Kindergarten Writing at the Beginning of the Year!

I always seem so overwhelmed when I give my kindergarten students a writing paper for the very first time. I know how their writing must look to be prepared for first grade, and when I see their very first writing, I always cringe wondering if we will ever make it to mastery level.

I have learned that MODELING is the key to kindergarten writing. Students must see you write everyday as you discuss what good writers do.

We have been writing using our daily sight words and learning to "stretch" our words as we write during these first two weeks of school. During this past week, we chose a couple of days to write about particular colors. We named and made a chart with things that are red and then named yellow items another day. As students named an item of the color, the student said the sentence they would write using our sight words "see" and "the" as I modeled writing the sentence on chart paper.

After modeling, the students had their turn to draw something that color and write a sentence to tell about it. Some of them did a really good job. Here are a few of the writing samples.

The strawberry is red.

The flower is red.

I see a yellow banana.

We still have a long way to go to get them and all of the other students where they need to be by the end of kindergarten, but I know we can do it with a lot of modeling, patience, and daily writing practice. Stay tuned for more writing samples throughout the year.

If you have any writing ideas to share, please comment below. I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for stopping by!