FREE PRINTABLE Kindergarten and Preschool Lined Paper that is perfect for your little ones to use for writing practice.
If you need a writing anchor chart to help your students with visual references, this post has 9 must-make anchor charts to boost your writers.
Helping busy teachers to simplify their teaching practices through fun and engaging research-based curriculum and resources! Read the Blog Looking for Something? Facebook-f Twitter Pinterest-p Instagram Youtube Tiktok hello I'm Deedee Wills Mrs. Wills’ Kindergarten
Hello Everyone! We began our "How To" writing unit today. What better way to start than with a sweet treat? Oreos fit the bill. Everyone ...
A few years ago, the school where I was working provided me with Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study for Primary Writing. I loved those books and her approach to writing – it was developmentally appropriate, rigorous, and got kids involved in creating authentic pieces of writing. I read and reread her lesson descriptions and tried […]
I thought it was time to share some alphabet activities for preschoolers. Alphabet activities and How Wee Learn definitely seem to go hand in hand! I have shared with you oodles of letter activities before AND a (rather lengthy) post about why I don't actually suggest teaching letters in ABC order. But I have not
Download the Tracing letters with cute fruits. Writing practice. 2251108 royalty-free Vector from Vecteezy for your project and explore over a million other vectors, icons and clipart graphics!
These portable Name Folders offer 4 different hands-on ways for children to practice recognizing, spelling and writing their names.
An ABC countdown is a fun and simple way to wind up your kindergarten year. Here's how to pull together an alphabet countdown with lots of great ideas.
Tot School/Preschool Activity Need help recognizing and writing the alphabet? How about your child's name? Here is a perfect activity! ...
Last week’s post looked at nonfiction writing through the lens of the common core writing standard 2 and how charts can help support that instruction. We shared examples of ways to generate topics,…
20 Free Name Activities for the First Week of Kindergarten. Check out these amazing hands-on and fun name activities! Integrates multiple skills.
These writing mini-lessons for the ENTIRE YEAR take the guesswork out of what to teach each day in writing each day.
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
Astrobrights Colorize Your Classroom Challenge -Color increases learning retention. Join the challenge to use more color!
Is your child ready to start tracing letters of the alphabet in print or cursive? These free alphabet tracing printables, available in print and cursive, will be perfect for helping you teach tracing letters in your homeschool and work in improving writing skills. Teaching Young Learners How to Write Letters I love teaching my little...
Trace then write the words themselves in this AT Word Family Trace and Write printable worksheet.
How to set up and organize a writing center in your pre-k, preschool, or kindergarten classroom. See pictures of my writing center and material suggestions.
When we are learning about different writing genres, I love to have the students do an inquiry into different kinds of introductions and conclusions to help them with their own writing. We look to our favorite authors {some are authors from our room!} or books of the genre. We just finished up our How-To unit and I wanted to share with you how I go about doing this. First I select texts to be our mentor texts throughout the unit. They are usually books I already own. For this unit we also printed off recipes as examples. This unit I used: This isn't the recipe we used just one like it. During the unit we read these mentor text more than once. Sometimes I use them to teach a skill or strategy for a mini-lesson and other times to get ideas from their authors. After the students had the concept of telling their reader how to do something with steps I knew it was time to work on our introductions. We got some of the books out and I typed their introductions. I also took several examples from students in my class. Then I read them and the kids sorted them and named what the authors were doing. For How-To writing they noticed authors started with actions, questions and telling. Some did more than one. When the students went off that day to write they were so excited to fix up their introductions. By the end of the unit every single student had an introduction without my prompting! Since the students noticed and named what the authors did in their introductions, they had a sense of ownership. This built their confidence and then they willing to try something new. I typed up some of the books introduction for you to make your own anchor chart! Click on the link or images to download. How-To Introductions When the students are ready we do the whole process over again but this time we inquire into conclusions. Check out these posts for How-To Writing resources: Introduction to Expository Writing, More Expository! and Writing Workshop Revisions (which refers to the old Units of Study by Lucy Calkins). Here is an example from our opinion writing of the same type of inquiry lesson: See the original post here: Strengthening Our Opinion Writing These lessons are definitely impactful on my little writers!
(The farmer can see the horse.) We are finally moving along with Writer’s Workshop. I am really pleased with their progress. Granted, we are...
In my district we use Lucy Caulkins' Writer's Wrokshop for our writing curriculum. I love the way she introduces the idea of writing to st...
We had a ton of fun with July's Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids' author Audrey Wood. And yes, I know it's already August. Better late than never! There are so many great books by
The toughest part of writing is often getting started. Jump the hurdle with these kid-friendly writing warm-ups that spark creativity!
Hopefully, it has been a few weeks and teachers feel back in the swing of things. September is time for creating a classroom community. Many of the teachers in my building celebrate the month by making self-portraits. Check out some of the beautiful children below! We have student's outline with a pencil and go over it with a Sharpie. The last part is to color with pencils, markers or paint. Jessica had her student's paint on a canvas and hung them up with Command hooks(easy for next year). She got the canvases for a great price at Michael's. Amy had her students draw, outline and color. She pasted them on a color background and cut out their names. Katie had parents guess their child at Back to School night. I like how she didn't laminate them. Simple yet beautiful. She puts these in their school portfolio. Hopefully, your finding a place in your class to celebrate the faces of your students. A great big thanks goes out to any teacher who nominated Joyful Learning for a top kindergarten blog ❤❤ click here for blog list If you are planning on launching writing workshop in your classroom check out this post on tips for getting started. Joyfully yours, Melissa
Recently I was contacted by a few teachers with questions about Lucy Calkins and who are just starting out. These emails reflected my own thoughts and feelings just a few years ago when I began using Lucy so I thought I would post one of my responses. Enjoy! ~~~************************************~~~ I am so excited that your team is taking on Lucy Calkins Writing Workshop! Believe me when I tell you that the concerns expressed in your emails were the same as those of teachers at my school when we first started using LC five years ago. I really could go on forever about this program so I am going to make a list of “pointers” to keep myself from going on and on and on! Here are some of what I believe to be the most important things to keep in mind about Lucy: Writing is a “craft” made up of many different components. My team (and school) is of the mind that Composing is the most important component of writing. Mechanics and Grammar are also important, but Composing is about content and the idea of “story.” Students might have correct grammar and mechanics, but without Composing, the content of their writing is often meaningless. LC teaches students to love and feel writing to their core. My students would rather do writing workshop than go to recess most of the time. And all my classes have been this way ever since I started using LC. LC is about having children write about their own lives. This gives power and meaning to their stories that cannot possibly be achieved through prompt writing. Every child has something to write about because we teach them that what they do each day is important and deserves to be written down. In the upper grades, the students have to do prompt writing on state tests, so the teachers have the kids write a prompt that would fit their story after they finish writing it. LC is meant to be taught in order, but you can make variations to fit your curriculum/grade level. Also, each book is only meant to be taught for one month. At the end of the month, you should have a writing celebration and move on to the next book whether you finished all the lessons or not. We start the year with an Illustration Unit roughly based on Katie Wood Ray’s work, in combination with the Launching Writing Workshop book. The Illustration unit was written by a group of teachers at our school and is used by all classes K-2. Then we move on to Small Moments, which I think is where the kids really start to take ownership over the process. Book 3, Writing for Readers is a little too primary for us so we skip that book and go straight to Revision. This is where we supplement with mechanics and grammar. Then comes my all-time favorite Authors as Mentors J! Because we skip book 2, we do two months of Authors as Mentors. (This is an exception to the one month rule because this usually falls in the months where we have a lot of days out of school). This is another good place to fit in some mechanics lessons. I do a month of Ezra Jack Keats and then a month of Angela Johnson, but not all of us do it that way. Many teachers use more than just these two authors during this book. After Authors as Mentors, we take a break from Lucy and teach a Fairy Tales/Letter Writing Unit (which was also written by teachers at our school) to meet state and county objectives. Then we do the rest of the books pretty much as is. Writing Celebrations are very important. They can be simple or elaborate, but kids need to celebrate what they have accomplished regularly. I often invite another class and any adults without classes at the time to come and listen to our stories. Once we had a “Slumber Party” writing celebration where the kids wore their PJs, we used old sheets to make tents out of the desks, and the kids read their stories to one another using flashlights. That was a lot of fun. Most of our celebrations are much more simple. 5th Graders came to listen to our published stories. Reading to other second graders. This little one nearly brought me to tears when she said, "writing makes me feel important Ms. Moler." Conferring can be the scariest part of Writing Workshop for teachers but it is very powerful. I make a conferring schedule, with each kid having a day that they know I will confer with them. That makes it more manageable for me to get to everyone. After I have conferred with my 4 or 5 students scheduled for the day, I usually check-in with my lowest writers. There are some kids I confer with almost everyday, but most do fine with weekly check-ins. My conferring schedule also doubles as my sharing schedule. The kids I confer with are the ones who get to share their writing at the end of the lesson. That way I know I have worked on the stories that will be shared and can use it as a teaching point if needed. There is a great video out there of Lucy Caulkins talking to students about how to treat their writing. I show it to my kids every year and sometimes more than once. Lucy tells the kids that they can find stories anywhere, and that they should treat their writing like it is gold. I definitely recommend showing this video to your team teachers as well as to your kids. LC is really big on choice. Students should choose which paper they want to use, what to write about, etc. I let my kids sit wherever they want with the understanding that I will choose for them if they choose poorly. Some teachers allow the kids to sit around the room but assign places so the students always go to the same writing spot. That really is up to you. I find that the kids are a lot more spaced out when they sit around the room rather than just at their seats, so there actually is a lot less talk than when they are all at their desks at the same time. Speaking of paper, one adaptation we do is that we don’t use the LC paper. We give the students 5 page blank books from the get-go. That way they know that they are writing “books” and that everything in one book should be related to the main idea of their story. This also helps with kids who want to write stories that have no end (I call them “and then” stories). We give them blank paper without lines, and let them choose where on the page to place their writing and illustrations. There are lessons about this in our Illustration Unit, but I think LC has a lesson about this somewhere too. Again, this requires giving up a lot of control and I am not saying you have to give your kids paper without lines. There is a lot of research out there to suggest that it is better though… Whether you use lines or not, I absolutely recommend giving kids stapled booklets from the start rather than just loose paper. Work as a team! Our school has professional development for writing through a PLC format (we call it EPIC). When we first started out, we had full day EPIC once a month with teachers from our school and a partnering school. Then last year we switched to half-day EPIC monthly, and now we have one half-day PD each quarter. If your school isn’t doing any professional development for you it will be more difficult, but definitely use each other as a team to problem solve. Overall, the best advice I can give is to give up some control and trust in this program. When your kids start to understand that they are Authors and take ownership, you will see them and their writing shine like never before! I have gotten the most hilarious, heart-breaking, creative, and meaningful stories out of my students as a result of this program. More than once a student has shared a story that made me cry tears of sadness and joy. And I laugh so hard I cry at least once a week from listening to my students’ stories. (Alot of tears in Ms. Moler's room and most of them are mine!) Writing was my least favorite thing to teach before Lucy came along and now it is my absolute favorite! I know I’ve missed some things but I’ve already gone on waaaay too long. I hope this has been helpful and not “preachy.” I encourage everyone to do what works best for them and is in the best interest of their kids. Writing is messy but it can be beautiful!
Eisenhower Elementary School Grand Prairie, TX.
60+ Must Make Kindergarten Anchor Charts for the classroom. Covers classroom management, literacy and math. Multiple ideas!
I teach a modified version of Lucy Calkins' Writing Workshop. I love it. Although I supplement the program, it really turns my 1st grader...
Steal these for your writing unit!
