Teaching Writing in Kindergarten: A Structured Approach to Daily Writing That Helps Every Child Become a Confident, Capable Writer Paperback – 1 Jun. 2008

This book definitely made me think about teaching writing. I was blown away by the idea of starting it from day 1. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate it into our curriculum which is filled up with lots of activities...and do encourage children to follow up with enthusiasm. Is it really possible?? I guess I'll have to check that out.I'm glad that I bought it, though.

Hands down the best resource I have seen for teaching writing. Step by step directions as well as the reasons behind it. Methodology produces exceptional results. Unbelievably effective and very simple to implement. All you need is a pencil and paper.

This book is the best! My kindergarten teammates and I feel like we have "finally figured it (writing) out." When I first received it, I didn't believe my students would be able to match the April writing sample on the cover. I thought, "It's going to take me some practice... maybe next year," but they did! I started off on our third day of school and made sure we got to it everyday for the first two months. At the beginning of the year, writing time never got skipped. The results I saw were incredible. The guided writing that the book teaches gives strategies for all learners no matter how much knowledge of the alphabet they have. The beginning of the year section in the book, also has some great (and short) alphabet routines to do with your students before beginning writing time. One year I used the "Alphardy" song to accompany the routines and this year I'm using "zoo phonics" (we don't actually have zoo phonics, I just have some old poster and watched a YouTube video to learn the hand motions... I thought the kinesthetic portion would be beneficial). By October (!!!), I had students able to write 2 full sentences and a student (who entered K with low fine motor and little exposure to the alphabet) writing a string of 2s and letter i's telling me it says "my grandma makes me happy" and hey, maybe all I saw were 2s and i's but she's understood the whole, "If I think it, I can say it. If I can say it, I can write it," idea. Then I had students everywhere in between. Then, as the students gain more phonological awareness and phonics practice, their writing grows naturally and when they're ready. I loved the book because it gives all my students the ability to write... and we know, writing in kindergarten looks different, but all my kids have learned such great writing strategies from this book that they don't get stuck on the spelling or the writing of letters (no matter where they happen to be in their phonics/phonological awareness), that they can focus on the content. (Correct spelling and handwriting are important, and of course, it gets mentioned when I teach writing, but I teach them these things explicitly at other points of the day. My focus when I teach from this book is getting our ideas on paper). I'm technically required to follow a school-wide curriculum but before this book, my students didn't have the skills to produce or even attempt the writing assignments it was asking of them. After we learned those skills, I went ahead and started following our school curriculum with more success.

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I have used this book almost every week during this past school year.