Writer's Workshop: Trusting the parachute

This week we launched Unit 2 of writer's workshop which centers around narrative texts.  We also started making books.  Yesterday I was thinking that whoever wrote Unit 2 was an idiot! I mean Unit 1 went so smoothly...why on earth would I want to change a perfectly comfortable process in favor of making books?   Thus my title... Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?  It was not broken... why fix it?

Making books is messy business.  I start to hyperventilate when I can no longer dictate the minutia of writers workshop.   It makes me want to breath into a bag.   But you know what?  It is not about me.   It is really about moving the students forward.

I won't go into the benefits of student's making books versus a page a day. We did that in great detail this summer with our book study. If you missed it, you can read about it here.

Here is one page I came across today during a writing conference. This was from one of my sweet babies who had trouble holding the pencil at the beginning of the year.  He could not write his name.  At first glance, you would think this writing lacks meaning.

However, when I sat down to confer with him, this is what I found out.

I LOVE his dad's expression!!!

Wow!   This little guy worked on this for 3 days.   He sustained his focus over time.  He knows that a book's subject is connected in meaning. He also knows that books contain words made up of letters. Since he has no letter/sound knowledge,  I was thrilled that he wrote a string of letters.

Confession:   We outlined the conferring note book in Unit 2, but I started it around week 2 of school.

Here is what mine looks like.

I added names to the tabs

I have my conferring schedule on the inside cover

Deanna and I are working hard on Unit 3 which will focus on informational (procedural) texts. 

If you are following along with our Writing Through the Year units, we would love to hear how it is going for you!