Benefits of Individualized Writing Instruction
Writers Workshop Benefits Both Gifted and Special Needs Students
Dec 10, 2008
Writers Workshop provides opportunities for each child to have individualized instruction each week, enabling him to improve and learn at his own rate. The teacher will meet one-on-one with each student over the course of one week. This benefits all children and helps the teacher to tailor lesson plans to the particular level of each student, including gifted and learning disabled.
How the Individualized Instruction Works
After a few students share their work from the Author’s chair and get feedback from their peers, the teacher will then set the class up with some seat work, and will call one child at a time for an individual conference. According to a study done by VanTassel-Baska, Johnson, Hughes, and Boyce, there is evidence that small-group instruction is an important element in students’ learning [Frey, C. P., 2000].
During these individual conferences, the teacher can instruct the student on any apparent need. This could mean simply helping the student implement the suggestions from his peers, or it could mean teaching them the mechanics of writing a particular sentence. These one-on-one conferences with the students are often where teachers will do their best teaching.
Writers Workshop for Gifted Children
Often the reason gifted children get in trouble at school is because they are bored. The teacher, in an effort to teach to the whole class and leave no one behind, has to simplify the lessons somewhat, and leave the quicker children mentally unchallenged. While it would be unfair to slower students to move ahead faster because they cannot keep up, Writers Workshop has built into its design, a way for students to progress as fast as they need to, improving different writing skills at each student's individual level.
The different texts produced from two different students in the same class do not necessarily need to be at the same level. In fact, the odds of every student writing at the same level are slim. Writers Workshop thus enables the gifted students to go deeper, have a wider range of perspective, and write impressive texts, which will encourage them to enjoy writing instead of feeling stifled or bored.
Writers Workshop for the Learning Disabled
A student with a literacy problem will have a difficult time writing, because writing is a literate process. Writers Workshop used in classrooms with students with different learning disabilities, specifically in the area of literacy, will see students improving their writing skills and abilities more dramatically than in other inclusion classes. Reasons for this include the ability of the students to write what he is interested in, and the individual instruction that each student receives.
Given the fact that Writers Workshop benefits both gifted students and students with special needs in the same classroom, this method of teaching writing is preferable. Students and teachers alike benefit from this method of teaching and as writing scores come up, principals and other educational specialists are bound to appreciate the Writers Workshop style of teaching as well.
Learn more tips to effectively teach writing.
Source:
Frey, C. P. "A writers’ workshop for highly verbal students". Gifted Child Today Magazine 23. 2000
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