District Event Celebrates Middle School Writers
Garfield Middle School sixth-grader Erin Ptacek goes over one of her writing samples with her dad, James Ptacek.
Garfield Middle School and Harding Middle School students and their families gathered together on May 3 to celebrate the great progress the students have each made this year as writers. The evening was organized to toast the hard work and great results achieved through working with Lakewood Schools' new writing curriculum, Columbia Writing Workshop or as students refer to it, “workshop.”
Organized by Teaching & Learning Coordinator Christine Foote, families first watched a student-produced video that shared from various students’ perspectives how they feel their writing has improved over the year and what elements of workshop have helped them achieve their writing goals in the three genres studied - narrative, information and argumentive.
Following the video, guests were asked to read their student’s writing piece and make comments on their “glow” sheet in order to provide the writer with authentic feedback, such as is done in the classroom with their peers. Everyone then moved around the room three different times to read other students’ work and provide comments for the glow sheet.
The evening concluded with students reading aloud chosen lines from their writing pieces.
It was clear, from the comments on the video and the writing samples, that workshop is working and as a result our students are writing more clearly and decisively, along with creating work that is more interesting, with more variety and details.