My school is in it's third year of implementing writer's workshop. Each year, our students know more about writer's workshop and have improved stamina and skills, which is really exciting. In kindergarten, however, it's a different story; with a large free and reduced lunch population, our students come with a huge range in pre-academic skills like drawing, letter formation and recognition and knowledge of sound letter recognition.
In my perusing of educator blogs, I found some great ideas for writers in the emergent stage on Sarah Pickard Taylor's blog READ, WRITE, PLAY: (She's an author and top-notch literacy consultant with the Columbia University Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project.)
~have kids label 5 things on a page (I like the idea of giving kids a number of how many.)
~once kids can write the first and last sound they can start writing on the line instead of just labeling
~let scribblers use COLOR!!! She says this will help those kids with messy, scribbled pictures remember more details of their story. (I love this idea for the kid who scribbles and then cannot remember what their story was about and keeps the least skilled kids engaged with writing behavior for longer...another challenge solved!)
