I agree with Cristy. Readers and writers workshop needs to
include mini-lessons, and those mini-lessons can (and should)
target the areas in which students need to improve the types of
skills they will be assessed on. There is also research (from
Doug Reeves I think) showing that students who do more writing,
such as in writer's workshop or any other method that allows
frequent encounters with the writing process, have increased
scores on multiple-choice tests as well.

On 6/25/09, Cristy wrote:
> Just because the workshop method allows for a ton of student
> choice, doesn't mean there isn't also structure in place to
> support your students' learning. To be effective, reading and
> writing workshop needs to be supported by daily mini-lessons,
> high standards, modeling, and whole group literature lessons.
> You can certainly build in mini-lessons for test preparation
> and you can do a writing workshop unit on writing on demand.
> Of course, any good instruction in reading and writing would
> "prepare" students to perform on a test.
>
> On 6/24/09, Joy wrote:
>> Our district is requiring that all high school lang. arts
>> teachers use the "balanced literacy" "readers/writers
>> workshop model" for teaching which allows a ton of student
>> choice. I'm not sure if this will prepare students to
>> successfully pass the ACT and SAT. Any thoughts or
>> experience with this?
>

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