This unit focuses on writing to teach others about things we are experts on. We all know that kindergarteners are experts on a lot of things and have a lot to share about what they know. This is a great chance for them to see the connection with "reading to learn new information" with "writing to teach people." We started off this unit by making a list of all the things we are experts on. These can be big things like sports or small things like lining up at school. Ms. Ledford and I will be introducing the different components of nonfiction writing as the units progress. These will include a table of contents, chapter headings, scientific diagrams or how to pages, ect. Their final product for this unit will be a collaborative nonfiction book about their African Animal for our PBL project. |
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Wow! The power of writing made a BIG impact on our class! Letters were written, petitions were signed, and speeches were given. Thanks to all of you and a little help from Mr. Elliott, the bounty of supplies we received was plentiful! Thank you for embracing this campaign and helping us out. To wrap up our writing for the month, the students chose a piece that they wanted to publish. We have been using checklists to help improve our writing and become more self-aware of what we need to add to our pieces for a while now, but instead of filling out the checklist by themselves or with me, they completed it with their learning partner. This was a great learning experience on how to receive feedback form a peer. Partner 1 read their piece to partner 2. While partner 1 was reading, partner 2 was checking off the components that they had added in their writing. By the end, there were checks for what they have done and circles for what they had not done YET. A dialogue between partners took place if they thought they were "scored" incorrectly and the partner was able to prove to them that they did indeed have certain items on the list in their piece of writing. At the end of the feedback session, students then had a chance to go back and add things based on their partner's feedback. Once they had indeed added those to their writing they converted the circle to a check.
** Check out your student's persuasive writing showcase in their e-folio to see all the hard work they have done during this unit!
Here are a few mentor texts we have been using to help us make sure our writing is convincing! What did they do to convince us?Revision in kindergarten is a little messy. Our January papers are covered with tape, staples, and flaps! They are AMAZING :) A week ago, each student chose a piece from their writing folder to publish from December. We have since been adding on and revising those pieces to make them better. We talked about, - Powerful titles that draw in your readers - Captivating beginnings that tell your readers where you are situated in time and get them excited to read your book - Endings full of emotion and feeling. It was so fun to hand them their old story, have them think about a revision with their peers, and make a change! A little messy, but also a little magical. I can attest to the amount of tape used for revision strips and the million staples needed to add on more pages :) **Keep an eye out for these stories on your student's e-folio! This unit has also focused on writing so that it is easy for people to read. You will also shortly find a little clip of everyone reading their writing! Pretty amazing for December :) We used quite a few mentor texts to serve as models for great titles, beginnings, and endings. We learn from the work these authors have done and how they make us feel as readers. We then use what they have done in our own stories to capture the audience of our readers.
The words writing and magical seem to go hand in hand in my mind. You can see their wheels turning as they go through the process of thinking about what they want to say, determining which letters they need, and then writing it on the page. You can see their smiles as they share with you an experience they had that they were able to capture on the page. This unit "Writing for Readers" seems like it would be dull, but nevertheless becomes magical. Until now, we have wanted the focus of writing to be feeling good about getting their ideas out on the page and we have hidden the struggles with being able to translate their letters into meaning. We have been distracting children from the fact that we can't read their writing by highlighting their picture and their ability to tell their story with their own storyteller words. The problem with this is that students will only care about spelling, conventions, and spaces if these things make is easier for other people to read and understand their text. Alas, the dance begins. We want to empower them as writers who have ideas to share, but we also want them to be shared in a form that is readable to others. The most crucial skills to make their writing more clear are: writing in sentences and re-reading their work as they write.
Thanks for taking the time to come to celebrate all the growth we have made as readers and writers so far! It is so nice to see students sharing their stories with other adults besides me. Even if you missed it, I am sure you did your own celebrating at home with their published "penguin" duct tape piece.
In our class, we talk a lot about how writing allows us to share our thoughts, feelings, and passions with the world. Kids have soooo much to tell and are given so little time to share it. Writing allows them that much needed outlet. We write for our friends, our teachers, our parents, our community, our world, and ourselves. An authentic audience can do wonders for a students motivation and allows them to see that their thoughts and words matter. This will come up even more in our opinion writing unit towards the Spring. Persuasive writing in kindergarten.... oh yes!
Below is the final page in a story I wrote about my dog Ella and I going to the beach. In my picture I showed who was there, where I was, and what happened, but forgot to add people talking. We added the speech bubbles together on each page of my book to make my story really come to LIFE! We will be publishing our first narrative story next week. Before we do so, we will be using this checklist to see if we have shared our story just like a storyteller would. We will be going into narrative in more depth after this first published piece is complete, but this is a good opportunity for students to reflect on their writing and see how they can make it even better!
Reading and Writing: what's what?Students are starting to notice that the strategies that we learn as readers help us with our writing and the strategies we learn as writers help us with our reading. The two are so intertwined that sometimes we don't know if it's "reading" time or "writing" time. Our shared reading poem this week was the sight word chant. Sight words are words that are used a lot in books, and often are not easy to sound out. There are 200 sight words that students are expected to memorize by second grade. Kindergarteners are expected to know the first 25 sight words by the end of the year. Students will progress through the sight word lists at different paces this year. As students demonstrate mastery of each list of 25 words, they will be given a new list. Lists are also posted on the curriculum ~ resources page of this website. We will talk more about sight words at conferences. In the mean time, encourage your student to practice the chant at home and hunt for these words in the books you read together each night. If it is fun for your family, write the words on flash cards and play games that help your student memorize these words. What makes us better readers, makes us better writers too!
Handwriting Without Tears LaunchMs. M started teaching us all about how to form our letters this week! She helped us learn all the names of the lines that we use to form our letters and she even started teaching us how to form "frog jump capitals." Not sure what all of this means? Read the kindergarten welcome letter from Handwriting Without tears and browse the resource files below. Your student will be learning LOTS of new handwriting lingo! Learn it alongside them so you can help with their letter formation at home. Just a reminder, we don't want their handwriting to stop them from doing lots and lots of writing. Handwriting time is taught separately from writers workshop time. Writers workshop time is for students to get their ideas flowing in any way that they can. Handwriting time is for giving them the tools they need to make writing easier for them in the future. You will naturally see their handwriting learning start transferring into their writing. Let it be a natural :)
Mat man helps us draw people in our writing and also helps us practice the lines we need in order to make all of our letters. The document below gives you the names of all the lines so you can practice the same lingo at home.
We are writers who are taking risks and writing labels and words to enhance our teaching books! I can't explain to you how absolutely magical kindergarten writing is. Students feel empowered to share all the amazing things they know with the world. It is true expression at its finest. I LOVE watching you students write :) When students take that HUGE risk and begin writing words it is so important to not shut them down. I encourage students to spell words the way that they sound to them. They are taught to slow down the word and stretch it out as long as they can. They then listen to the sounds they hear and think about what letters might make that sound. Many times this means that vowels may be missing or the words don't end up looking like what they would look like in a book, but that it okay!. Some students can become frustrated with this process because they want me to tell them how to spell it exactly right. This phase of inventive spelling is an extremely important step in the process of both reading and writing. If your students are doing any writing at home, PLEASE encourage them to stretch out the sounds in the words and write what they hear. For many of the students, their letter-sound correspondence is still developing. Stretching out the words is a fabulous way to increase their understanding of letter sounds.
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