The Empowering Writers’ classroom handles the writing process differently. Our goal is to provide a teacher and student-friendly process that works in the real world of the classroom. Writing as a process sessions are modeled after the “authors group model” rather than the one-on-one conference.

In the real world of writing, authors gather with a group of their peers for the purpose of sharing, critiquing, and revising their work. They share portions of their work, discuss it, and then return to improve, revise and edit. The key difference between the authors’ group model and the traditional one-on-one conference is that in the author’s group model everyone in the group benefits through the sharing! In the one-on-one conference model, the only one benefitting is the individual student.

Additionally, in the Empowering Writers model, the teacher selects pieces of writing to share and discuss with the whole class that represent common needs. In this way, many benefit from the same sharing session. Also, entire pieces of writing are broken into smaller, more manageable pieces, with the teacher circulating amongst the group, touching base with individual students. See the Empowering Writers Narrative, Expository, and Persuasive Comprehensive Guides for the Process Writing Timeline and Process Writing Tips which outline the process for breaking a piece of writing into manageable segments.

Another huge benefit of the whole class instruction/authors’ group model is that it improves classroom management and optimizes instructional time.