Kindergarten is taking literacy by storm. Along with their tried and true lessons using Fundations for reading and spelling development, Lead Kindergarten Teachers Amanda Findlay and Rachel Liptz, along with Humanities Department Chair Becca Berwick, have introduced a specialized writing component to their literacy curriculum.
“We tell the children, ‘you are a writer, we are all writers.’ And writers think, ‘so what do I write about? What do I want to share? What do I want people to know about me?’”
The class employs a multi-modal approach to learning, using different techniques and activities to get students engaged in writing and telling stories. They will do whole-group alphabet yoga with the book ABC Yoga by Christiane Engel, do “skywriting” in which they trace letters in the air with their bodies, and of course, physically write letters while becoming familiar with their sounds. In conjunction with these lessons, the class also splits into breakout groups for writer’s workshop.
“We start each lesson singing a song and engaging students by finding connections from our previous session. This allows us to bring back a teaching point, our most recent one being that writers have special tools like pencils, erasers, and pencil cases that they need to take care of,” said Amanda. From there, the children then read a story known as an “anchor text,” a piece of writing that will connect to their lesson of the day. After the read-aloud, teachers will model sentence formation on the board as students share their thoughts about the story and what they plan to write.
In the beginning of Kindergarten, Amanda and Rachel explained that much of reading and writing actually starts with drawing.
“We want to get them familiar with gathering those tools, thinking about what they will write independently and with partners, connecting it to the anchor text, and then getting those ideas down on paper.”
By mid-fall to winter, students will begin to write by themselves. Once they master the process, they will form words and sentences, using correct punctuation and upper and lower case letters where appropriate. By the end of the year, many students will be writing up to two full sentences connected to their lessons.
Another important piece of the writer’s workshop is sharing their work afterwards. Children may share with their table partner, or in small groups, or even as an entire class. This helps them build confidence in their writing ability, even when they make mistakes. Each student also conferences with a teacher, during which they hear one thing they did well and one thing for them to keep thinking about, whether it be remembering their tools or including punctuation.
“In previous years Kindergartners did some of their writing through their VIP celebrations, times when a specific student gave a presentation on themselves and their families,” explained Becca. “That’s always very engaging, and now we’re being even more intentional about the writing process itself and the sequence of objectives throughout the year.”
With such a dynamic, comprehensive and hands-on approach to literacy, Kindergarten students are seamlessly mixing fun into their learning. They laugh while doing yoga, they get excited when they share their sentence ideas, and they celebrate when they write a perfect lowercase “f”. Their confidence is being built, bit by bit, as they become strong independent writers and readers.