Teaching Writing in Kindergarten

Over the past 6 years, I have noticed that a lot of my Kindergarten students struggle with free write time. It is too open ended for many of them and they find it overwhelming. Or, they end up drawing the same things every time, which eventually leads to frustration.

I revamped our writing workshop altogether this year. I wanted to set my students up to feel successful in writing, as well as provide them with scaffolded support in writing complete sentences. I also wanted to incorporate writing to the picture, so they could focus on writing and not illustrating as well.

Mondays are dictated sentences on the whiteboards. First, I tell them how many words the sentence will have so they can setup place holders for the words and finger spaces ahead of time. Then they try to write each word using our sight words and phonics strategies.

Tuesdays are writing to the picture, which is one of their favorite days - they love seeing what the new picture is each week. They also really enjoy the half sheet of paper. It is far less overwhelming for them and makes all of my students feel successful!

Wednesdays are for The Moffatt Girls amazing monthly journal entries - my classes have always loved these. The illustrated word bank helps them write a complete sentence and the 'I Can' checklist helps them to remember all of our writing rules!

Thursday is a whole group interactive writing on what we are working on in readers workshop. Sometimes it's a shared experience, a how to chart, or even an animal riddle. They all get a chance to come up and write a word on our "story."

Friday is a directed drawing (using From the Pond's awesome resource!) and a sentence to go with it. They come up with the sentence using her word bank and I model how to write it. If they are able to write on their own with ease, they will head to their seats to try it out. The rest choose to stay with me, and I write it word by word, modeling finger spaces and letter formation - using our iPad stand and camera.