supporting developing writers

The Kindergarteners have been working on telling, planning, and writing true stories. We have worked together to create a culture of storytelling in our classroom. One way to support the children in putting their words - from speech bubbles to action words - on paper, is to work on a collaborative piece. With a little scaffolding, the children wrote a short story about the time we saw a chickadee on our bird feeder - the little bird was close enough to reach out and touch! It's important for the Kindergarteners to recognize you can take any small moment from your day - any little experience - and tell about it. You can make a reader or an audience feel like they were there by having expression, using detail, and making the characters talk.

All of our work during reader's workshop and writer's workshop has been connected. The children know that when reading a story, you try to sound like the characters. When writing a story from your life, you tell or write what the characters said! When reading a story you notice who the characters are, where the story is happening, and what is happening - when writing a story, you make sure to tell or show who, where, and what. The reinforcing of teaching points, and the making of connections, happens throughout each day.

 

 


When reading their writing after school and checking in with students throughout our workshop, I've noticed more and more children are trying to write full sentences. This desire to write a sentence is coming from the students, from their love for authoring their own work. One way to reinforce the teaching of writing a full sentence with spaces between words, is to build a sentence.

We reread our big book, I Went Walking. I took one sentence from the story and offered a sentence strip to each student. Some chose the challenge; a mixed up sentence for them to cut and put in the correct order. We have built letters, words, and sentences throughout the school year. This is one of my favorite learning opportunities, as children eagerly embrace the directions; point to each word and read the sentence, count the words and spaces in the sentence, carefully cut out each word, and put the words in order. As children worked around the oval rug, I explained how this practice will help make their sentence writing stronger; it helps to remind them to always have spaces between words and full sentences. It also helps to reinforce the importance of rereading and checking your work; Does your sentence tell what your picture is showing? Is there punctuation at the end? 

Perhaps the best part of this experience, is reading the mixed up sentences, as children enjoy playing with the word order to make a silly sentence. Learning should sometimes be a little silly!

 

 

 

Do you want the sentence already in order or the challenge? Kindergarteners make a choice in their learning.

 

 

The children were brave to try drawing something new. Many of the pigs were inspired by the pig character in Elephant and Piggie, while other pigs were described as a collection of different kinds of lines.