Writers Workshop Wednesday

As I told you all last week, I just love JIVEY and her Workshop Wednesday linky! So I'm linking up to share with you what my writer's workshop looks like and one of my FREE mini lessons :)

My writer's workshop takes place during our Daily 5 station. Usually we focus on one or two writing skills a week. I introduce this skill on Monday, and we learn it as a class through a mini-lesson. The students get practice during Work on Writing throughout the week in their writer's notebook. These mini lessons range from types of writing (persuasive, letters, informative, story writing, etc.) to working on writing structure and the writing process.

Here's what our writing corner looks like...

This is the table where we write. In the bins are my monthly writing prompts for the whole school year, and other creative prompts that match up with our skill. 

This is one of the walls filled with supplies. I keep lots of post-its, index cards, colored pencils and pens, scissors, staplers, hole punch, erases, and all sorts of writing supplies at hand. The tote bag has our class mascot and class mascot journal that our "VIP" takes home and writes in each week. The paint chips are "vivid" adjectives that my kiddos created during an adjectives mini-lesson. They LOVED it and we made a class ring of good adjectives with them! I constantly see my kiddos reaching for it to juicy up their writing. 

This is another part of our wall. I keep our "Trait Crate" close at hand because it reminds kiddos of mini-lessons we work on. There are multiple colored pens and lots of pencils. The green bins have "rough draft" paper and "publishing paper" that is fun and bright colored!

Our writing center pencils have "wild" duct tape so kiddos know they STAY there! It works wonders because when a kiddo sees someone with one outside of the writing center, they immediately call them out! Cracks me up :)

Another favorite of my students are the Whole Class Writing Journals. These are just a few of them. When they finish their writing they can pick one of these up to write in, or they can write in them during "free writing workshop time."They beg me to write in them and they LOVE reading their classmates writing, too!

One of my most beneficial mini-lessons is my "Comma Rules" quick check. In 4th grade we struggle so much with writing complex sentences that aren't run ons. So I whipped up these little rule reminders and we spent a week going over and practicing a rule a day. These little posters hang right by my workshop as reminders to my kiddos of the rules now! You can get this mini lesson for free here.

This is something else we focus on a lot! We go through the writing process together in the beginning of the year. Students have this to refer to during writers workshop to remind themselves of the steps they need to take to "publish" a writing piece. Once they've taken these steps they can sign up to be  "in the spotlight" on Friday and share their published work! They love it :)

I'd love to hear about your workshop! Link up and share :)