Collaboration in the Writing Workshop 

Abstract: This article addresses collaboration in the primary classroom during writing workshop. In Writer’s Workshop, students collaborate with each other and constantly talk through their thinking. This is a developmentally appropriate strategy that can be utilized through writing partnerships. Students can be set up for success by setting expectations and procedures at the beginning of the school year and teaching specific types of conferences that students can utilize. This article addresses types of conferences, ways to introduce expectations using fishbowl modeling, and specific problems that might arise along with solutions and ideas for those problems.

Text Teaser: This article addresses the topic of collaboration in the writing workshop through utilization of peer partnerships and modeling in the classroom.

Collaboration in the Writing Workshop

Many teachers believe that writing workshop should be a silent work time. I have often caught myself thinking, “wow! It is loud in here… I better get the class to quiet down!” and then listening in...realizing that although it may sound loud in the classroom to outside ears, all of the students are engaged and talking about their writing. Allowing primary students to talk during writing workshop is beneficial in many ways. Writing workshop is a collaborative time, where students are allowed to talk, brainstorm, and share with their peers throughout the writing process.

Developmentally Appropriate Approach

Allowing students to collaborate during the writing process is essential in the primary classroom. Students are constantly talking when they are writing, sometimes to themselves and sometimes to a peer or teacher. They might be stretching out words, thinking out loud about their ideas, planning out sentences, asking a friend about a picture, or chattering about what they are going to write next.

Talking during writing is developmentally appropriate and we as teachers need to try to teach into the talk, to help children understand ways they might use talk to help them make their writing even better.

Writing Partnerships

Writing partnerships and peer engagement can be utilized in the writing workshop to help give students more constant feedback and support. There are times when the teacher may be surrounded by students, all having questions to ask and flailing papers. By utilizing collaboration and allowing talking during writing workshop time, students are able to get their needs met more quickly by their peers.

Students are more independent and are able to ask their writing partner a quick question instead of always relying on the teacher. They are able to support one another through the writing process and give constant feedback to their partner as they work side by side.

Writing partnerships also foster student to student conferencing allowing students to have much more practice critiquing writing and working collaboratively. “In a nutshell, it is flow and feedback. Traffic is redirected, and students’ experience responding to text multiplies.” (Hsu, 2009, p. 153)

Writing partnerships and peer engagement should not replace writing conferences led by the teacher, but instead enhance the writing process and help students get feedback from multiple sources.

As students become more confident and understand the expectations of writing partnerships, writing groups can be introduced which allow students more opportunities for peer feedback and interaction with text.

Setting Students Up for Success

Setting expectations in the workshop time is essential for this time to be successful. Spending time at the beginning of the year (and throughout the year as needed) modeling to students what writing time should look like and sound like will ensure that students are on task and thriving in the classroom. Showing students explicit examples of times they may need a peer conference during their writing process.

In the first grade classroom, I would use six kinds of conferences to teach children that they might utilize during a writing conference. They include:

1. I need some “wow!” in my writing
2. I am just stuck
3. I have a question that I am wondering about in my writing
4. I need to test-drive my piece
5. My ideas need to be bigger- ask me some questions
6. I need someone to look at my illustrations and make sure they match my text

Each lesson begins with an explanation of the kind of conferences we want to teach that day, making as many connections as we can to the children’s experiences as writers and times when we’ve seen they could have used this kind of help.

Types of Conferences

1. “I need some “wow!” in my writing means that you want someone to look at what you’re writing and help you think of some cool stuff- in the words and illustrations- you might do to make the book really good.” (Ray, 2004, p. 189)
2. “I’m just stuck means that you started writing and you can’t think of anywhere else to go with it. You need to talk it out with someone until you get some more ideas and can carry on.” (Ray, 2004, p. 189)
3. “I have a question I’m wondering about in my writing means there is something specific you want to ask someone about what you’re writing. It may be a content question (Are birds mammals?) or it may be about the craft of writing (Can you help me think of a good repeating line to use in this?).” (Ray, 2004, p. 190)
4. “I need to test drive my piece means you’ve written something and you think it’s really funny or really sad or really disgusting or really something, and you need someone to read it so you can gauge the response. Does the reader laugh or seem sad or say, “Oh gross!” after he has read it?” (Ray, 2004, p. 190)
5. “My ideas need to be bigger- ask me some questions means you’ve gotten something written from beginning to end, but you know you need to make the ideas inside it bigger. You need someone to tell you what else she might like to know on each page.” (Ray, 2004, p. 190)
6. “I need someone to look at my illustrations and make sure they match the words on each page means, well, exactly what it says! You want help thinking through your illustration decisions.” (Ray, 2004, p. 190)

Each of the types of conferences described by Ray can be utilized by students freely once introduced to the class. These types of conferences are not meant to be used at the end of writing time or at the end of the writing process, but instead utilized all along to help students make their writing piece better and better as they work.

Pause and Ponder:

• What does your writing workshop time currently sound like in your classroom?
• What are some conversational ground rules you could set in your classroom?
• What are the types of conferences you might introduce to your students?

Fishbowl Modeling

In a fishbowl activity, a small group of students are picked to discuss a topic. The rest of the class watches and listens as the small group models their thinking to the rest of the class. Each type of conference will be introduced and explained, and then modeled in the fishbowl. Students will watch and talk about what they notice.

The role play should be set up ahead of time so that students know what to expect and what their role is in the conference. Chose a few students depending on the type of conference and pull them aside to explain their role beforehand. Student work or teacher work can be utilized during the fishbowl activity to give students an example.

Once the fishbowl conference is over, come back together as a class and discuss it with the children. “We make sure they’ve noticed important things such as how the two peers shared a look at the writing, the ways the help was asked for and given, the tone of the help, and the ways the writer made use of the help or kept track of the suggestions.” (Ray, 2004, p. 190) Students are then asked to envision a time where they might use this conference and what it would be like to be writing during the workshop time and the process they would go through.

Teachers should end the introductory lessons with a request that students let us know if they have a conference like this with someone that day, so that we can talk about how it went for them during the share time.

Possible Problems in the Workshop

There are a few problems that could potentially arise by allowing students to work collaboratively during writing workshop. “Partners may not be engaging one another deeply, which is when the teacher involvement is crucial. Teachers can participate in partner talks without dominating them.” (Hsu, 2009, p. 156) Teachers should be circulating the room in order to jump in and help stimulate deep conversations by asking leading questions. If students are off task, the teacher can work with the group by asking questions and redirecting them back to their writing task on hand.

If student feedback focuses on edits more than revisions, students can be encouraged to focus more on author’s craft and think about the strategies the teacher has provided the class during minilessons. Anchor charts with ideas for writing conferences and peer feedback can be left up during the year for students to refer to if needed.

It is essential that writing workshop is a collaborative time where we allow students to talk and work together. In the primary classroom, students should have writing workshop daily where they are working on writing pieces for extended periods of time.

By allowing collaboration in the workshop, we are following developmentally appropriate strategies and setting students up for success. Through modeling and training, students will learn the expectations of staying on task during the writing workshop and look forward to writing each day.

Take Action!

• Allow writing workshop to be a buzzing time in the classroom.
• Partner students with a peer for writing time and have them stay with that partner for an extended period of time to increase the peer writing relationship.
• Utilize the fishbowl modeling method to introduce the different types of conferences to students.

Literature Cited:

Ray, K. W., Cleaveland, L. B. (2004). About the Authors: Writing Workshop With our Youngest Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hsu, C. (2009). Writing Partnerships. The Reading Teacher 63(2), 153-158.

Due to formatting in scholar, I have also included a link to the google doc I wrote my paper in for readability/formatting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/153zG3NDxc-GFI8PinZX6yBwAs_W47cbBKkmS6uJlvtw/edit?usp=sharing