Teaching Writers to Reflect: Strategies for a More Thoughtful Writing Workshop

Even if your writing workshop hums with the sound of productive work most days, with time carved out for sharing and reflecting, how do you know whether your students are really learning from their writing experiences, or if they’re just going through the motions of writing? What if you could teach your students to reflect―in a powerful, deliberate way―throughout the writing process?

Teaching Writers to Reflect shares a three step process―remember, describe, act--to help students develop as writers who know for themselves what they are doing and why. The authors argue that teaching the skill of reflection helps students:

• Build identities as writers within a community of writers
• Learn what to do when there’s a problem in their writing
• Make writing skills transferable to more than one writing situation.

With specific teaching strategies, examples of student work and stories from their own classrooms, Whitney, McCracken and Washell help you align the work of reflection with your writing workshop structure.  After learning to reflect on what they do as writers, students not only can say things about the texts they have written, but also can talk about their own abilities, challenges, and the processes by which they solve writing problems.

For many years as the author of bestselling Heinemann books such as About the Authors, Study Driven, Already Ready, and In Pictures and In Words, and as a member of Heinemann’s Professional Development Services, Katie Wood Ray gave teachers resources and PD that transformed writing instruction and helped children discover a lifelong love of writing.

In 2014, Katie “moved to the other side of the desk” and joined the dynamic team of editors at Heinemann where she works closely with authors to craft powerful professional books on a range of literacy topics. Katie is also the series editor for the new Classroom Essentials books from Heinemann. Tasked with bringing foundational, progressive practices to a new generation of teachers, Katie works to ensure that the sharp focus and enhanced design of each book best serve the content. She also teamed up with her longtime collaborator, Lisa Cleaveland, to write one of the first books in the series, A Teacher’s Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers. 

You can find her on Twitter at @KatieWoodRay.

 

Anne Elrod Whitney is Professor of Education at the Pennsylvania State University.

Colleen McCracken is a second grade teacher at Easterly Parkway Elementary School in State College, Pennsylvania.

Deana Washell is a third grade teacher at Easterly Parkway Elementary School in State College, Pennsylvania.