Kindergarten Writing Program

All writing in Kindergarten is encouraged. 
-Students start the program by learning how to properly hold the writing instruments (pencils, markers, etc.) and build the muscles that help with this task. 
-To develop the fine motor skills used in cutting and printing.
-We have a variety of centre activities: using tweezers, using chopsticks, using tongs, lacing cards & beads, cutting pages, playdough & tools, along with others.   
-Children who print lightly need to particpate in the above activities to build the strength in their grasp.

Writing stages are developmental and in the beginning it may start out as squiggles and have little resemblence to the English alphabet. 
-This is normal & strongly encouraged. 
-It’s similar to speaking where in the beginning all that’s heard is unidentified noises which eventually develop into coherent sounds and language.

In Kindergarten, written communication often includes a picture. 
-JKs usually only have a picture and maybe some letters or copied words.
-The JKs usually orally dictate their thoughts to the teacher who scribes it for them to ensure they understand the writing format.  
-It is also acceptable for children to “drite” (draw and write), this means they can do some words and some pictures or symbols to create their sentences.   
-Students start by learning to recognize his/her name and then to copy the name.  
-In the beginning, a yellow marker outline of his/her name allows the student to practice forming the letters properly.

-Students are taught to create pictures which include at these 3 components:  shapes, colour & completeness (top, middle and bottom).
1. Shapes (i.e. a house is a large square or rectangle with a triangle on top and additional squares/rectangles as the windows/door).
2. A variety of colour (i.e. a person has different colours for eyes, mouth, hair, pants, shirt, etc.).
3.Add a top, middle & bottom (i.e. outside in the summer there is a grassy ground on the bottom, the objects (people, equipment, trees, etc.) in the middle and the sky above.

Writing is incorporated in all the classroom activity centres and a variety of writing tools and activities can be found throughout the entire classroom to encourage inquiry based learning.  
-As one example:  in the drama centre when it is set up as a house there are:
-notepads and phones; a calendar; a planner; extra “homework pages so they can play school; plain paper and clipboards; grocery lists and so forth.

All the FDK students do a weekly jolly phonics printing or word practice activity to help them with their alphabet learning. Grade One students focus on word families and printing these words.

* Once your child is forming complete letters, follow these tips we use at school, remember to:
– use all lowercase letters except at the beginning of a sentence.
-put a period at the end of a sentence (not the end of every line).
– leave a space between each word  (this is really important). 
-encourage your child to sound out words (even if they only put the beginning sound or the beginning and ending sound). 
-Help your child by slowly sounding out the word for him/her and help them practise printing and sounding out on their own. 
-JKs will probably only put the beginning sound or even non-related letters (which is a great start, they are practicing forming letters not numbers and it shows they know the difference). 
-Sks should be able to listen for both the beginning and ending sound and should start listening for the middle sounds as well. 
-The students have the Jolly Phonics picture symbols in the classroom to help them remember the letter names and sounds while they print.

Common classroom sample:  “APSKSAFG”  (all capitals, no spaces)
A better  example of the same words:  “A pns ks a frg.”  (A princess kissed a frog.)
You can see how crucial spacing becomes when children are learning to write and read it back to someone.

The Ontario Government has a province wide writing program that starts in Grade One.   Approximately every 6 weeks the students learn a new form of writing.

Below are the forms of writing taught over the course of the year.  In Kindergarten, the students will be exposed to samples of these forms of writing and be taught ways to recognize books of each genre.  Students who are ready may also participate in shared writing experiences where they help create some class samples of these writing forms.

“Recall or Recount”.
-Recall is a sequential retelling of past personal events, telling where and what happened. 
-More advanced students might also use the words: “first”, “next”, “then”, and “finally”.
-Our class samples of recall include things like: what I did before coming to school; what we did at school, what the student did on the weekend, on our field trip, and so forth.

“Procedural writing”.
-Procedural writing should have a goal;  materials needed; and a list of 3 – 4 sequential steps. In the older grades, a list of equipment is also necessary.
-Our class samples for procedural writing include things like: how to brush your teeth; how to carve a pumpkin; how to play duck, duck, goose and so forth.  
-Here is a WiggleWorks sample that we review on our Smartboard while the children each follow along in the corresponding  book.

Goal :  to make a pizza;
Materials needed: english muffin, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese;
Steps:
1. Place english muffins on baking sheet.
2. Spread tomato sauce on English muffins.
3.  Sprinkle on the cheese.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
Recipes are only 1 sample of procedural writing.  There are also instructions (ie. how to carve a pumpkin, how to get dressed for outside, how to build a barbeque) and so forth.

 “Report writing”.
-Report writing needs to include a title, and list 2 or 3 facts (not opinions) the child has learned from observing or reading something. 
-We can distinguish reports from other types of writing because they traditionally have photographs, sections and may include diagrams. 
-Samples can include: weather reports, fashion reports, factual/scientific book reports , sports reports, biographies, brochures and so forth. 
-In the past, we  have done mini book reports on the moon, penguins, a couple oral and written “fashion reports” as well.  
-We have also done a “pet” report with 4 headings: appearance; food; habitat and interesting fact, we use diagrams and more advanced students work on labelling their pictures.

 Fictional “Narrative writing”, (short, make-believe stories). 
-These narrative pieces must have characters, a problem, and a solution. 
-As an added challenge for a few SK students we also discuss a setting along with a beginning, middle and end. 
-All students need to think about the character(s) in the story (and the setting – for advanced SK children) before putting anything onto paper.  
-If your child creates any writing pieces at home that they would like to share, please send them into the room.  Please encourage your child to write at home, even simple lists and so forth.  
-At school, we use 3 picture boxes with words underneath to depict “beginning, middle, and end” of the story in our shared writing experiences and for more advanced SKs.

For our persuasive writing the students are learning valid reasons to support a position idea/statement. 
-For example: Summer is the best season.  Summer weather is hot and you don’t need to wear a jacket.  
-During  the summer you can go to the beach and swim outside.

Many students at this age will give opinions, for example:  ”Summer is the best season because I like it.”   
-We are teaching them to develop and explain/support why the statement is true with facts.

Our goal is to state an opinion and provide one supporting fact to go along with our opinion.  For example:
 A dog is a good pet.  A dog can bark and warn you about strangers in your house.
An answer that needs more guidance would be: A dog is a good pet.  A dog is fun. You need to know “why” is the dog fun – fun is an opinion not a fact and would have to be supported (i.e. you can teach your dog tricks and will have fun playing games).  We do lots of work at school discussing facts versus opinion.
Another acceptable example:  I would like to go to the Great Wolf Lodge for summer vacation.  The Great Wolf Lodge has lots of slides and activities. 
At home,  practice discussing opinions and supporting facts with your child. 
-It doesn’t have to be in written format, we’ve been doing lots of oral discussions and games related to this skill just to help them with the concept. 
-The child is always first stating “what” s/he thinks (opinion) then supporting the opinion with a fact (”why” the opinion is valid).   
-You can work this into simple prompts like “What do you think we should have for supper?”, “Where should we go this weekend?” and so forth.

Explanation Writing or writing that describes a cause and effect relationship, explaining an experience or an event. 
-On their own, the children will be expected to restate the question in a simple one reason answer. 
-The response must also include the linking words “because” or “so that”.  
-For example, one child brainstormed the question:  Why do we need shoes?  Answer:  “We need shoes so that our feet stay warm.”  or “We need shoes because we want our feet to stay warm.”