Entry #2

             With my limited experience in teaching being in a self-contained classroom as well as a sixth grade science classroom I haven't had much experience with writing workshop. For the writing assignments that what a part of the topic was chosen for the students and they had rubric that they were to follow as they wrote so that they knew what they needed to include and what needed to happen for them to do well. I also look back to my own experience as a student, I can't remember having such independence that this type of workshop creates. Hicks(2009) has students working in both a physical and a virtual classroom on projects that they have a lot of control over. They were able to choose their own topics, collaborate with the teacher as well as other students on their projects and then had the ability to choose how they were going to publish their work. These choices are what I see as independent and taking responsibility for their own work. Taking responsibility for their own work to me means that they aren't writing just for the grade but they have a purpose and they are using writing to create real meaning and sharing it with the world.
       Since I don’t have experience teaching writing workshop I have an ideal set up in mind that I would love to implement in my future classroom. It would start by tying into what we’re learning in science or social studies at the time so students could get experience researching. Within the broad topic that we are working on my students would have the ability to choose something that they wanted to learn more about and then create a writing piece about that would eventually be published and shared with the class to enhance the learning of the class as a whole. Once the topic is chosen students can research in books or on the internet and then start the prewriting process. There would be places in the room where they can work individually as well as consult with other students and myself.
       Once the prewriting, drafting, revising and editing stages are complete students would be able to choose how they want to present what they have written to the class. This is where the digital part comes in; they will have access to computers to blog, use a wiki, and create a brochure, PowerPoint, prezi, poster …..the possibilities are endless and I am sure that my students will have more ideas then me. After this final step students will share what they have created to the class and everyone will learn more with the broad topic that we started with. 
       I understand that this is a very idealized digital writing workshop but I would like to create a community in my classroom that fosters students independent, curiosity and a sense of ownership for their work instead of creating students that are just doing something just for a grade and not really learning or getting anything from the writing process. This is what I ultimately see as the goal of writing workshop and I was never able to experience this much freedom of choice in the classroom so I would like to create this in my future classroom.