Groton — About 45 Groton teachers attended a writers' workshop last week run by Teachers College at Columbia University to learn how to better instruct students in writing.

Lessons offered simple but key tips to help students become creators. One suggestion: If you’re showing first-grade children how to write a simple informational book, don’t assign the topic. Let the children pick one.

Then they’re already experts. The child doesn’t have to learn about the topic, just how a book is set up, with a title, chapters, pictures and structure.

Here’s what you might get: How to be a flower girl.

One first-grade girl wrote it, including a chapter on the ring bearer and how he shouldn’t drop the ring, break it and make the bride cry. The child also drew a picture of a bride, groom, ring bearer, flower girl and priest (so you know some kind of clergy might attend).

Finally, she explained the rules: “Flower girls have to get ready. It is a lot to do, but if you don’t want to do it, you have to do it.”

Katy Vernett, a second-grade teacher at Claude Chester Elementary School, said the workshop represented a shift in teaching writing, by having children take topics from their own lives.

“This is such an authentic way to teach kids. It’s respectful and authentic and so child-centered,” she said.

Beth Bailey, a second-grade teacher at S.B. Butler Elementary School, said she was also excited by the program. “Everything is coming from the child. We’re getting the ideas from them,” she said.

Lessons from the four-day workshop for elementary school teachers — which included narrative, informative, persuasive and essay writing — will make their way into classrooms this fall.

Each of Groton’s elementary school principals and several assistant principals also attended.

Teachers of upper elementary grade students also learned about how to help students struggling with structure by writing and rewriting chapters on their own topics.

“They’re going through the process themselves,” said Emily Strang-Campbell, a staff developer at the reading and writing project at Teachers College.

She'd suggest the teachers write a chapter first using a timeline approach, starting sentences with “first,” “then,” “next,” “after,” and “last.” Then she’d tell the teachers to rewrite it using a different approach.

Groton is also offering professional development for middle school staff, said Susan Austin, assistant superintendent.

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter: @DStraszheim