Monitoring Writing Workshop

So I gave my third and fourth periods writing workshop time at the end of today's classes. As in, once they finished their primary work for the day, they could have time to pre-write and draft the short stories that they are working on as the culmination of our unit.

Third period seemed to handle it just fine. I was pleasantly surprised.

Fourth period...well, they handled it about like I thought third period would. To them, workshop time meant "talk time." I had to remind them verbally a few times to get on task.

At least I had kids from both classes come up to talk with me about their story ideas which are to be given to me on Thursday. Lots of in-depth talks and ideas came from that.

But I may need to re-evaluate how I structure workshop time in the future. Do they need actual materials/papers/resources to get their hands on to see that they actually work? Or can they be trusted to budget their time wisely and make use of their own materials to pre-write and draft a story as needed?

Something to think about...