I am often asked how I organize my student writing folders. Then the other day I was cleaning out a "special drawer" that I had (AKA: junk drawer, catch-all, blackhole) when I found an old writing folder I used with my 2nd-grade students. I'd forgotten all about them. So I decided to whip up a cleaned-up version and offer them to you all! Here are your Writing Folder Organization FREE labels for your early ...
Writing
City Dog, Country Frog Activity Ideas and more
City Dog Country Frog Activities and Mentor Text lesson ideas are here! Find reading comprehension and writing ideas to use with this amazing book by Mo Willems. City Dog, Country Frog Mentor Text I don't remember the exact moment I fell in love with City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems. I think it was actually a love at first sight sort of thing. I love the theme that two individuals who are so different can still find a true ...
Teaching Black History Month (free file)
Black History Month Lesson Plans for kindergarten through second grade. February is a perfect month to explore the genre of biographies. Learning about the courageous men and women in black history while diving deep into reading comprehension provides an ideal opportunity. Biographies These are the three books we used to help guide our exploration into biographies: Rosa Parks by Kitson Jazynka Frederick Douglass by ...
Using Mentor Texts in Kindergarten
Kindergarten Mentor Texts to teach reading and writing with Cynthia Rylant's Scarecrow book (affiliate link)... you bet! This last week I had the pleasure of visiting a kindergarten classroom. She had already started the book, Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant for her Guiding Readers/Close Read, so when she asked me to do a lesson on word choice... I could not contain my excitement. This book is PERFECT for word choice (among other ...
Interactive Writing Book Study Ch 6 to 8
Interactive Writing Book Study Ch 6 to 8! These chapters really focus on writing conventions and sharing the pen. You can find this book by clicking HERE. (Affiliate link) Interactive Writing Chapter 6: Sharing the Pen I love how the authors start this chapter out, "Share the Pen is informed by what you know about your students, your curriculum expectations, and the characteristics of good writing." p. 79 On page 80, the ...
Interactive Writing Book Study Ch 3 – 5
Interactive Writing Book Study Ch 3 to 5 is what we are going to talk about today. Welcome back! If you want to catch up Chapters 1 and 2, you can click HERE to read them. I got this book from Amazon and you can order it by clicking HERE. (affilaite link) Interactive Writing Chapter 3: Experience The authors start out with a quote from K. Bromley, "Writers write about what they know." The authors go on to ...
Interactive Writing Book Study Ch 1 & 2
Interactive Writing Book Study Ch 1 & 2! Let's look at the book Interactive Writing Across the Grades as part of our blog book study. See how to engage young writers through explicit writing instruction. You can view this professional read on Amazon by clicking HERE (affiliate link). What is interactive writing? Interactive writing is a method of teaching writing that was originally deployed in primary classrooms to support emergent ...
Illustrative Studies Book Study
Illustrative Studies Book Study is revisited. A few years ago, I helped organize a blog book study on one of my favorite professional books, In Pictures and in Words by Katie Wood Ray. In case you missed it, I wanted to give you a little walk down memory lane! Chapters 1-6: Illustrations and Writing The first few chapters provided the rationale for using picture books to teach the qualities of writing. You ...
4 Spring Books to Use as Mentor Texts in Writing!
Writers Workshop Mentor Texts to use in Spring! These picture books will help elevate your illustrative studies in writers workshop. Your kindergarten or first-grade students will love these books and their writing will soar! I love using picture books to help elevate the quality of writing with the students I work with. Here are four books you can use right now! Mud by Mary Lyn Ray What a fun book! Great for connections as ...
How to Heal a Broken Wing Lesson Plans
How to Heal a Broken Wing is one of my favorite books to use as an illustrative study mentor text. This book is essential any kindergarten classroom and I will tell you why! Reading I'll start with reading. We use this book in our Guiding Readers units because it BEGS to be read over and over again. I have said this many times, you can't have a meaningful conversation about a book that does not grab at your heart. ...
What is Balanced Literacy? AND How Do I Teach it?
Balanced Literacy Approach? What is balanced literary? How do I teach balanced literacy?... All the questions... Get comfy... grab a cup of tea... this might prove to be a long post. The other day in our Kindergarten Facebook group, the subject of the various balanced literacy approaches came up, so I promised to help explain them. Many of these I have blogged about in the past, so be on the lookout for links to ...
Secrets to Instant Planning… Just PRINT and TEACH
Lesson Planning Secrets Made Easy! Writers Workshop, Math Workshop, Guided Reading, and Reading Comprehensions Lessons for Kindergarten and First Grade. Just Print and TEACH! Here are a few things we know about teachers. They want the absolute BEST for their students. They want to employ "Best Practices" in their classrooms. They. Are. Overwhelmed! Occasionally, they want to go home before 5 pm after school AND they would ...
9 Books that Get Kids Writing in Writers Workshop
I want to share with you some of my favorite books to help students get started with writing. I just got a new book today {EEK} so I added to my evergrowing collection! Books that tell a story with just pictures One of the things that might make kindergarteners a little reluctant to write is that somewhere along the line, they were given the impression that only words make the writer. To help build their author~ness, share some ...
5 Things You NEED to Know About Writers Workshop
So... to be honest... there are WAY more than 5 things you need to know about writers workshop. But I hope this will get you started! I have been reflecting on the questions I get asked most frequently when I do presentations on writers workshop. Here are the some of the biggies! Student Choice I will start right off by saying writing prompts for writers workshop are not considered best practices. Don't take my word for ...
Why I LOVE Kindergarten Assessments! Don’t Hate Me!
As you many know, I spend weeks and weeks each year talking to teachers about assessment. I am at times a bit timid when I say I LOVE KINDERGARTEN ASSESSMENT. When I broach this subject, I can feel the stress level rise around me. Tell me if any of this rings true for you: You spend weeks and weeks assessing only to turn around and start assessing again. You feel like you can't get to instruction because all you ...
Small Classroom? No Problem!
Do you have a small classroom? No problem! Here are a few tips to help you create literacy stations for a small classroom. Recently I received an email from someone who was looking for suggestions for her small classroom. She wanted to use a few of my permanent literacy stations, but she was in a small classroom. Her was space was at a premium... so, I was determined to come up with a solution. Small Classroom Solutions: Writing ...
10 Wordless Books to Teach Story Telling
I love using wordless books to teach story telling. These 10 wordless books that are my favorite. Before students can be asked to write a story, they must first be able to tell a story. The Why! Has this happened to you? You are so excited to start writers workshop early in the year. You dismiss your students to start to write their stories, only to hear a chorus of "I'm DONE!" 2.2 minutes later. Or later in the year, you read a ...
Tips for Organizing your Reading and Writing Rubrics
Most of the time... I am a mess. At the beginning of the year, I have everything in its place. Then after the first day of school, I am constantly looking for things. I want to give you a few tips for organizing your reading and writing rubrics now. The Anchor Charts If you have our Guiding Readers series, these anchor charts will look familiar. Deanna and I have been wanting to create skills based reading rubrics to go along with the ...
Insect Lesson Plans for Kindergarten
Insect lesson plans for kindergarten are here! Last week I was able to work with a kindergarten classroom as we immersed ourselves in all things insects! Insect Lesson Plans: Close Reading We started insect week by reading Insect Detectives by Steve Voake. This is a fantastic book! We spent our time contextualizing the vocabulary. When we discussed the fact that insects have 3 body parts, someone chimed ...
Genre Writing in Kindergarten
Genre writing in kindergarten is not as difficult as you might think. I have been working on various types of genre writing in a kindergarten classroom and we have been having a blast! Informational Text When I first started working with this class, they were just wrapping up informational text writing. We were ready to head into the writing genre of small moments. But not everyone was ready to let go of informational text. In my opinion, ...
Opinion Writing in Kindergarten
Last week I had the opportunity to work on opinion writing in kindergarten. Oh my! So much fun! Our units do introduce writing for a reason as a unit of study. However, I like to teach opinion writing spirally! As you know, kindergartners grow leaps and bounds in their transcription skills, so I want to give them plenty of opportunities to express their opinion in writing throughout the year. We started with a ...
The Giving Tree and more!
I had a fantastic week last week in kindergarten! We read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein! Then spent the week diving deep! We made connections with the text and this will friend gave herself an A+! HA! Don't mind if I do! And we did a little craft with our Giving Tree sentence study! Some were more abstract than other! Precious, just the same! You can find all of these Giving Tree ...
Sentence Writing Made Simple (AND FUN)!
In kindergarten, I am always looking for a way to make sentence writing simple! BUT... we also need to make sentence writing FUN! Naturally, we do direct sentence writing instruction through interactive writing. You can read more about how I incorporate interactive writing with our reading units HERE. We also do direct sentence writing instruction during our small group guided reading. Deanna Jump and I are in the ...
Emergent Writing Questions Answered
I loved talking about emergent writing with Greg from Kindergarten Smorgasboard the other evening. If you missed his Google Hangout, you can watch it HERE. As promised, I will try to answer some of the questions that popped up that we may not have covered or those that are worth going over again. First... I would like to address that fact that in looking back at the video, I had NO idea where to look at my computer. I will put a big ...