Writing+Workshop+Expectations

EXPECTATIONS AND RULES FOR WRITING WORKSHOP Expectations Find topics and purpose for your writing that matter to you, your life, who you are, and who you might become. Create and maintain plans for your territories as a writer: the ideas, topics, purposes, genres, forms, and techniques that you’d like to explore. Make your own decisions about what is working and what needs more work in your writing. Be your own first responder. Be critical. Listen to, ask questions about, and comment on others’ writing in ways that help them move their writing forward, toward literature. Take notes and create a handbook of information presented in writing mini-lessons, recorded chronologically, with a table of contents. Produce at least three to five pages of rough draft every week. Work on your writing for at least an hour every weekend. Maintain a record of the pieces of writing you finish. File all finished work, along with all drafts, in chronological order in your writing folders. Attempt professional publication Recognize that the readers’ eyes and mind need your writing to be conventional in format, spelling, punctuation, and usage. Keep an individual editing list that you check your writing against when you edit. Each term, set and work towards significant goals you set for yourself. Work hard during writing workshop to be better than the last time you wrote. Use rules from mini-lessons to make your writing stronger.

Rules for Writing Workshop 1. Save everything: it is all part of the history of your writing. 2. Date and label everything you write to help you keep track of what you’ve done. 3. Write on one side of the paper only. Always skip lines. Always print double-spaced. Both will make revisions, editing, and publishing easier and faster. 4. Draft prose in sentences and paragraphs. Draft poems in lines and stanzas. Format as you go, real writers do this. 5. Get into the habit of punctuating and spelling correctly as you write. This is something real writers do. 6. When writing on the computer print a double-spaced copy every two days so you con look at it away from the computer and see the whole picture. 7. Keep a personal spelling list in your binder of words you frequently misspell 8. Understand that writing is thinking. Do nothing to distract other writers. Find your own quiet spot in your head while writing and listen only to your own voice. 9. When conferencing: whisper. 10. Conference only when you have a reason to. Limit conference to specific problem solving issues. 11. Tap the tips you have been taught in class when you get stuck. 12. Maintain and update your proof reading list often. 13. When a piece of writing is complete, staple everything together, including all drafts, list, and revisions. Record all finished pieces in yout writing folder.