Kindergartners should practice and learn three kinds of writing: opinion, informative, and narrative. All three will likely start with kids listening to books read aloud and responding to what they’ve learned. In an opinion piece, your child tells the reader his opinion or preference about a topic, such as a book, animal, activity, etc. (e.g. My favorite book is...). In an informative piece, your child names what he’s writing about and gives some information or details about it. (e.g. Dinosaurs lived on Earth a long time ago…) Writing a narrative is like writing a story. Your kindergartner will describe an event — or a few loosely linked events — putting the events in the order they happen and reacting to what happened. (e.g. Then Goldilocks tried the second bowl of porridge.)
In a word, yes. You may have heard that kindergarten is significantly more academic under the new Common Core State Standards — and it’s true: the kindergarten writing standards include scary terms like “research” and “publish.” But don’t panic. Kindergarten is still the year children first learn about writing, which means learning to listen, speak in class, and write the ABCs.
Check out these real examples of good kindergarten informational writing:
• “All people can save water”
• “All people can save water”
Kindergartners start learning the basics of sentence structure — namely capitalizing I (when referring to themselves) and the first letter of the first word in a sentence, ending their sentences with a period (and knowing that it’s called a period), and ending their questions with a question mark (and knowing that it’s called a question mark).
3 types of kindergarten writing
When answering, your child should learn to use frequently occurring nouns and verbs and correctly use the most common “connection words” or prepositions — such as to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, and with — to express their thoughts. They should also learn to answer questions using simple, complete sentences. Kindergartners also need to understand and use question words, including who, what, where, when, why, and how, when they speak or dictate writing so they’re familiar with these words when they begin writing on their own.
This year your kindergartner should learn to print “many” (yes, the new standards specify “many,” not “all”) upper and lowercase letters.
Watch how kindergartners research and discuss a topic
Your child’s first experience with research projects will be listening to a few books by the same author or on the same topic. Students will be asked to recall information like the author’s name, and what they learned from the reading. Then, with help and prompting from the teacher, they may draw pictures to accompany dictated sentences or write one to three sentences about what they learned from these books.
Kindergartners should practice and learn three kinds of writing: opinion, informative, and narrative. All three will likely start with kids listening to books read aloud and responding to what they’ve learned. In an opinion piece, your child tells the reader his opinion or preference about a topic, such as a book, animal, activity, etc. (e.g. My favorite book is...). In an informative piece, your child names what he’s writing about and gives some information or details about it. (e.g. Dinosaurs lived on Earth a long time ago…) Writing a narrative is like writing a story. Your kindergartner will describe an event — or a few loosely linked events — putting the events in the order they happen and reacting to what happened. (e.g. Then Goldilocks tried the second bowl of porridge.)
In a word, yes. You may have heard that kindergarten is significantly more academic under the new Common Core State Standards — and it’s true: the kindergarten writing standards include scary terms like “research” and “publish.” But don’t panic. Kindergarten is still the year children first learn about writing, which means learning to listen, speak in class, and write the ABCs.
Check out these real examples of good kindergarten informational writing:
• “All people can save water”
• “All people can save water”
Kindergartners start learning the basics of sentence structure — namely capitalizing I (when referring to themselves) and the first letter of the first word in a sentence, ending their sentences with a period (and knowing that it’s called a period), and ending their questions with a question mark (and knowing that it’s called a question mark).
3 types of kindergarten writing
When answering, your child should learn to use frequently occurring nouns and verbs and correctly use the most common “connection words” or prepositions — such as to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, and with — to express their thoughts. They should also learn to answer questions using simple, complete sentences. Kindergartners also need to understand and use question words, including who, what, where, when, why, and how, when they speak or dictate writing so they’re familiar with these words when they begin writing on their own.
This year your kindergartner should learn to print “many” (yes, the new standards specify “many,” not “all”) upper and lowercase letters.
Watch how kindergartners research and discuss a topic
Your child’s first experience with research projects will be listening to a few books by the same author or on the same topic. Students will be asked to recall information like the author’s name, and what they learned from the reading. Then, with help and prompting from the teacher, they may draw pictures to accompany dictated sentences or write one to three sentences about what they learned from these books.
As a district, we will score our student’s work together during a PD day. However, I included what I anticipate their score to be.
NOTE: These images are small, but if you click on them, you will get a bigger image and you will be able to read the kid’s handwriting.
- Uses spaces between words consistently
- Uses rereading strategy and shows signs of editing
- Writes a simple message (two or more sentences) that communicates the writer’s purpose
- Writes all letters with the correct formation (excluding reversals)
- Hears and records some consonant letter sounds in sequential order and some easy to hear vowels may appear in sequential order
- Writes 4 or more simple high-frequency words (excluding I, a)
- Draws and writes about the prompt. Writing is supported by details
- Writes words: may or may not use spaces
- Uses rereading strategy with 1-to-1 correspondence
- Writes a simple message (a sentence) that communicates the writer’s purpose
- Writes some letters using correct formation, may include capital letters (reversals accepted)
- Hears and records some consonant letter sounds but not necessarily in sequential order
- Writes less than 2 simple high-frequency words (excluding I, a)
- Draws and writes about the prompt
Analysis of Writing Sample 2
The October sample was also an assessment (same hands-off rules applied).
This week we gave our district’s writing assessment. Each kindergarten class performs the same assessment in the same manner.
I think these samples are pretty indicative of my class population. I am not convinced our scoring guide for 2011 was rigorous enough. As a district, we are committed to not making any changes. Because this was a district scoring guide, I am not permitted to share it.
It’s never too early to help kindergarteners develop the healthy skill of daily reflective writing—and elementary school is the perfect time to begin the habit.
To help your students get the most from this excellent exercise, we’ve developed a set of 52 easy writing prompts for elementary school students.
Further, mix it up and ask children to draw and write about activities they did that day. You want them to get used to writing things down, especially in this age of technology.
You can make this more powerful by reading out-loud what you are recording as you are writing it. Explain the value writing offers in the situation. Do what you can to help your child see the value of writing.
Writing Worksheets for Kindergarten Printables
Journal keeping is the perfect way to help young students further their language skills!
The kindergarten classroom is the perfect place for young children to socialize, play, and pretend — but it also needs to be a place where children set the foundation for the rest of their education.
Leave plenty of paper, crayons, markers, and pencils available for your child to use whenever they are feeling creative. Encourage your kids to draw and scribble as much as they want to.
I shared this chart with you a few weeks back. We are still using it, but I added these goal images to the bottom of their writing paper.
Deanna Jump and I have created simple, yet powerful daily lesson plans to teach writers workshop. We have taken the guesswork out of your instruction.
Kindergarten Writing Goals Chart. Grab this free Writers workshop goal chart and see student examples from my kindergarten classroom.
For the majority of my class, we are swimming along quite nicely in writing. They have exceeded our grade level expectations and we are right where we want to be. However, if I am being honest, there are a few that I feel like I need to clasp their hand and pull them through towards proficiency. Am I the only one?
WANTING MORE ON WRITING?
You can find this paper and the anchor chart at the bottom of this blog post.
Is this you? You start off the first part of the year, letting your students “explore” skills, but as the summer months approach, you are starting to feel the threads of panic. I am looking for evidence of mastery!
Since I LOVE talking about writing, I have a few (dozen) blog posts about writing.