Write On!

By Renee Gillespie, Kindergarten Teacher for Belding Area Schools

Can you believe that it is already December! The time from Halloween to Christmas goes so fast with these little ones! Last week on our last day of school before Thanksgiving break we had a Kdg. - 2nd grade writing celebration!  It was wonderful to have so many interested parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends in our classrooms for an hour to see what our youngest writers are doing!  We have stopped, for the moment, working in depth on details and labeling and have moved on to sketching a picture in our picture plan and moving on to an actual writing piece.

At this point in the school year, we are looking at how well our kindergartners are stretching out words and writing down the sounds that they hear. We are expecting them to hear and write down some consonant letter sounds but those letters may not necessarily be in the correct order to spell a word.  Most letters should be written using correct letter formation and some vowels such as e,a and o  that are easier to hear are beginning to randomly appear in their writing. We would expect that our kindergartners would be capable of writing at least (3-5) high frequency words off of a word wall (Dolche words) including I and A.

Our youngest writers have now been in school over 60 days, and are also expected to draw/sketch and write about a given topic or theme. They should also be able to read their writing back to us. Our advanced kindergartners are using spacing consistently between words in sentences, and are able to convey a simple message with their writing. They have no reversals of letters (such as b/d) and consistently use capital letters correctly (in names and at the beginning of sentences). They also use punctuation correctly (. ! and ?).

Here are some  practical ideas that you may use with your child to practice phonemic activities which will in turn help with your child’s writing.

                                                                                

These students are making/building words and putting together sentences with old duplo blocks that have letters and words written on them.    

                

These students are using pieces of Velcro with letters written on them to practice making their spelling words. They are sticking the pieces of velcro onto cup coasters available in sets of 4 at WALMART for around $2.00

This student is using pages from an old book to create a new book using the pictures to write her story. There is white tape on the bottom of the book that she is writing words on to make a new story! We re-use everything in our classroom, but these activities are also well suited for home!

Every day TOOLS to help young writers. We use SLINKYS and hair band to help us stretch out words and fancy coffee/drink stirrers to help us read books and point to each word individually. We also use flat clothespins to help us put spaces between words while we are writing!  USE your imagination when working with your young writer at home!  Make a writers suitcase full of scrap paper, memo paper, used birthday or Christmas cards, old magazines and books, colored pencils and stickers!  All of these items help to motivate youngsters to write!  Most of all, support all of their efforts! Good luck, and HAPPY WRITING!