Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By
Megan Donnelly
Introduction
The writing samples presented in the following pages have all
been selected from a Kindergarten classroom at Ipalook Elementary
School in Barrow, Alaska. The classroom is composed of 18 students,
10 female and 8 male. At this point in the year, the students range in
age from 4 to 6 years old.
In this classroom, the students have studied narrative and
informational writing from Lucy Calkinss Units of Study. The students
have three hour-long writing blocks a week. Aside from the Units of
Study, students can choose to go to centers that incorporate writing,
such as: Kitchen (clipboard for taking orders, writing shopping lists and
recipes), Writing Station (writing tub of varied writing materials, paper
types, and letter writing supplies), and Teacher (dry erase boards and
markers). Students use journals regularly through out the day as
morning work, an option for early finishers, and for responding to
literature.
While the writing blocks are fairly structured, the writing that
happens during center time and in journals is more informal. As Fields,
M., Groth, L. & and Spangler, K. (2008) state, The best time to
observe childrens theories about print is during play that includes
writing materials (p. 35). For this reason, I model writing often, but
generally avoid asking my students to copy words and sentences that I
have written, and I strive to incorporate writing into as many of our
an excellent way for him to receive feedback on his work. This student
also appears ready to learn some long vowel patterns, which will start
to be introduced to the whole group at the end of the month. For this
student, I will start pointing out CVCe patterns.
Sample 3
This student has a cat a home that appears often in her writing.
One of my favorite How To pieces from the current writing unit comes
from this author, and its titled How to Walk a Cat. In this piece of
journal writing, I notice a mix of capital and lowercase letters, an
attempt at spacing between words, and a period a the end of the
sentence. Her text runs from left to right, and her drawing accurately
represents the text and adds addition details and context to her work.
Just as my student in the first sample wrote about play and my
the student in my second sample wrote about Junie B. Jones, this
student wrote about something for which she has a great deal of
emotional investment and personal interest. As Celia Genishi and
Andrea Smith Honig (2009) theorize, The task (labeling a new color)
may also show that children attend to language presented in an
interactive context (p. 104). All three of my students incorporate
words and language that they experience in daily life through
authentic experiences. This theory supports my decision as a teacher
to avoid pre-selected writing prompts in favor of assisting my students
in the process of
brainstorming topics
that are of personal
interest to them.
To help this
student grow as a
writer, I believe that a
lesson on rereading
for the purpose of
adding detail to a text would be beneficial. This student shows
excellent understanding of how to structure a sentence and use words
and a picture to express an idea, and she is ready to add more
complexity to her writing. To accomplish this task, I would start by
modeling how I write about something that I enjoy doing in my daily
life. Starting with a basic sentence, I could reread with a think aloud to
brainstorm the other factors involved in this activity to increase the
length and descriptive language used in the text. In a one-on-one
session we could also talk about the kind of food the cat eats, or the
color of the bowl used. During read-alouds, we can also reflect on how
authors use language to help create mental images in our minds. In
thinking about her technical writing, this student also appears to be
ready for long vowel patterns and may benefit from highlight CVVC and
Conclusion
Overall, students in this classroom enjoy writing and take great
pleasure in sharing their work with others in pairs and in the authors
chair. They believe their writing is an important way in which they
document learning and communicate with others. In fact, we went on a
field trip recently, and all of the students had pens and clipboards for
taking notes on what they learned about North Slope history and
traditions. Every student took this task seriously and wrote extensive
notes and made detailed drawings. Our tour guide was shocked and
impressed! As I moved around the hard-working group of Kindergarten
students, I saw some students drawing approximations of maps of the
borough and its villages stretching from Barrow to Point Hope while
others were creating detailed illustrations of the polar bears and owls
on display, carefully writing the English and Inupiaq names. As Genishi
and Honig (2009) observe, In terms of event representations, children
learned first the words that referred to the most meaningful events of
their daily lives (p. 103). By creating authentic experiences
surrounding language, our students will naturally be more inclined to
References
Clay, Marie. (2014). By different paths to common outcomes:
Literacy learning and teaching. Auckland, New Zealand. Global
Educations Systems, Ltd.
Fields, M., Groth, L. & Spangler, K. (2008). Let's begin reading
right: A developmental approach to emergent literacy (6th ed.)
Columbus, Ohio: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Gentry, Richard. The developmental stages of writing.
(adapted from The conventions of Writing Developmental scale, The
Wright Group). Retrieved March 12, 2016 from
http://www.sanchezclass.com/curriculum/Developmental%20Stages
%20of%20Writing.pdf.
Genishi, Celia & Honig, Andrea Smith. (2009). Childrens
Language: Learning Words from Experience. In Informing our practice:
Useful research on young childrens development. Eds. Eva L. Essa &
Melissa M. Burnham. Washington, DC: National Association for the
Education of Young Children, 2009. 101-110.
Johnston, Peter. (2012). Opening minds: Using language to
change lives. Portland, Maine. Stenhouse Publishers.
Mayer, Kelly. (2009). Emerging Knowledge about Emergent
Writing. In Informing our practice: Useful research on young childrens
development. Eds. Eva L. Essa & Melissa M. Burnham. Washington, DC: