Coby’s Reflection To Graves Chapter 2-3

In the second and third chapters of his book, Writing: Teachers and Children At Work, Donald Graves talks about running a writer’s workshop and helping children choose topics. Graves goes over the steps of a writer’s workshop which would be: setting the atmosphere, visiting individual students, allowing the students to share with each other, and having the students file their writing into a writing folder. He also says that teachers can help their students with brainstorming ideas by knowing what their students are interested in, reading other literatures to them, and coming up with a list of four topics as a class.

I enjoyed reading these two chapters because they gave me simple applicable tips for running a writer’s workshop. I especially like the idea of writer folders so that every idea that a student comes up with is saved and can be used for future projects. “Nothing gets thrown away” sounds like a very efficient statement. I could even use this idea for my own personal hobby writing projects. Another great idea is reading different literatures to the students so that they may put together a plot for their writing using ideas that they have gathered from other stories. The last thing that I learned from this reading is how important it is to know your students and their interests. It actually helps to boost their academic, or at least their writing, skills. The writer’s workshop concept excites me because in Greg’s class it has given me a place to be creative and have fun with my thoughts. The main goal of my teaching philosophy is to make learning a fun activity rather than a boring chore.