Hello! I am new to this board and am excited about all the discussions that are
going on here. I am a fairly new teacher who has absolutely fallen in love
with Atwell's approach. I taught high school and middle school English at a
small private school, so I had free reign to experiment with it.
Reading workshop: I can't imagine an approach that garners as much enthusiasm
and motivation among students for reading. The results of my workshop were
truly amazing and the difference in student motivation as a result of the
workshop approach were visible almost immediately. I attempted the new approach
in the second semester of the last school year and in that semester I had
several middle school students who read close to 40 books each. Although I did
not calculate it, I would guess my class average to hover around 20 books in
one semester. If I'd had another semester of workshop with that group, I would
expect the semester average to increase slightly. My whole-group lessons using
short stories and poems to study literature on a deeper level were not nearly
as effective as the individual reading component of the class, so that's
something I need to work on. Also, I had a hard time finding response
activities that excited the class. Reading
workshop was not quite as popular at the high school level, although I would
still consider it a success. I am currently scouting for books that describe
what reading workshop might look like at the high school level, if anyone has
any suggestions!
Warm success story. I had a student who never read and had a hard time
completing regular assignments. He much preferred video games to school work,
so I guess you could say that he is your typical middle school boy. A few
weeks into the workshop, he discovered the Artemis Fowl series and we literally
could not pull him away from books from that moment on. I think he read close
to 40 books last semester and he even told me - seriously - that books are
actually BETTER than video games!! He got in trouble for reading under his
desk in other classes!! I can't imagine that happening in any other class
situation and I had similar results with other students.
Writing workshop: This was also successful, but not nearly as successful as the
reading workshop. For writing, choice is not enough. Students NEED to know how
to write essays, but for the workshop to be successful, the teacher needs to
form a community of inquiry in which the students are motivated to write essays
about their own interests. That was the hard part for me. My students had a
hard time producing work in bulk and I had a hard time getting them to produce
even two pieces in a quarter - I would love some advice on how to get them
writing more prolifically.
Laura - I would LOVE to hear more about your experience at CTL!!
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