I didn't realize that was there...

This week I was once again reminded of how much I haven’t been paying attention to the things around me. It’s so easy to take everything at face value without stopping to think about why things are the way they are.



This week I read the first 3 chapters from “Word Identification Strategies” by Barbara Fox and I began looking at the classrooms I went into in a whole new way. I walked into Ms. Bunny’s room for the first time since school ended last spring and examples of what I had been reading about began to jump out at me. I had been in this classroom more than any other over the last four years, and until now, my mind just took for granted the things that I saw! I have spent too much time seeing the forest and not the trees that make it up.

There are words and labels all over the room. “Desk, chair, calendar, clock, red, blue, green, flower, and airplane”; the list goes on and on. The words within the posted daily schedule are words with corresponding pictures. It’s the same with the tables and graphs that are part of the daily morning routine on the Activeboard. The students' names are everywhere throughout the classroom. On their pencil boxes, on the white board, under pictures they drew of themselves.

When I first entered, the students were presenting their homework for the week. This week’s letter was “F”. Their kindergarten homework consists of a letter of the week that they need to make a “project” for. It is usually a standard piece of paper or construction paper with words starting with that letter. They can be cut out of magazines, clip art from the computer, small glued objects, or pictures drawn by the student. During sharing, they tell their classmates about what they did, then they get in groups of 2 or 3 (including someone who “forgot” their homework) and they talk about it “knee to knee” on the floor. I had known about this homework since my son was in this class 4 years ago, so it was familiar to me. But this is the first time I actually considered WHY she arranged the “homework” like this!

I could envision the higher level of thinking the student needed to use to complete this (as opposed to just coloring pictures given to them or tracing words). I saw the opportunity for different learning styles to come into play (draw, write letters, computer skills, verbal, possible 3D projects as well). And I saw it as an important way of incorporating families into the importance of learning together and a way to get the students to think about words at home. I saw that by having students "teach" what they knew, they were advancing their own understanding. I hadn’t realized any of that until I began to look at it in a new way through my own learning of literacy.

To quote Kevin Henkes, "all I can say is "WOW"".

What other trees have I not been noticing? It’s a huge forest…

"Who wants to share what you wrote?"

I have always been fascinated by the fact that a kindergartener can start the school year out unable to write their own name and by the time the year is over they are reading and writing. Reading about emergent literacy this week has reminded me more about some of the reasons why I love Kindergarten!

One of my favorite teachers (I’ll call her Ms. Bunny) once told me that every child has something to say, and they love to talk about themselves. How true! Every year she has her kindergarteners start a writing journal. Yes, most of them don’t know how to write their own names yet, but they have a writing journal that they write in at least 2 times a week, if not more! She tells them that they will be writing stories about themselves, their families, the things they like, and the activities they enjoy doing. They start out by using pictures, words with made up spelling, whatever they are capable of doing. She gives them a writing prompt such as, “what is your favorite animal?” or “what did you do this weekend?” or “if you could have any pet, what would it be?” and off they go. Sometimes she has them sound out words themselves; sometimes in the beginning, she will have them dictate to her what they want her to write to go with their picture.


From time to time she has them share what they have been writing with the class. “Who wants to share with us what you wrote?” Even the kid who only drew a picture the first week of school raises his hand to share. They bring their journals up to the document camera and tell their classmates all about the “story” they wrote. Their classmates ask questions and they proudly answer. Ms. Bunny is sure to give very specific praise for something that they did well, for all to hear, and they are now confident that they can be a writer, too.

As the year progresses, I love to look through the journals from beginning to end. The progress they make is amazing! Words start to show up, then sentences and whole stories. From time to time, Ms. Bunny has them look back in their own journals, pointing out to them how much they have learned and how hard they have all worked. “Remember when we first started Kindergarten….? Look at what you just wrote. WOW!”

This is just one of the literacy activities I have observed in that classroom. Reading “just right” books to themselves, their parents, and their classmates, written words posted on items all around the classroom, fabulous interactive activities on the Activeboard to learn sight words, daily reading opportunities built into the routines of the day, and the list goes on and on.

It’s an intimidating prospect, taking on the literacy education of these young minds. What we do early on has such an effect on their future as students. I only hope I can learn from those good examples I see as I go along, and always keep my eyes open for further opportunities to learn.

This is a link I found for a first grade Writer's Workshop in a real classroom:

A Day in the Life of our Writing Workshop

And another that introduces the idea of Writer's Workshop by Reading Rockets (http://www.readingrockets.org/)

Watch and Learn: Writing

From Kindergarten Chaos blog:

evolution of writing workshop