ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how Real-World Writers involves four interrelated practices: class writing projects and associated genre-study, writing workshop, writing mini-lessons and finally personal writing projects. It provides information on how to plan and organise writing in all the academic years and to ensure children’s development as writers. It describes how, in a mastery through repeated practice approach, children are regularly introduced to class writing projects through a rhetoric- and genre-based study week when they practise and develop their skills in writing in the most personally meaningful genres. The chapter then discusses the importance of conducting yearly Welcome Projects to help settle children into the routines of the writing workshop and the benefits of beginning the year teaching poetry. Poetry is said to be the mother of all genres; therefore, the more you develop your children as poets, the better writers they will become. Finally, the chapter discusses the importance of child agency and the allocation of time for free-writing or personal writing project weeks.
