Using the Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom: Modeling Effective Writing, Reading, and Thinking Strategies for Student Success

by Cynthia D. Urbanski

As a trencher, do you find that preparing for standardized tests interferes with teaching advanced thinking, reading, and writing skills in a meaningful way? Do you want to balance test preparation with more creative activities?

Success in school and beyond depends on one’s ability to read fluently, write coherently, and think critically. This handbook uses the workshop model for exponentially increasing adolescents’ abilities in these three key areas.

This practical guide addresses the daily running and practice of a workshop-based classroom, using research and the author’s own experiences to illustrate how to establish a workshop

Try Urbanski’s approach to teaching literacy analysis and mentoring student writers, and discover just how rewarding the workshop experience can be!

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction, Professional Development

192 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 2005

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are plenty of books that focus on writing workshop in the elementary and middle school. Certainly, anyone looking to teach ELA using this approach should read over In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning. Urbanski concentrates on older students, and offers up some specifics that will work 9-12. Her approach is similar to Attwell's: Writing Groups, Reading Groups, Daybooks to hold thinking for both. She lacks Attwell's thoroughness, so you'll have to carry the ball much of the way to the end. But I like her tone and approach. She's quite good at pointing out how all instruction passes along messages to students, so teachers should think about what doing X in the classroom means.

Not essential, but worthwhile for its intended audience.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

am getting ready to do my own Writing Project inquiry and have been wanting to do something with WW but have been struggling to figure out the practicalities of doing it with a) high school students, b) on an every-other-day Block class, and c) with AP Lang students getting ready for the test. Most books on the subject (plus my WP leadership) approach workshop from an elementary or middle school background; they show how workshop can be great for writing personal narrative, etc. Well I’ve never found that to be useful; I was always frustrated by how this could really work with advanced students working on highly academic writing. No one ever seemed to be able to “sell” me on how to do workshop in HS until I read this book. Urbanski makes a convincing case for the supporting research, but also provides oodles of practical advice and examples. She lays it out in a way that I can not only see HOW it could work in my classroom, but also WHY it’d be a good idea

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Using the Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom as a textbook in a college course I took specifically on the teaching of writing. The author, Cynthia Urbanski, was a friend of my professor and in this book references many English professors at a university not far from me. Urbanski's book is not revolutionary, but it makes a good case for why the workshop technique of teaching is important and gives some good ideas on how to implement it.

In this book, Urbanski discusses the workshop approach in English teaching — essentially the intentional setting aside of class time to foster student growth in writing, rewriting, and editing their compositions. In eight chapters, Urbanski covers the technicalities of the workshop method, the challenges of teaching around a standardized test, the importance of modeling writing and editing techniques for students, the role of the teacher in helping students come to their own conclusions about improving their writing, and the eventual independence that students can achieve when they have been taught the workshop method. With a recurring comparison of teaching English and coaching track, Urbanski challenges teachers to step beyond the standardized teaching model and provides them with multiple ideas on how to practically implement the workshop method into their classroom.

“If we want them to take our classes seriously, trust us, and grow as writers and readers, then we must guard closely that they cannot detect any inconsistencies in what we say about writing and reading and what we do about each.”

Urbanski's book is probably best aimed at beginning teachers who want to implement writing time into their classrooms but don't know how. Her ideas scaffold off those of Lucy Calkins, Peter Elbow, and Donald Graves, and her main contribution to the topic is how and why the workshop approach has worked in her own classroom. Urbanski's observations about writing being too complex to be broken down into a simple formula translate well to the eclectic pace of Using the Workshop Approach. Referencing her own writing process and those of her students, Urbanski's writing is accessible and ideal for a high school teacher who has no idea how to incorporate writing into the curriculum. Her ideas are perhaps even more suited to a teacher of creative writing, professional writing, or even a collegiate-level writing course.

It's always nice to read a teaching book specifically geared towards high school educators, as we often get left in the corner when it comes to pedagogy and technique. Teenagers are entirely different creatures compared to elementary or middle school students, and Urbanski is very sensitive to that fact as she discusses how to give teenagers their own agency and confidence in their writing. The students she quotes and discusses almost seem too perfect to be real, but perhaps that's just evidence that the workshop method really does work that well. Urbanski's emphasis on the entire writing process rather than just the construction of sentences is very important, and I want to focus more on that as I go into my next year of teaching English.

A few other things I like from this book:

• the specific examples of how to model the entire writing process in the classroom
• lots of great quotes by famous authors and teachers on the subject matter
• the entire concept of daybooks (which I use in my classroom and absolutely love!) and free-writing
• excellent lists of ideas for writing prompts, assessments, small-group discussion topics, rubrics, and final assignments
• good integration of how the writing skills can be used to foster interest and insight into literature
• the important reminder that everything we do in classrooms should have some kind of theory or reasoning behind it, never just a time-filler
• great focus on the importance of listening to and conferencing with our students, responding as a reader instead of a teacher looking for mistakes, and letting students come to their own conclusions and voice their concerns
• the extensive list of outside resources for articles on pedagogy, methodology, and inspiration

“We cannot show our students how to fly from our exalted position behind the podium. Students can never experience flight trapped inside a formulaic box. We have to come around to their side, push up our sleeves, and work right along with them. We have to model writing and thinking and reading for comprehension and enjoyment… We must coach them.”

I don't love everything in Using the Workshop Approach — Urbanski basically dismisses the importance of teaching any EOC prep, which I would get fired for ignoring, as well as the need to teach grammar beyond basic corrections. She also tends to get lost in her own vignettes and wander off topic a little too easily. However, Urbanski's book is excellent as tinder to inspire teachers of writing who want to implement some new ideas. It's a great reminder of how important writing is in the English classroom, especially when students have a reason to be excited and proud of their own work.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent quite a bit of time reading fairly far into this book at the beginning of the school year, but then I set it aside to read books with my students and didn't get a chance to pick it up again until the second semester. For that reason, the connectedness and my overall impression of the book has dulled some, but I don't plan to go back and reread the first part until the summer or fall of the next time I teach.

That being said, it was a decent overview of the workshop model for high school classrooms. Urbanski explained why she does this, she drops little hints at what the workshop model looks like in her classroom, and she includes the transcripts of actual workshop discussions with students in her high school classroom and the college writing center she worked in.

However, I don't really feel like I have a good visual of how it looks in a high school classroom. Aside from think time, how do the students arrive at such thoughtful comments about their own writing? Do they generally show up with a thinking process that they've never been asked to share, and then they actually share those thoughts with her now that someone asked them? I've waited 10, 15, sometimes 20 seconds after asking students what they think of their first drafts, and they have not answered me anything. When I give them suggested feelings like proud, confused, frustrated, hopeful, confident.... there is just more quiet time and no response. I can only assume that the students I typically teach are coming from middle schools where they don't get a chance to discuss this kind of thing and/or students have a learned helplessness when it comes to writing. These kinds of issues are what I need help with, and Urbanski did not really deliver on those questions.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is exactly what I needed to read as I prepare to enter my second year of teaching. My mind is racing with so many amazing ideas I want to try to implement this next year, and I am very motivated and excited to do so! One thing I wish the author would have explained is how she creates her groups. I wonder if she pairs students randomly, by ability, or by their own choice. Knowing her way of doing things would have given me more clarity in how I am going to use some of these methods in my classroom.

[Michael Geer · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy to read and reassuring narrative about writing in the English Classroom. It has some solid strategies and doesn´t get bogged down in theory or pedagogical technobabble. For someone looking to increase writing in the classroom (for English) this is a solid read with some very achievable advice. As a history teacher I have less direct lessons to draw from this book, but it has given me some ideas on ways to better support writing skills in the history classroom and inspiration to experiment with new techniques.

[Lisa Penninga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great workshop ideas, rubrics, and grading pointers!

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resource for exploring workshopping and reader response writing techniques

[Rikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for this book! One of the best books on workshop that will work in any grade level.

[Sandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good for a newbie; not earth shattering.

[Marlana Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read a book that so perfectly describes exactly what I want my classroom to look like and how I want my students to feel about their skills as readers, writers, and thinkers by the end of our time together. Urbanski's ideas are overwhelming at times, but if you can stick with what she proposes to be a great classroom environment for students, I truly believe that students will soar. This is what they need. Not lectures and red ink on their papers, but coaching and support that meets them where they are at and allows them time to work in a safe environment.

[Emsmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this book overwhelmed me at times but as I went along I came to understand what she means by the workshop approach. Brave Writer would most likely approve. Probably would have helped me to have read this before my oldest enter high school. The book was worth reading though implementing it would be daunting for me at this point.

[Kevin English · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are certainly so many great ideas in this book! I really like the extended metaphor of teaching as coaching. So many thinks I want to try in my own practice after reading this!

[Adrienne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good, just I don't feel that the second half of the book was really for me. Got some great ideas out if it, though.