Eleven Elements of Writing Instruction in the Writing Workshop

There are eleven elements of current writing instruction found to be useful for helping adolescent students learn to write well and use writing as a tool for learning.

Writing strategies, which involves teaching students strategies for planning, revising, and editing their compositions.

Summarization, which involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how to summarize texts.

Collaborative writing, which uses instructional arrangements in which adolescents work together to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions.

Specific product goals, which assigns students specific, reachable goals for the writing they are to complete.

Word processing, which uses computers and word processors as instructional supports for writing assignments.

Sentence combining, which involves teaching students to construct more complex, sophisticated sentences.

Prewriting, which engages students in activities designed to help them generate or organize ideas for their composition.

Inquiry activities, which engages students in analyzing immediate, concrete data to help them develop ideas and content for a particular writing task.

Process writing approach which interweaves a number of writing instructional activities in a workshop environment that stresses extended writing opportunities, writing for authentic audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing.

Study of models, which provides students with opportunities to read, analyze, and emulate models of good writing.

Writing for content learning, which uses writing as a tool for learning content material.