Thoughts from the shower

So two thoughts have been swirling in my head. First, I'm still thinking of how to move forward with P. (and the botched conference) plus I'm thinking about Dionne's comment about her student who wanted to write fiction about Batman...and that fact that she thought he would have written a better piece about that topic.

We have one student who wants to write nonfiction (P. and weather) and one student who wants to write fiction (Batman) when we're focusing on small true moments (mini memoirs).

This is a great opportunity...what's the problem with letting these kids do what they want to do? The beauty of K is that we're not tied to teaching specific genres (like the upper grade standards require). The only caution is that these students may need to circle back at some point and to demonstrate that they can write a small moment true piece.

Here's how I'm thinking of moving forward next:
1. Friday's mini lesson is still about drawing hard to draw ideas...I'm incorporating a book that a student brought. I will conference with P. and focus on getting him to verbalize what his original piece is about. Getting words out will be a success. Not concerned about text and more pictures. I will label his piece. "This is nonfiction."
2. Next week's mini lesson will move forward. I will bring a stack of small moment books and a stack of nonfiction books. "Writers, just like there are different sports...there are different kinds of books..." It will end up being a fiction/nonfiction mini lesson. In a rotation, kids might be able to sort the stacks?
3. In the next mini lesson, I will show P's. weather piece and another student's small moment piece..."Writers, which one is a small moment piece...which one is a nonfiction..or teaching me something piece?" Question: What's the K way of describing nonfiction?" And then end the mini lesson with telling students they can choose different kinds of ideas to write about.
5. My only concern is that mini lessons may get too broad and unfocused if we have kids writing lots of different genres. I know that Calkins and Katie Wood Ray do genre studies within all levels of their writing workshops now...and have moved away from the early versions of ww (i.e. Atwell) when kids could pick any genre any time...I think the move grew out of standards-based teaching.
4. I'm still thinking that an important mini lesson is teaching kids how to correct a TP/teacher if we misinterpret their writing. This could be done with a "fishbowl" demonstration conference at the front during a mini lesson. I could be the teacher...Sheryl could act like the kid...

Do you see what I mean by learning the most from my mistakes? A couple brief comments during our study group time led to lots of curriculum. This is what makes me so damn excited about writing workshop.

Nerdily yours, Lorrie