This unit on Living the Writer’s Life is designed to serve as a framework as you launch your first grade Writing Workshop at the beginning of the school year. The unit reflects current research and understandings about early literacy and addresses the NCEE First Grade Writing Standards. Your deep familiarity with the standards and expectations is an important responsibility. Writing Workshop fits into the rich context of classroom life where children are learning to write. This context includes:
Understanding the context in which Writing Workshop fits allows you to plan all aspects of instruction in the most appropriate context. This unit is specifically about your workshop time.
In first grade, Writing Workshop is a time for children to play with writing and approximate being a writer. Katie Wood Ray suggests that young children need to write (make books) as they learn. This joyful, deliberate work energizes their learning about written language.
Living the Writer's Life is the unit that will both launch and sustain your first grade Writing Workshop. The lessons are designed to help you envision and experience the structure and tone of Writers Workshop so you' can continue it all year as you find writing mentors for your children and introduce your children to different types of writing. Once you feel your children are ready for the first grade genre unit, you should introduce it into your Writing Workshop.
You will notice that you are being encouraged to use small, handmade books rather than a writer's notebook, which is a change from our thinking the first year. We now understand that a writer's notebook is a tool many writers use to capture and contain the ideas, impressions, or thoughts, that pop into their heads throughout the day so they can be used at a later time for writing projects (filling the notebook is not the project). Katie Wood Ray recommends we begin helping children use notebooks in second grade when they can write fast enough to record their ideas quickly. At that point, children do not have to struggle with all the spelling and letter formation issues that take so much cognitive energy in first grade. As a first grade teacher, you will have to decide if and when a notebook can be a useful tool for your young writers.
As you look through the unit, you will see that lessons repeat, circling back to ideas as children widen their experience as readers and writers. The experience of reading other writers’ work and creating their own work as writers becomes the raw material from which children construct the foundation of their understanding of writing.
Procedure lessons help children learn productive routines for workshop. Some procedures will change over time and can be revisited in mini-lessons; others need to be taught, charted, and reinforced.
Using tools to support independence creates opportunities for the teacher to help children use a variety of writing tools.
Lessons that support oral-language development as a strategy for composition take place throughout the year. Other strategy lessons that support composition (what to say) and transcription (how to write it down) occur regularly.
“Why writers write” is an ongoing topic of exploration in lessons based on other authors’ work (author-based lessons). As children write more, they gain greater insights into others' writing; that is, they learn to read like writers. We are teaching them through repeated experience rather than an explicit lesson on reading like a writer.
“What writers write” supports another series of author-based lessons that help children read like writers. They begin to build experience and understanding about the kinds of things that writers create and informs their decisions about their work time.
First grade children begin craft lessons as a deeper form of author-based lessons. Standards 2 and 3 provide much insight into the role of author friends both as mentors for children and as a co-teacher for you.
| Type of Lesson | Goal | Lessons in the Unit |
| Procedure Lessons | To help children learn productive procedures for workshop (routines) and rituals that introduce magic and play into the workshop (rituals) |
1 (PDF or Word) 2 (PDF or Word) 5 (PDF or Word) 9 (PDF or Word) 10 (PDF or Word) |
| Using Tools to Support Independence | To help children make use of classroom tools to work independently | 8 (PDF or Word) 8a (PDF or Word) 8b (PDF or Word) |
| Strategy Lessons | To help children think of ideas and expand ideas (composing) and record ideas (transcribing and problem solving) |
4 (PDF or Word) 5 (PDF or Word) 6 (PDF or Word) 10 (PDF or Word) |
| Author-Based Lessons | To help children use other writers’ work to understand topic choice, writing forms and structures, and pictures | 2 (PDF or Word) 3 (PDF or Word) 4 (PDF or Word) 7 (PDF or Word) 11 (PDF or Word) |
| Craft Lessons | To help children use other writers’ work to take on the language of authors and develop word choice awareness | 11 (PDF or Word) |
Living like a Writer: What does it look like in first grade?
When a first grader lives like a writer, he learns an idea from a set of examples (from touchstone or mentor texts), then he puts the idea into words and actions. Children should start learning from favorite "author friends" early. It will help children be more decisive and deliberate when they work (I'm making a days of the week book, just like…) Reading and listening like a writer follows reading and listening like a reader. Children need many, many opportunities to enjoy a wide variety of texts before developing insights.
The following table gives you an idea of what living like a writer looks like in first grade. If you want children to learn from the work of others, you must begin with a framework in which the information fits. Then you must show them the works of authors. Eventually, children will be able to connect their own writing ideas to the work of other authors. But, you must build the foundation.
| Teacher sets INTENDED LEARNING. |
Teacher SHOWS what it looks like (example). |
Child names it with WORDS. |
Child takes ACTION. |
| What writers do | Eric Carle writes every day. | Writers write every day. | I will write every day. |
| Why writers write | Cynthia Rylant wrote to help her friend feel better. | Writers write to help other people. | I will write a book to help my mom take care of our cat. |
| What kinds of things writers write | Eloise Greenfield writes poems. | Poetry is a genre that writers write. | I will write some poems. |
| How writers say things | Marcia McClintock Folsom asks a question and answers it on the next page. | Writers have different structures for their work. | I will write a question-and-answer book about whales. |
| How writers complete their work | Eric Carle has a title and his name on the cover. | Writers have standards of completion. | I will write my name on each book and add a title. |
| Writers revisit ideas | H. A. Rey writers about Curious George over and over. | Writers write about some things many times. | I can write more books about my skateboard. |
Adapt the unit to meet your students’ needs. Feel free to add your own favorite touchstone or mentor texts, read alouds, and mini-lessons (PDF or Word). If you are working with English-language learners, you need to think about sheltering instruction in your Writing Workshop (PDF or Word). This unit will evolve as we add new lessons and titles; think of this site as permanently “under construction,” and come back often to visit and see changes.
If you have technical questions about this Web site, contact Joel' Bradley-Hess at
joel_bradley-hess@dpsk12.org or 720-423-3723.
Page last updated:
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
© 1999-2005 Denver Public Schools. All Rights Reserved.