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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Writing





I love teaching writing in Kindergarten! Not everyone does-- and in a lot of classes writing comes down to handwriting or just copying the morning message. I believe children should be given many opportunities throughout the day to express themselves. Is it an easy task-by no means! Most students enter Kinder (even GT students) with a limited ability to sound out words to write. You have to have a lot of patience and work with them student by student, encouraging them to sound out their words.

In the beginning you get "Du dg s n du hs" - that's "The dog is in the house." for those of you not fluent in Kindergarten :). Eventually they are able to sound out words more completely and begin to really put some creativity into their stories. I added a few examples one is a recent assignment to compare the perspective of roots to that of flowers. The others are what they felt listening to jazz music.

The face of these little ones the first time they bring up something they read and I read it back to them is absolutely priceless!