Processing+Urbanski's+Workshop+Approach+for+the+H.S.+English+Classroom


 * SECONDARY ENGLISH GROUPS: ** **a)** //Teresa, Jen, Blakely, & Willis;// **b)** //Jamye, Heather, Anna, Scott, & James//
 * Using the Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom: H.S. focus **
 * Chapters 1, 3, & 4 from Urbanski (1998) **


 * Scenario:** Your principal has sent you to a professional development workshop on Urbanski’s Writing Workshop Approach because writing scores are low at your high school. As a result, she wants your English department faculty to implement this strategy with students to bring a greater focus to writing in the curriculum.


 * Your responsibility:** Now your principal has charged you with the responsibility of presenting a brief overview/introduction to Urbanski’s Writing Workshop Approach to selected members of your high school English department faculty! “Hit the highlights and give them takeaways!” she says. Given this charge, please address the following questions below (prior to typing on the wiki, you may want to create a Google Doc with your group members so as to save a document prior to posting your group's ideas below. You will not want to overwrite the other group's responses):


 * 1. Where does Urbanski suggest we start with regard to teaching writing to high school students?**


 * //Group A//: The writing process begins with the pre-writing/invention stage. For Urbanski, this stage is founded on a love of writing and a desire to help her students discover and experience that joy. Therefore, every stage of the instructional process begins with modeling to help students understand how to engage with and succeed at writing.


 * //Group B-// Urbanski suggests that we start with ourselves first.We must develop ourselves as writers, and then model our writing for our students. We should teach writing by doing and coaching, not just as some abstract concept. Urbanski uses the analogy of a running coach and a writing teacher. As a running coach, we wouldn’t just talk about running with our runners, we would show them how to hold their heads, how to breathe, and how to do certain things to make them better writers. The same is true with students. She talks about how coaches, "we encourage, cajole, and even require our athletes to step out of their comfort zones and try new things" (6). She also talks about the challenges of being the coach because of the negative connotation often associated with the word coach, but she encourages teachers to think about this role as an adult who is "working continually to gain knowledge..and then working with children to help them find their own reasons for learning" (7). Urbanski encourages teachers to actively pursue writing and learning so that they can then encourage students to. We must model for them what we want them to do, and the only way to truly model what we want them to do is to start with ourselves. If we aren’t writing, then we can’t model writing.


 * 2. For Urbanski, what is the writing process akin to and how does this play out in the secondary English classroom?**


 * //Group A//: She likens the writing teacher to a track coach. For a teacher to be an effective model/coach, he or she must be an active writer. Urbanski focuses on encouragement, practice, and teaching/learning by doing. She writes extensively about writing with her students and in front of her students so that they see how a writer works and thinks.

>  Urbanski’s goal is to help all students experience this “flying”, to know that if they manage to //begin//  writing and //continue//  writing through the rough spots, they can actually //become//  writers. She describes the **writer’s**  writing process, especially her own, showing that writing is not a G_d-given gift so much as it is a discipline made simpler with habit. Real writers get up in the morning, drag themselves to their writing stations every day and write (even though it is hard and tiring and they cannot imagine how they will ever “fly”). The role of the secondary English classroom then is to force students to just write, to give them writing experiences that they can refer back to--times when perseverance paid off, times when topics veered off before they got good, times when they really managed to move a reader. The English language arts classroom becomes the place where one is forced not only to write, but to understand writing as a discipline--something one attains not at birth, but every day.
 * //Group B-// Urbanski elaborates at length on the connection between writing and distance running. Running, as she explains is not the type of thing you’re psyched to get out and do; it’s hard; it hurts; it’s so different from the natural state of being that we can barely imagine the running high. Writing is similarly daunting at its undertaking; the thoughts seem exhausting; our stride seems like it may never come. But for writing, as for running, we must just **do it** . Even if we do not **do it** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> particularly well for a period of time, nothing will change unless we <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">**do it** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The pre-running/writing mentality is the obstacle that all runners and writers must overcome. Urbanski goes on to describe the feeling of overcoming--how when you push through “walls” and hit a stide--stride of breath, of thought, of voice--we can really “fly”.


 * 3. Given her description of the writing process, what is her approach to using writing workshop in the high school English classroom?**


 * //Group A//: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Urbanski makes extensive use of modeling. The modeling must be done in front of the students so that they can witness the process. She cautions against sharing writing, as an instructional/modeling tool, that is done outside the class. Students need to see that your first draft isn't perfect. A draft brought from home may look perfect compared to what the student is able to create in a first draft. If students see you work through a piece and witness revision, they learn how a piece of writing progresses and improves. She devotes considerable class time to writing to build trust and community.

> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As with cross country, most of the skill one needs comes from the sheer volume of practice. Runners need to run and run and run in order to be better runners. Writers likewise need “more time to write than they know what to do with”. There are, however, certain ways to hold the arms, to tighten the core, and to take hills that need to be taught and refined as a cross-country runner progresses. The same is true of the writing workshop; the teacher/coach must help with revisioning, revising, transitions, grammar, etc. But such items seem meaningless without that first progression into writerdom. And writerdom comes from practice practice practice, and a coach who takes her own advice.
 * //Group B-// Urbanski describes the secondary English writing workshop in terms of a cross country team. The teacher is the coach, and the coach is a runner. If the coach is a sedentary guy who sits and watches the run through some hazy cigar smoke, then the suggestions he makes to his team at the end of a practice are nothing more than requests for blind faith. But if the coach is out there running with them, pushing through to the wall for her second wind without stopping to breathe, then “keep pushing” really takes on a new meaning. In the writing workshop classroom, the teacher-as-coach is writing with the students. The teacher shows that students can expect to write a couple pages of garbage before they arrive at a topic they care about. Teachers can spit out a first draft and cut it to pieces and rearrange. And as students watch these real efforts, watch as their teacher/coach actually uses her own writing strategies, the proposed process becomes “valid.”


 * 4. What are some of the key features of Urbanski’s approach to teaching writing and implementing writing workshop?**

> > Urbanski recommends the use of a journal for free writing; however, she cautions against calling it a journal or diary as students may connect this with a practice not specific to generating writing themes. They also may have negative connections with journals and diaries. Instead, she recommends the terms "writer's notebook" and "daybooks".
 * //Group A//: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She takes an interactive approach with an emphasis on creating a safe space to create, and also to fail. Urbanski focuses a great deal of energy on the Free-Write stage of the writing process. This is where students invent topics about which to write. Here again, the student needs to perceive the environment as a safe place write. Mistakes are permissible as are false starts. Students should know it is alright to abandon an idea that is not working. Urbanski suggests 30 minute free-writing sessions followed by five minutes to highlight "gems and surprises". Afterward, students should be invited to pair and share what they have written. She views free-writing as an efficient use of time because are prepared to write a paper on a topic that they have thought through. It prevents the problem of getting half way through a paper only to realize that one cannot complete it for a variety of reasons.

> Finally, Urbanski talks about two practical tools to use in the writing workshop: 1. Free writing activities and 2. Daybooks. Free writing allows students to create whatever is in his or her head. Urbanski tells the story of a student she instructed to “free write” who struggled through it by editing and correcting along the way. Urbanski says that rather than this rigid way of writing, teachers need to “Let them go, let them fly. Let them run” (p. 55). Teachers should encourage students to write without pressure, knowing it’s “ok” to make mistakes. Secondly, students should be able to free write in daybooks. Urbanski likes the term “daybooks” more than “journals” or “diaries” because she feels there are some negative connotations associated with those latter terms. A daybook can be presented to the class as something new and unique. In it, students can record their thoughts, creative writings, or whatever else they choose without much rigid structure. It allows the instructor to go beyond the rules and guidelines associated with diaries or journals and allows students to free write.
 * //Group B-// Teachers should be writers. Urbanski says that it’s “ok” if the teacher doesn’t know everything, because he or she is learning as a writer also. Being a writer helps instruction and planning. Urbanski says that teachers should model writing for their students by “writing, reading and thinking” aloud in front of students. Students can learn writing better by watching someone else do it. Urbanski quotes the work of others about the necessity of creating a habit of writing everyday. Teachers need to write. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There are two advantages to being a “writer” and teaching a writing workshop: 1. Students trust the teacher more and 2. It makes planning easier. Urbanski says that the act of writing shows the students that the teacher is also working. The teacher has bad writing days. The students see that the teacher isn’t just waiting to mark their mistakes in red pen, but the teacher is actually helping and working with the students. Working in this way creates a type of trust between the student and teacher. Urbanski says that working along side the students helps the students to see that the teacher isn’t tricking them or making them do more work. Writing with the students allows the students to see the value in writing. Secondly, Urbanski says being a writer just makes planning writing instruction easier. She recounts a story of a surprise classroom observation where her assistant principal wanted to see a lesson taught. Urbanski had planned on allowing her students to just write without much instruction. In a panic, she spent the beginning part of her lesson working on an overhead writing out a comparison of two objects, verbalizing her thoughts and reasoning. When she finished, her students worked diligently because they were encouraged and intrigued by their teacher’s example. The entire lesson, however, was made up on the fly. Urbanski says that writing with students simply makes planning instruction an easier task


 * 5. What other important information do you think your faculty needs to know as an introduction to Urbanski’s approach to writing workshop?**


 * //Group A//: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Urbanski includes many quotes from writers she admires. She emphasizes the value of using professional writers as models and letting students know that you admire writers and model your writing on theirs. Urbanski says that these techniques help students learn how to identify writing they like and incorporate the elements of that writing into their own.


 * //Group B-// She mentions a lot about giving her students permission to have bad writing days, and make it clear that every writer does. The point is that they write everyday, any way. Our students need to see firsthand that not every thing we write is brilliant. They need to see us struggle with our ideas, write dribble to get to the jewels, and mess up our grammar and punctuation so we can stay in the flow of ideas. She mentions free writing as a great way to open up their ideas and allow them to write without correcting so they can get to their jewels. So many of our students are hung up on the idea of writing perfectly so we don’t mark up their papers with our red pen. We need to clarify when they need to write with that focus on precision, and when they can write whatever comes out of their heads to find ideas. By allotting class time for these free writes, we show them that this is an important part of the writing process. By showing them the ideas we came up with that didn’t work lets them see that no writer, regardless of where he is in his development, produces a polished piece in the first draft. They need to see our mistakes so they aren’t afraid to make their own.