I found that the Units of Study for K-2 and the set for 3-5 are very helpful, but it depends on the teachers' comfort level with doing this kind of work. If you want a day by day, step by step, Workshop 101, then perhaps the Schoolwide materials are right for you. It is a scripted plan, with day by day lessons and teaching points, and is even sold with the mentor texts fro read alouds that a teacher would need. This would help get someone started in Writing Workshop, but may not be right for the more advanced teacher.
Next up is LitLife's The Complete Year: there is a different book for each year (K, 1, 2, etc.)and is a complete overview of the Reading/Writing Workshop. Each book has about 2 "Spotlight Units" that have completely fleshed out day-by-day lessons, while the other units are presented with just the overview. Lucy's Units of Study are best used flexibly: I don't think she meant for people to use them "by the book", copying the day to day lessons. I think instead they show a possible progression through a unit, which then calls upon the teacher to know his/her students and make the best instructional choices. It is also a great resource for understanding the Writing Workshop philosophy as held by Calkins and the Columbia Reading and Writing Project, making clear connections between the philosophical and the practical. Lucy is "verbose" (as another poster put it), and so the "script" may or may not fit your students (one of my 4th grade teachers yesterday told me that she could never talk to a student about his "perfunctory" draft because the students would think she was cursing at them...). Also, they just published the Units of Study for Reading Workshop (3-5), so the same for K-2 can't be far off, so perhaps having consistent resources for both Reading and Writing would benefit your teachers. Randy Lichtenwalner Elementary ELA Developer Public Schools of the Tarrytowns _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
