Launch a Primary Writing Workshop

Learn how to take your students from pictorial story telling into fluent writing and how Lucy Calkins and her colleagues launch a rigorous and responsive primary writing workshop. Through 2 foundational books-The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing and Launching the Writing Workshop-and eight online video clips, Lucy and her colleagues provide the strategies, lesson plans, and tools you''ll need to jump in and teach writing to your students in powerful, lasting ways.

The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing equips you to teach a productive, well-managed writing workshop, introduces you to the methods that underlie all writing instruction, and helps you plan a yearlong curriculum in the teaching of writing. In addition to guiding you through the classroom systems and teaching structures that are the foundation of a primary writing workshop, this comprehensive overview also includes chapters about working within developmental stages of writing, supporting English language learners, and assessing writers.

Whether you have taught in a writing workshop for years or are just learning the term, Launching the Writing Workshop will offer you a comprehensive plan for the first four weeks of a primary writing workshop. Lucy and Leah Mermelstein present both the precise language and pacing of their teaching and the reasoning behind it, so that you can create the same powerful experiences with your own children. Whether writers write just a few labels on items in their pictures or write paragraphs, by the end of this unit all children know that in order to write, a writer fills him or herself with an idea, plans how the text will go, and then draws and writes as best he and she can, working to make the page match the writer''s vision.

The eight accompanying video clips convey the inner workings of writing workshops in a variety of primary classrooms. These live-from-the-classroom video clips are supported and enhanced by an optional voice-over coaching commentary from Lucy that explains the teaching moves and strategies. (Video clips are free for 6 months upon registration. You must register within 6 months of purchase.)

Learn more about these resources and the series at www.unitsofstudy.com.

This pack is part of firsthand''s Getting Started series.

Bridging the gap between educational theory and practice, firsthand classroom materials model the carefully crafted techniques and language of master teachers in ways that help teachers refine their practice and reinvent their own teaching. The most comprehensive of these resources span more than a year of instruction. Firsthand''s Getting Started Packs were created for teachers in training and professional book study groups who want a compact, affordable way to study and tryout these transformative classroom materials. Each Getting Started Pack includes an overview book, a complete unit of study, online video clips provided free of charge for 6 months, and an accompanying study guide.

Getting Started packs include: Launch a Primary Writing Workshop, Grades K-2; Launch an Intermediate Writing Workshop, Grades 3-5; Launch an Intermediate Reading Workshop, Grades 3-5; Introduce the Qualities of Writing, Grades 3-6; Monitor Comprehension with Primary Students, Grades K-2; Monitor Comprehension with Intermediate Students, Grades 3-6; Investigate the Number System, Grades K-3; Investigate Multiplication, Grades 3-5; Investigate Fractions, Grades 4-6.