Teaching Writing In Kindergarten

This book is the best! My kindergarten teammates and I feel like we have "finally figured it (writing) out." When I first received it, I didn't believe my students would be able to match the April writing sample on the cover. I thought, "It's going to take me some practice... maybe next year," but they did! I started off on our third day of school and made sure we got to it everyday for the first two months. At the beginning of the year, writing time never got skipped. The results I saw were incredible. The guided writing that the book teaches gives strategies for all learners no matter how much knowledge of the alphabet they have. The beginning of the year section in the book, also has some great (and short) alphabet routines to do with your students before beginning writing time. One year I used the "Alphardy" song to accompany the routines and this year I'm using "zoo phonics" (we don't actually have zoo phonics, I just have some old poster and watched a YouTube video to learn the hand motions... I thought the kinesthetic portion would be beneficial). By October (!!!), I had students able to write 2 full sentences and a student (who entered K with low fine motor and little exposure to the alphabet) writing a string of 2s and letter i's telling me it says "my grandma makes me happy" and hey, maybe all I saw were 2s and i's but she's understood the whole, "If I think it, I can say it. If I can say it, I can write it," idea. Then I had students everywhere in between. Then, as the students gain more phonological awareness and phonics practice, their writing grows naturally and when they're ready. I loved the book because it gives all my students the ability to write... and we know, writing in kindergarten looks different, but all my kids have learned such great writing strategies from this book that they don't get stuck on the spelling or the writing of letters (no matter where they happen to be in their phonics/phonological awareness), that they can focus on the content. (Correct spelling and handwriting are important, and of course, it gets mentioned when I teach writing, but I teach them these things explicitly at other points of the day. My focus when I teach from this book is getting our ideas on paper). I'm technically required to follow a school-wide curriculum but before this book, my students didn't have the skills to produce or even attempt the writing assignments it was asking of them. After we learned those skills, I went ahead and started following our school curriculum with more success.

I have my Title 1 liscense but currently stay home and home school my 5 year old. I found this book very helpful. I knew what a good reading and writing program should include but not really the step by step process on how to get there with a young student. This book is practical and easily implemented. Best of all, besides a piece of paper and pencil...it does not cost anything to implement! My Kindergartener is just 11 weeks in to her school year and is writing at nearly a first grade level, mostly in part to the scaffolding laid out in this book.

This book really helped to scaffold my writing process for the beginning of the school year. My students were quickly able to build writing and phonemic skills they could build on the remainder of the year.

This book is a real guideline and presents an approach that is possible to implement in a daily basis Last year with my pre-k I had a great result and I am still using it with 1st graders ! Wait for the publishing part , the kids just grow their writing stamina and love to see their work being validated the assessments on progress are really good Worthed, worthed, worthed!

This book has explicit instructions for a writing program for kindergarten. It requires only copy paper, pencil, and a white/chalk board, and some planning and preparation. There are checklists to assist with assessing students' writing development over the course of the school year. The method used in this book also helps kids improve their reading skills.

This was my first year of teaching, and really one of my first years of experience with Kindergarten. I was nervous and scared and picked up this book in hopes that by the end of the year I could send away 17 great writers. It is happening! I started out the year with the same prompts and ideas in this book and continued them most of the way through the year. Now, I did not follow this book word for word every day and I used it in conjunction with The Animated Alphabet series, so a lot of times we would use the writing ideas from that because it went along with the letters we already knew, but I think there are great strategies and ideas in this book and I have definitely seen my kids do so well with it! In fact, so well that the other kindergarten teacher who has more experience couldn't believe my kids could write so well and also couldn't believe I had started them the first day with a writing assignment. If you're new to teaching, I suggest you grab this book. It may not be the end all be all of teaching writing, but my kids did SO well with it.

My granddaughter is dyslexic and has trouble and struggles with writing. As homeschoolers we are always looking for ways to help her. This book has been a godsend . After sitting down with her within two hours we saw a huge difference in her writing. Highly recommend for young children as well as anyone of any age having problems with writing.

I thought this would guide my kids' writing skills, but it's a guide for teachers.

Hands down the best resource I have seen for teaching writing. Step by step directions as well as the reasons behind it. Methodology produces exceptional results. Unbelievably effective and very simple to implement. All you need is a pencil and paper.

good

This book definitely made me think about teaching writing. I was blown away by the idea of starting it from day 1. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate it into our curriculum which is filled up with lots of activities...and do encourage children to follow up with enthusiasm. Is it really possible?? I guess I'll have to check that out. I'm glad that I bought it, though.

I have used this book almost every week during this past school year.

I like it