Writer’s Workshop Curriculum Guide

Layers of Learning’s Writer’s Workshop isn’t just a curriculum; it’s a mindset. It’s a lifestyle that will change writing from a chore to a joy as your whole family grows as writers together, family-school style.

Nine Genre Units In One Reusable Program

The Writer’s Workshop program is divided into units based on different genres of writing including poetry, fanciful stories, report & essays, and so on.

Writer’s Workshop is sold two ways: as individual PDF units and as a single volume that includes all nine of the units.

Each genre unit is intended to last for about a month in your homeschool. You will pick and choose the parts you want to do, then be able to reuse it in subsequent years by choosing other exercises and writing projects from the same genre. Each unit can be used again and again in your family.

Or Buy the Units One by One

Each unit included in the Writer’s Workshop program can also be purchased individually as PDFs. Here is what is included:

Inside Each Unit

Exercises

Within each unit, you will find exercises – short writing assignments that help you develop specific writing skills. None of the exercises will be graded. They are practice. Most of these will be kept within a Journal that is personal to each writer. Creativity and freedom of expression are hallmarks of a successful Writer’s Workshop.

Mini-Lessons

Accompanying the exercises, there are sidebars within each unit that share mini-lessons, short daily lessons to help teach grammar, punctuation, the writing process, genre skills, and more. Mentors are also encouraged to be an active member of the Writer’s Workshop, noticing skills that need to be taught and tailoring the program to help growing writers. In addition, within the Layers of Learning catalog, you can click on the unit you are using and have access to more links, the unit’s YouTube playlist, and the continually-growing Writer’s Workshop Pinterest board.

Project Ideas Banks

During the course of each unit, one project will be chosen and the writer will take that one piece all of the way through the writing process – prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Every unit includes idea banks to spur on ideas and keep pens to paper. The monthly project will be the only graded writing, and its evaluation includes a rubric that addresses specific skills learned within the unit.

Printables

Every single Writer’s Workshop unit also includes a printable pack full of printables used within the exercises and mini-lessons, as well as printable idea banks and rubrics.

Word Work

The Goal of Writer’s Workshop

Writing in our homeschool happens in short bursts throughout our day.  We use it to show what we know and add our own ideas and contributions to the world’s body of knowledge.  Writing is empowering! Rather than getting caught up in mechanics and mundane exercises, we focus on ideas first. We use writing to communicate, to share a part of ourselves and our ideas.

Process Over Product

As we write, we focus on the process, not just the product.  Writer’s Workshop Jump Start will help kids practice the writing process, which they will continue to use as they write.

• pre-writing
• drafting
• revising
• editing
• publishing

Just to be clear, these steps don’t all happen in a day, and sometimes they don’t all happen in a week. I teach mini-lessons just about every day. We write in our writer’s notebooks until we have something we want to turn into more.  Sometimes this happens spontaneously (like my son’s series of Super Monkey books about a superhero monkey who saves the world from a variety of evil-doers).  Sometimes it happens because I assign something; “Okay young authors, your biography is due on Friday. . . no more dawdling!”)

The kids write, wherever they are at in the process, until we are ready to move on to something else.  Then they just put it away and pick up where they left off the next day.

Some Quick Tips

Open creativity is awesome, but we’re also believers in providing clear direction.  There’s nothing worse than being told to write anything at all when no ideas seem to come.  Some kids will come up with their own ideas, but you should also have assignments, story starters, fun ideas, and specific directions on hand for those writers who don’t come up with topics and ideas well on their own.  The Writer’s Workshop units are a go-to source of inspiration for those tidbits of fun.

The physical act of writing can be quite a chore for some kids.  Don’t take the burden away entirely, because the way they will build writing endurance is by writing.  At the same time, you can lighten the burden. For example, taking a story all the way through the writing process can involve three or more re-writes. Have kids do it once, but then you can pitch in and type up the story.  With little ones, you may even do some of their writing on the first draft to help them get their ideas down, but don’t ever take over and do all the writing if you want them to grow as writers.

Pre-writing is an important first step in the writing process.  Talking about ideas, drawing a picture, creating a character sketch, or making a web or outline can make an overwhelming assignment manageable.  A fun pre-writing activity is a great mini-lesson with each new genre you start.

Intersperse writing assignments with authentic writing experiences. Kids can write to grandparents, penpals, people in the community, companies, authors, and politicians. They can write shopping lists and to-do lists, or send e-mail.  Consider submitting essays to essay contests, writing online book reviews, or keeping a family scrapbook.

Every day is different and variety is key.  Sometimes we’re quietly writing at desks.  Sometimes we’re outside listing as many things as we can see in our yard together.  You may find me typing up a story with a kid at my side as we talk about how to make the writing better.  You may see us all sitting together writing a collective story, with Mom as the scribe.  Sometimes we’re reading silly poems together.  We could be playing a game about nouns or watching Grammar Rock videos.  We’re always reading, writing, and talking about writing. In the messy process (and about an hour a day), we become better writers by doing Writer’s Workshop.

We Hope You’ll Join Us!

We write all throughout our day, whether we’re writing what we learned about an artist, explaining a math concept in a journal entry, writing up an experiment, or creating a passage in our world explorer journals. Our Writer’s Workshop gives us the flexibility to write about anything we have big ideas about.  As we master the writing process and learn how to be better writers, we get to use those skills to better share the ideas we have. Through Writer’s Workshop, we grow! We hope you’ll join us in creating a Writer’s Workshop in your homeschool. We can’t wait to see the ways you grow too!

Writer’s Workshop in a Podcast