In our Writing Workshop we use mentor texts to learn about authors' techniques in various genres. We begin the school year reading and writing personal narratives. Our stories focus on addressing the 5W's: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Later in the Fall, we begin to study the craft of a particular author, and try to incorporate what we've learned into our own narrative story writing. Our second grade writers begin to realize that narratives often follow a structure which includes having a problem and solution, or a situation and resolution. In the Winter, our study of nonfiction writing involves producing one or more biographies and/or an animal research report. As we move into early Spring, we write folktales and fables. In April, we celebrate National Poetry Month by writing poetry. Our end of year workshops include persuasive writing.