As an advocate for nurturing writers in all classrooms Pre-K thru college, I think the first step to starting a writers’ studio is to recognize that every learner in your classroom is a writer. What does it mean to be a writer? A writer is any person who is alive and has stories to tell about his or her experiences, emotions, opinions, and beliefs. In other words, being a writer is about expressing one’s voice and using writing to find one’s voice! Writing is both self-reflective and transformative. There’s been a great deal of research on understanding the importance of identity and helping learners express and shape their writerly identity (i.e. Gardner, 2013; Ivanic, 2004) and more studies need to further examine what this looks like in a classroom, in the space of a writers’ studio.

Below are a few steps I recommend to start a Writers’ Studio:

Step one, call your students writers. Explore what they think a writer is and have them identify different writers from around the globe – sports reporters, novelists, analysts, nurses, moms, dads, teachers, doctors, poets… the list goes on and on. Then, invite learners to describe different writers in terms of what they do, who they write for (audience) and what seems to drive their passion and interest in being a writer.

By naming your learners as writers (and they naming themselves as writers) you create a space where writers exist and live together.

The next step is to explore what writers actually do and how thoughts and ideas make it to a piece of paper or a computer. Learners can brainstorm what writers do by studying and reading about famous writers’ practices, interviewing writers, and eventually mimicking or taking on these writers’ ways of living and being. Search your community and invite writers in to your classroom. Interview them about their craft and their practices.

As you and your learners identify who writers are and what writers do, then you are tasked with creating a space including materials, equipment, general guidelines for being a writer, and a schedule to support writing. I like to think of it as a studio- a creative, safe, buzzing space where writers think, study, write, share, and design writing.

A Writers’ Studio.

References
Gardner, P. (2013a) Writing in context: reluctant writers and their writing at home and at school. English in Australia, 46(1), 71–81.

Ivanic, R. (2004) Discourses of writing. Language and Education,(18)3, 220–245.