Teaching Writing in Kindergarten

Hello friends!

It has been a busy, busy week in Kindergarten. We are finishing up our last Language Arts unit, doing so many tests that I can't even see straight, and trying to have fun with pre-summer activities. Today we finished up our last writing sample of the year and I wanted to share a little bit about how I teach writing in Kindergarten.

When I first started teaching I thought that Five and Six year olds would only be able to write about one or two sentences by the end of the year. Boy, was I wrong. I soon discovered that many of them quickly learned to do much more than what I expected and I decided that I needed to have higher expectations for them.

I purchased this fantastic book and it changed my life (or maybe just the way I teach writing which sometimes feels like it is my life).

Anyways, Randee Bergen is my hero! She has suggestions and resources for starting to incorporate daily writing time from day 1 and helping students continue to improve throughout the year. I read the entire book in about two days and followed her directions step by step the next school year and I have to say, I was blown away by the results. My little ones came in barely able to write their names legibly and left writing me full pages of sentences with capitals at the beginning, punctuation in the right place, proper spacing, sight words spelled correctly, etc...AND they made sense!

I realized that year that (most) Kindergartners love writing and that I love seeing them do so well. I was so excited that I wanted to tell everyone about their amazing progress and I started keeping a writing portfolio that I'm going to share it with you now! :)

Every year I have the kids do a writing sample on the first day of school. I explain that I know they haven't had a lot of practice writing journals yet, but that I would like them to do their very best to draw a picture of themselves and write a little bit about themselves even if all they can write is their name. Here is what the samples usually look like on that first day:

From that day on, we dedicate at least thirty minutes a day to writing time. At the beginning of the year we do a lot of directed drawing and labeling pictures, and as time goes on they each get their own composition journal for primary grades and start doing daily journal entries. I try to take a writing sample every trimester and I show them how much they have improved. They love seeing how great their writing is compared to the last sample and many of them try to go back and fix the mistakes in their old ones so I have to keep an eye out for that!

Here are some mid-year/close to end of the year samples:

And here are some of the end of year samples that we did today:

Here are the pictures of one of my students' work throughout the school year:

here's a closer look at that End of Trimester 3 writing:

The beginning of year writing templates and ideas for keeping a writing portfolio came from Heidi's blog and you can get a copy for yourself here.

SIGHT WORDS

Hi there!

Today I want to share with you the way that I have been teaching Sight Words in Kindergarten for the past few years.

So far in my teaching career I have worked with two different reading programs - Open Court and Journey's Common Core. Both of these programs only require Kindergartners to learn about 40 words by the end of the year which I quickly realized is not enough to help them become fluent readers! So, I took the Journey's word list and combined it with some of the star words that our First Grade teacher uses and created my own sight word curriculum for the year.

By the end of the year I expect students to be able to read 95 words by sight (no sounding out, no guessing, they just have to have them memorized). You may be thinking that this is too much for such little learners, but trust me it is not! My kids get so excited each time they pass a color set that they beg their parents to practice with them and they speed right through the words. This year more than half of my class had the entire word list memorized by February and they have all started working on the first few sets of words that our First Grade teacher uses. (Three of my boys had them done by Christmas and are reading at a second grade level now!!!!)

Of course, there are a few students who still have a set or two to work on and I tell them and their parents that that is OK - everyone learns at a different pace, and as long as they have the rainbow done by the end of the year they will have mastered all of the Kindergarten words and the first few sets of First Grade words. Plus they have all summer to review :)

At back to school night I explain this whole thing to parents and give them the first set of words to start working on and a letter that explains how to get started.

A few weeks later I start the first round of testing and anyone who passes takes home their orange set of words and gets to color in the red line of their rainbow that I display in the classroom.

From then on I do scheduled testing once a month and they don't just test on their new set - they have to be able to read all of the sets that they already passed and the new one. I keep track on a progress monitoring sheet that I keep in my reading binder, and if they miss any old words I send home a note that looks like this:

When they pass all of their rainbow words I make a huge deal out of it because, well, it is a big deal! (And it doesn't hurt that the other kids get jealous and want to do the same!) I got permission from my principal to give them a free dress day, they get their face on a rainbow up on my sight word superstar board, and I give them the first page of First Grade words to get started on.

If you like what you see and want to try out my Rainbow Sight Words in your classroom then head on over to my TPT store and pick up your own copy by clicking on the picture below!

Mother's Day

It's almost Mother's day & this year I made my own craft for the kids to do but then found an adorable activity on the blog Teaching with Love and Laughter and I just had to do both.

First we read My Mother is So Smart! by Tomie DePaola. If you don't have a copy of this book you can read it for free on www.wegivebooks.com!

We talked about what is special about our Moms and then completed a super cute directed drawing activity from Heidi's blog and writing activity from Teaching with Love and Laughter that you can read more about here. The finished products were so cute that I just had to share!

Then, we did the very simple (and seemingly boring in comparison to the first one) craft that you can buy at my TPT store by clicking on the picture below.

Have a great weekend!

Teacher Appreciation Week

Everything in my store is 20% off for Teacher Appreciation Week! Plus you can get an extra discount when you use the code THANKYOU. Enjoy! :)

Subject-Verb Agreement

According to our Journey's Kindergarten Curriculum, I am supposed to be teaching subject-verb agreement this week, however, we do not have any of the resources that go along with the plans, so I had to get a little creative!

I made my own little subject-verb agreement unit which includes posters, whole-group pocket chart activities, and independent practice worksheets and I used them with my class before sharing on TPT. The kids really seemed to get it by the end of the week & I had fun teaching because I love testing my own products with them and I love interactive learning!


We started out with a lesson on what the subject and verb are in a sentence by looking at some posters from the unit and discussing the example sentences. Then we worked together to find and circle the subjects and underline the verbs in a few different sentences that I projected up on the screen (these are included in the packet & can be used as a pocket chart activity as well).

And of course wrapped it all up with a worksheet for independent practice:

In our next lesson we looked at another poster and discussed the fact that the subject and verb need to agree with each other. I told them that they have a "meeting" and agree on who is going to carry the letter S. If the subject is plural then the subject agrees to carry the S and the verb doesn't have to worry about a thing. If the subject is singular, however, then the verb agrees to carry the S and gives the subject a break. Then we read the example sentences on the poster and I made sure to very clearly point out and emphasize the fact that when the sentence was talking about more than one WHO or WHAT (A.K.A. a plural SUBJECT) then the subject got the s!!!!! (I hope you can sense the overdramatic articulation and repetition that I used in this discussion from my italicizing, bolding, and underlining☺️ ).

Feel free to take this freebie for your class!

Once I felt like they sort of got it, I whipped out a pocket chart activity and told them that I would read the sentences out loud and that they would help me choose the correct words to put in the blanks. For the first few sentences I pointed out whether or not the subject had an S at the end to help them choose the verb that did or did not have it's own S. After that I let them do it all by themselves.

When we finished completing the pocket chart sentences, we headed back to our tables and did a "Do the Subject and Verb agree?" worksheet. (They were all laughing a little too hard when I read the sentences aloud that didn't make sense).

If you want to try this unit it out with your class, you can click on the picture below and purchase it from my TPT store. Have a great weekend!