Planning Lifeworthy Writer’s Workshops… Ensuring the Work Our Students Do is Worthy of Their Time with Kelly Boswell

Phenomenal Teaching with PEBC

In this episode Kelly Boswell joins Michelle Morris Jones on the Phenomenal Teaching Podcast to discuss how to plan and implement lifeworthy writer’s workshops. In the PEBC Teaching Framework, "lifeworthy learning" means engaging with classroom content in a way that has meaning beyond the classroom. Lifeworthy learning sees and supports students as scholars, citizens and humans and helps them to see connections between the learning in the classroom and life outside of it. Kelly strives to create learning opportunities that are worthy of students’ time and asks herself four questions:

1. Is this meaningful?
   
2. Is this purposeful?
   
3. Is this something that real writers do?
   
4. Would I be engaged in this task?
   

From there Kelly takes on an unfussy, yet not watered down approach, to crafting her daily plans. Exploring mentor texts, modeling productive struggle through one’s own writing, providing time to practice and apply new learning, and ensuring that students are creating real writing pieces for authentic audiences are the hallmarks of effective and engaging writing instruction regardless of content area or grade level.

Kelly Boswell is a well known author and literacy consultant who spends her days working with children and adults to develop writer’s workshops that are steeped in authenticity, choice, and voice. This year Kelly is teaching 450 K-5 students asynchronously and has planned over dozens of writing units and recorded hundreds of mini-lessons. Kelly is the author of Write This Way from the Start: The First 15 Days of Writer’s Workshop, Write this Way: How Modeling Transforms Writing Instruction, and co-author of the book Crafting Nonfiction with Linda Hoyt. Her newest book is called Every Kid a Writer: Strategies That Get Everyone Writing.

To learn more about Kelly please visit her bio.

To learn more about the PEBC Teaching Framework, check out Wendy Ward Hoffer’s newest book, Phenomenal Teaching.