Does WriteShop work well in
a co-op setting?
WriteShop
was originally developed for a home school co-op, making it a natural
curriculum choice for anyone seeking to teach a small group of
students. Whether you do all the teaching, editing, and grading or
share these responsibilities with others, WriteShop will help you with
lesson planning, classroom management, and teaching suggestions.
Since the
WriteShop program entered the curriculum market in 2000, dozens of
WriteShop classes have sprung up all over California as well as around
the country, in such states as Nebraska, North and South Carolina,
Indiana, Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Massachusetts. Others have taught
WriteShop classes with success---you can too!
I teach language arts in a small
private school. Would WriteShop work for my junior high class?
If you
teach a daily class, your schedule would be much the same as for a
home school parent. Since you see the students every day, follow a
daily schedule (see Teacher's Manual) rather than one of the weekly or
biweekly schedules found in the Handbook. Use class time for student
writing and self-editing, and send home Skill Builders and unfinished
compositions as homework.
Am I qualified to teach
a class?
If you are a fairly confident writer with a good eye
for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, you can teach a WriteShop
class! You don't need to be an English major or have a teaching
credential to successfully guide a small group of students through the
basics of writing simple compositions. Because of its step-by-step
approach, the WriteShop Teacher's Manual will walk you through the
process and provide helpful instructional and grading tools.
Teachers may certainly adapt WriteShop for
use in the traditional classroom. However, home schoolers also have
many opportunities to offer specialized classes to other home
schooling families in their community through independent study
programs (ISPs), support groups, and co-ops.
What grade levels
should I teach?
For optimum
results, we recommend WriteShop I classes of 7th- to 10th-graders and
WriteShop II classes of 8th- to 12th-graders. Determine the best age
range for your own situation.
Some 11th- and 12th-graders may not be
ready for WriteShop II at first, never having learned the basics. We
have found that these older students function well in mixed-age
WriteShop I classes.
Why is WriteShop not a good
choice for 3rd- to 5th-graders?
We have been teaching WriteShop classes
since 1997. Our experience with over 160 students has shown us that
the younger they are, the more they struggle. Though we have never
attempted to teach 3rd- or 4th-graders, we did take on a few
5th-graders during our first year. They labored dismally to keep up
the pace and demand of the program, mostly because of their cognitive
immaturity. For that reason, we only take junior high and high school
students, with rare exceptions made for an occasional advanced
6th-grader.
The material is junior-high and
high-school level, and would totally overwhelm a 3rd- or 4th-grader.
WriteShop I is designed for the average 7th- to 10th-grader, but
bright and motivated 5th- and 6th-graders can use it with success if
they take the program at a slower pace (and, we might add, in a
home---not classroom---environment where the schedule can be adjusted
as needed). The website shows an example from Lesson 3. As simple and
basic as it seems, this lesson causes problems for the most mature of
9th-graders as they try to understand the concept of describing
without focusing on narration. Because WriteShop is an incremental
program, the lessons advance in difficulty. By the end of Lesson 16,
students are expected to write a strong, focused, three-paragraph
narrative that contains nine sentence variations and no more than one
form of "to be." This can challenge even the strongest writer!
How many students should I teach?
WriteShop classes have been
taught to as few as three students and as many as 20. We recommend an
assistant, a parent helper, or even a team teacher when the class
number goes above ten. For your first class, you will probably want to
start smaller, especially if you are teaching the class alone.
Consider beginning with the manageable number of four to eight
students.
Another factor to weigh is the amount of
time you have for grading student papers. For each composition you
edit or grade, plan to set aside up to one hour. If you are teaching a
group of six students, for example, you will probably need roughly six
hours a week to edit and grade. Some papers will demand more of your
attention and others will require less. It usually takes less time to
grade a final draft than to edit a first revision. Also consider how
quickly you plan to move through the program. Covering one WriteShop
book in a semester instead of a year will obviously require more
editing hours per week.
When you teach a co-op,
do you "do it all"?
Many co-op
teachers, including us, do all of the teaching, editing, and grading.
Others choose to spend class time on pre-writing activities, lesson
instructions, and a Practice Paragraph, but they require parents to
edit their child's first revision. And while some teachers will prefer
to grade final drafts, others would rather have the parents do this.
Something else to consider: If you plan to
charge a class fee, consider charging more if you do all the work and
less if the parents take on the time-consuming tasks of editing and/or
grading.
I have questions about
recruiting students, knowing how much to charge, and deciding how to
organize my class time.
If I use the Handbook for Teaching
in a Group Setting, do I still need a Teacher's Manual?
Absolutely! The handbook helps you with the details of organizing a
WriteShop class and putting the curriculum to work in a class
setting---schedules, parent handouts, classroom management ideas, etc.
The Teacher's Manual contains the lesson plans, answer keys, and
editing/grading helps you'll need to carry out your plans
successfully.
Do the parents need to buy
a Teacher's Manual?
If you do all the teaching, editing,
and grading, parents will not need a Teacher's Manual. However, if
they will be editing and/or grading their students' compositions, the
Teacher's Manual will be an invaluable resource, especially if they
feel at all insecure about taking on those tasks.
