Our daily writing includes a lesson that links us to the work we have done previously, teaches us a new skill, provides time to practice and apply the lesson, and to share our work with others.
The children begin by first sketching their story and labeling people and things using their kindergarten spelling. We have been practicing crafting sentences from the words labeled in our sketches. So many of the stories have included action that many children are writing words that end in -ing.
This week in Writer's Workshop we are introducing the setting of our stories. Setting clues can be seen in the children's sketches with examples of the sun in the sky or the tables in our classroom. These details demonstrate inside or outside locations and lend themselves to adding this information to their stories.
The sharing of work is very rewarding. We share in a number of ways. Some days we sit in a circle and retell our stories, other days we conference individually with the teacher, we read our stories to a partner, and use the document camera to point out our quality work.
For kindergarten, writing is a process that involves thinking about an experience and taking the time to draft words from the letter sounds the children hear as they sound out their words. This is a brave task and we encourage all to embrace writing by including it at home.
