Writer’s Workshop engages young writers with high-interest writing prompts and projects. The Writer’s Workshop method creates a happy environment where kids are coached incrementally towards improved writing skills. The program prioritizes the growth of the writer over tests and grades.
This book is a parent guide to help the adult plan daily writing lessons. It can be used to teach all ages from 6 to 18 years old and can be used simultaneously with different ages or abilities, family-style.
What’s In This Paperback Book?
Writer’s Workshop includes nine individual month-long units including:
- Writer’s Workshop Jump Start – to break free of old writing patterns, learn to have fun writing, and learn the writing process.
- Sentences, Paragraphs, & Narrations – to teach well-crafted, powerful sentences and paragraphs plus how to retell information in your own words.
- Descriptions & Instructions – to paint a picture in your reader’s mind with vivid language plus write clear instructions.
- Fanciful Stories – to write setting, characters, plot, and dialogue for fictional stories of all lengths.
- Poetry – to write formula poems, free-verse poems, rhyme schemes, figurative language, and more.
- True Stories – to write biographies, news articles, memoirs, and other true tales.
- Reports & Essays – to research and write book reports, science reports, history reports, essays, and other expository writing.
- Letters – to write letters to friends and family, write business letters, fill out forms, craft a resume, and more correspondence skills.
- Persuasive Writing – to get people to come around to your point of view through appeals to authority, emotion, logic, and more.
Read more about the Writer’s Workshop method of writing in the Writer’s Workshop Curriculum Guide. Get all the nitty-gritty details for how to set up your own Writer’s Workshop and mentor your kids to help them grow as writers in the Writer’s Workshop Guidebook.
A Writer’s Workshop Lesson
Writer’s Workshop includes mini-lessons in the sidebars on every page in a pick-and-choose format. Each daily writing lesson starts with a five-minute mini-lesson including grammar, mechanics, writing skills, and genre lessons. Choose the mini-lessons that appeal to you and that your kids need extra help with. Next, choose from dozens of exercises. Each of the units is full of pick-and-choose exercises so the parent/mentor can select writing activities that keep your kids engaged.
Some of the exercises can be done in a single one-hour writing session, others you will want to extend over several days or even weeks. Finish up each unit with a monthly writing project from each student.
Evaluating Writer’s Workshop
During the last week or of the unit, the student will take an exercise from the unit and take it all the way through the writing process. When the project is completed, it should be published and shared in front of a cheering audience. The writing project is the only part of Writer’s Workshop that is evaluated. Writer’s Workshop includes printable grading rubrics for each unit to help in evaluations that assess each writer based on his or her levels and growth during the unit, as opposed to an arbitrary standard.
Reusable and For All Ages
The units are repeatable so you can use the same Writer’s Workshop book and program year after year with all of your children from beginning writers who sit on a lap and tell Mom what to write down, to high schoolers preparing for college-level writing.
The Writer’s Workshop book is for the parent/teacher and includes mini-lessons on writing skills and grammar in the sidebars and dozens of writing exercises through the rest of the book.
The parent picks and chooses between mini-lessons that address the children’s needs and then exercises that will engage the children’s interests.
Extra Resources
YouTube playlists, Pinterest boards, links to helpful websites are all assembled and ready for you to access on the Writer’s Workshop Resources for Layers of Learning page.
Printable Packs
Writer’s Workshop also includes printables for every unit. The Printable Packs are available as a digital PDF download from Layers-of-Learning.com and come with your purchase on your receipt.
If you purchased Writer’s Workshop elsewhere and are looking for the Writer’s Workshop Printable Pack, you can find it sold separately within the catalog.
Also Sold As Individual PDFs
The Writer’s Workshop program also comes as individual PDF units you can purchase one-by-one as you go. The individual PDFs are exactly the same content as the units that are included within the paperback or PDF Writer’s Workshop book. It’s like buying the program chapter by chapter.
Supplemental Links, Videos, & Resources
There are Pinterest boards, website links, and a YouTube video playlist that go with this lesson on a separate page for Writer’s Workshop.
K. Haren –
So far, we’ve completed four units and are in the middle of our fifth. I am downright amazed at the progress I have seen already from my 9 and 13 year old. The 9 year old has gone from barely willing to write a sentence to writing a paragraph pretty easily. The 13 year old is learning how to add variety to her writing and make her pieces really sing. I really like how adaptable the activities are and that we can all do them together. My house is full of special learners, so thank you for an easy to use and wonderful program that can fit each kid so easily. I’m so glad we found it and jumped in.
Patricia –
As an educator, I am very impressed with the quality education offered at Layers of Learning.
Molly Impola –
Such a fun way to teach language arts and I love that it works for the whole family! I have been so impressed already, after just one unit in, at how well my kids are doing with their writing skills! Letting write more about what they WANT to write about makes everyone happier!
Kelsey –
Okay, I’ve gone back and forth between a different curriculum (Brave writer) trying to figure out if it would be writers workshop or brave writer or both…
Brave writer is great in the single read aloud for the family with copy work and ideas (with the singles). As far as the growing brave writer approach, it’s been fun, but not as strategic.
When my goal from the get go was to help my 5th grader improve his ability to write a paragraph..layers of learning gave more tools to the point my son was confident in writing a report with a few of the approaches from jump start. And as I‘ve looked at picking it back up, I can see LOL can give more specifics and strategy for my year’s goal.
I also liked how LOL has vocabulary/spelling tailored based on skill sets versus random vocabulary so I feel like it gives your kids more amo when they go to write a breadth of words with a methodology to spelling patterns.
Also, I can appreciate where BW has a similar attitude towards writing to give children freedom to write and not judge which is similar to LOL, but LoL actually puts it into practical practice from the get go of the structure (ie..this section is for your eyes only). That alone was a big builder of trust that helped our family’s dynamic towards writing.
So, if you’re in that camp, I hope this can save some time as you consider the goals you have for your family. We use copy work and check out applicable grammar ideas to a book with BW.. But use LOL for structure and skills for more applicable hands on techniques to really help us with our writing goals now.
Chantelle –
Writers Workshop takes all the beauty of Bravewriter but puts it into an organized format with actual mini-lessons and multiple options to choose for your kiddos in each unit. Then you can repeat the units year after year knowing that there are plenty of other lesson options to choose from in the following years. It’s a huge value because it can be reused over and over.
Krista Biggs –
This is exactly what I have been looking for for my reluctant writer, I love the set up, the activities, the suggestions, everything! I can’t wait to get started!