“If You Teach Them, They Will Write!”
Carol Brewer
May 24, 2010
Traveling to different school districts gives me the opportunity to see evidence of exemplary practices in all grade levels. With recent walkthroughs, I am most impressed with Kindergarten writing. I used to hear, "Kindergarteners can't do that," and now I hear, "If you teach them, they will write!" It is so exciting talking with Kindergarten teachers about their writing expectations.
Let me share some comments:
"We start the first day of school writing and writing in sentences. It might not be 'pretty,' but if you don't set the expectation, you will never get them to write."
"Writing has to modeled, my Kindergarteners see me write, then they write, then they read what they write."
"Some of my students did not even know how to hold their pencil the first day of school, no excuse, we still wrote."
"My Kindergarteners write everything! They complete their own graphic organizers. They write their own summaries. They share these with their partners. This did not happen the first day or the next; it has been a work in progress throughout the year, but if I had not started, they never would have gotten to this independence."
"Writing has also helped with fluency. My students are fluent readers and I contribute this to reading what they have written. They read to me, or their partner, or their small group, or the whole class."
The following is a great writing activity:
* Give students a topic (if needed)
* Students draw a picture (this organizes their thoughts just like a graphic organizer)
* Students label the picture (this can be used as their vocabulary or word bank)
* Students use their words to write sentences or paragraphs
* Students read their writing to the teacher, a partner, small group or whole class
* Teacher displays their work with the picture first then their writing (just like you would display a graphic organizer with the summary or reflection)
The Learning to Write Book and Flipchart has additional information and writing resources.
