Technology as a Tool in the Middle School Reading/Writing Workshop Classroom Julie Weber, 8th grade teacher Durant Middle School

Student Agency in Reading

Later she explains that each Thursday is "sacred" for reading. Earlier in the year, Julie suggested that the class could read for a short time every day, but the students' reply was "no, no! We want forty-five minutes of reading!" Julie believes that her students' passion for reading springs from the freedom they have to choose their own texts in her class. She explained that she had "a number of kids that at the beginning of the year said 'I just don't read, I don't even know what to read' and now they read a book a week." Julie's classes keep a reading log to document their reading and write book reviews to share their reading with other students.

I soon find that writing in Julie's class is even more exciting. A quote on the board catches my eye; "Starting over can seem like the hardest thing to do." Julie explains that the quote is the starting point for a short story, creative writing piece they began in reaction to the destructive tornado that blasted through Oklahoma in the spring of 1999. To get her students reflecting on this theme, she asked her class to "think of a time when you felt hopeless ... how did you cope?" After a class discussion, sharing thoughts and insights, the students read an article from the New York Times web-site about how Oklahoma victims coped with destruction. Finally, Julie's students were ready to start their creative writing. Julie's students were clearly motivated to write because they were given the opportunity to reflect on interesting, substantive issues.

Julie admits "We do a lot of writing ... at least one piece a week." Though she acknowledges this is a large amount of writing, she, like her students, is able to see a vast improvement from the beginning of the year. One of her classes had just finished a writing mentorship via email, with a college class at NCSU, led by Carol Pope and "they were so jazzed they wanted to write more." The mentorship, titled "Younger Pals," was a project funded by a grant from the Wake Educational Partnership, in which thirty children and eleven pre-service teachers communicated via email about writing. After a brief session of introductions and getting to know one another, Julie's students emailed a writing piece to their college writing mentor, who then wrote back with revision suggestions. Technology, in Weber's classroom, is a tool that crosses boundaries and presents students with a real audience for their writing. Participating in the email writing mentorship not only provided a meaningful motivation for student writing, but it also inspired students to extend their skill as writers. After completing the mentorship, Julie said "the kids feel like they are much better writers." Julie commented that her students "really liked the one on one time with an adult" that the mentorship offered. The culminating experience for the college and middle school writers occurred when the North Carolina State University students visited Julie's class for a face-to-face meeting. Weber reported that positive energy electrified the room as student writers shared their writing portfolios with their college mentor.

Julie set the tone for a successful writing experience at the beginning of the year by writing her students a letter in which she told them the theme for the year was for them to become better editors. "Whether it's your writing or someone else's" Julie told her students "if you can learn to step back and just look at the writing, without being emotionally attached, then you can be a much better writer." One way Julie implements this concept is by teaching students to do their editing on the computer, instead of handwriting drafts, making revisions and editing choices on paper, and finally typing in the final draft. In this way, Weber's students become more efficient and effective editors and computer users, while expanding their horizons as writers. In addition, Julie hopes to offer the "Younger Pals" mentorship to all of her classes, because she says each of her one hundred plus students crave adult feedback on their writing. Thus, Julie's students could benefit from peer editing workshops, while also learning from an experienced writer.

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Making the Basics Seductive

Despite the freedom of choice that workshop allows, Julie Weber sets concrete learning objectives for her students. She wants them to learn to spell correctly, use correct grammar, and enrich their writing with descriptive vocabulary. However, these objectives are not met by assigning countless pages in the Language Arts textbook. Julie skillfully weaves spelling, grammar, and vocabulary lessons into the writing workshop, where students can apply their learning in a meaningful context. After she got to know her students better she soon realized that they were at different stages in grammar knowledge and so she incorporated mini-grammar lessons into frequent conferences she has with them on their writing. Julie says she introduces "steep" vocabulary to her students because it is so necessary to "enrich the quality and variety of the creative writing." Instead of blindly memorizing words, her students used new vocabulary in "crazy and creative sentences," because "they felt like they synthesized the words better that way." Julie also taught all the Latin and Greek roots at the beginning of the year and her students enjoy quizzing each other on them to this day.

Julie's goals for the class have been successful because her students are effective at peer editing and are not "spoon-fed" anymore. They enjoy the freedom of creativity that writing workshop provides, which Julie says is evidenced in the fact that "they don't need my approval." Instead of continuously looking to her for advice and ideas, they now look forward to quiet time in class, where they can express their thoughts and feelings in writing. Students, in fact, are responsible for assessing their progress at becoming better writers. At regular intervals during the year, Julie's students write her letters assessing and reflecting on their improvement. She stresses to her classes that the focus of their reflections should be on "effort and hard work", not letter grades.

Julie provides a fun environment that fosters motivated readers and writers. During the Halloween season, she lit candles, turned off the lights, organized the class in a circle on the floor and had students read ghost stories they wrote with a buddy. Her walls are loaded with juicy, descriptive words, written in cool fonts, which enrich the students' writing. Desks are clustered around the room to promote interaction and discussion. Julie's organization provides a clean slate on which learning can occur and her classroom has a professional atmosphere, one that motivates students to become readers and writers.

After our conversation comes to an end, I walk down a hall at Durant Middle School, gazing at the shiny lockers and the white floors. I start to reflect on how I would like to go back to my middle school language arts days. Instead of completing page after page of grammar lessons and memorizing vocabulary words, I would choose to be a student in Julie Weber's eighth grade class. There, I would have the opportunity to become a writer, not only learn correct sentence structure or punctuation, but how to express my reflections in writing. I would be in an environment in which I could read, not for the purpose of defining the plot structure of a story or "correctly" interpreting metaphors, but just for the love of reading. Finally, I would have the opportunity to use technology to engage with an audience outside of the classroom and receive feedback on my writing