After reading a plethora of pins and checking out numerous blogs about writing workshops, I decided to give the writing workshop a go this year for the first time. I gathered up all the handouts I wanted to give my students to refer to while writing including making each student a writing workshop folder. I even printed the handouts in rainbow order just so my students would know which order to use them in for easy reference.
What I quickly realized was that my students were too overwhelmed with the whole let's get down to writing a RAEECE paragraph (check out earlier post on RAEECE writing). I also realized that that feeling of being overwhelmed was quickly leading to frustration and to shutting down on learning in general.
So what started out as a plan to write a solid RAEECE paragraph a day, quickly turned into a mini-lesson on thesis statements (the R+A). The second "AHA" moment I had was that I had totally overlooked the emphasis almost all the blogs had placed on mini-lessons to start out each day of the writing workshop. I missed the "MINI" part. Instead of focusing on one part of RAEECE, I tried to cram the entire paragraph into a mini-lesson which was an epic fail and clearly defeated the entire point of a short 10-15 minute mini-lesson.
After Day 1, I ended up having students practice writing RAEECE thesis statements with practice prompts. We did several more together as a group, and then students practiced in small groups with independent practice occurring after that. The outcome was a thousand times better than what I had imagined. My students went from writing thesis statements such as "Yes they should add new food to it because they should" to "After reading the article, "Possible changes coming to school lunch menus," schools should consider adding more food choices for students to improve their own healthy choices. Students were able to replace vague pronouns with specific language from the prompt as well as include a Global Idea for an answer.
After practicing in class and out for the next two days, my kiddos definitely had a much firmer grasp on what a thesis statement is and what should be included. I was even more amazed with my struggling students that really seemed to understand and even be the first to volunteer when practicing on the board.
So what was my lesson learned for this round? Mini means just that, MINI! If I can't get through the lesson in 15 minutes tops, it's not mini.
What are some of your best mini lessons for writing??
