Writing time is probably my favorite part of the day in a kindergarten classroom. Right now, I'm modeling how to tell a story about something that has happened to me. I might tell the kids about watching my daughter's soccer game and how she scored a goal. I may tell them about seeing a movie with my family, or anything else that has happened in every day life.
In the picture, below, one of our kindergarten friends is telling me about how excited she was to hold her neighbor's dog. She is pointing to the person in the picture and telling me that this is a picture of her (the student) sitting down and how the dog that she is holding is so cute.
The next student is writing about staying home because it was raining outside.
This student was writing about her family.
At the beginning of the school year, we focus on telling a story with a character (usually the person who is writing the story), a setting, and a significant event. We practice telling the story and
carefully drawing a picture to represent the story. One of the areas I focus on in our mini lessons is using simple shapes to draw pictures. We really focus on our fine motor skills at this time of the year. Today, we also started labeling our pictures. Some kids wrote their name by the character in the story and other kids wrote ME by themselves. We learned a song to remember how to spell the word me.
You will notice that the pages in our journals have a line on the page. Very soon, we will begin writing our sentences below the line. Our illustrations and labels will go above the line and writing will go below.
We are off to a good start and can't wait to see the great work our authors do this year!
