Teaching How to Writing in Kindergarten: Lessons, Samples & Books
- By Deedee Wills
- Updated on June 6
- 12 Comments
Table of Contents
How to Writing in Kindergarten Lessons, Books & Samples
Teaching how-to writing in kindergarten doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. In fact, it can be one of your students’ favorite writing units—especially when you pair engaging mentor texts with simple mini lessons and clear expectations. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I introduce procedural writing to kindergarten students, share some of my go-to books, and let you peek at real student samples from my classroom.
Whether you’re brand new to writers instruction or looking to refresh your approach, this post has everything you need to teach how-to writing with confidence!
Why Teaching How-To Writing Feels Tricky
Procedural writing with five-year-olds? Whew. It sounds daunting. Between supporting sentence structure, spelling strategies, and even basic handwriting, how-to writing can feel like one more thing on your already-full plate.
But here’s the good news: by this point in the year, your students are already seeing themselves as writers. After all, your young learners have been writing since the beginning of the year! They’ve likely worked on narrative writing, they know the basics of putting thoughts on paper, and they’re ready for a new challenge. Let’s build on that momentum!
Mini Lessons that Actually Work
This is our third writing unit of the year, and we use it to focus on the writing process for procedural texts. My mini lessons emphasize:
Using transition words like first, next, then, and last
Zooming in on details to make steps clear
Spelling strategies like stretching out words and using our sound/word wall
Writing short, complete simple sentences
We also revisit mechanics and anchor charts for things like:
Sentence structure
Neat handwriting (but we keep expectations realistic)
Using illustrations to support meaning
How to Writing Anchor Charts
We have some anchor charts that will focus on mechanics such as how to write short sentences. Other anchor charts will be used to remind our independent writers of some of the self-help spelling strategies we use all year long. We use these strategies when a student comes to a word they do not know how to spell. For these simple words, they will listen for the letter sounds and put down the sounds they hear. In kindergarten classrooms we invite students to include the phonetic spelling of words. Sometimes that means the words are not spelled conventionally. This “invented spelling” is like an assessment or window into each child’s orthographic knowledge. In other words, we don’t anticipate the correct spelling of words when students have not been given explicit instruction on those phonics skills yet. Sight words that have been explicitly taught are displayed in the classroom on the sound wall for students to refer to.
6 How to Mentor Texts
Books are a great way to hook kindergarten children and help them see how they can walk in the footsteps of some of their favorite authors. Mentor texts also give students the opportunity to hear new words, find sentence starters within each mentor text, and improve their oral language when you include a book discussion. You can also lift a sentence from the text to model what complete sentences look like.
As a side note: When using a mentor text for writing instruction, you will want to be sure you read the book to the whole group prior to your writer’s workshop time.
Perhaps you will want to read and discuss the book during your read aloud time so students have the opportunity to explore the meaning of the story first.
Then, when you are ready to use the book as part of your writing lesson, you will want to flip to the page you want to focus on.
As kindergarten teachers know young children can not sit on the carpet for a long time while you read the book from cover to cover AND deliver the writing lesson.
How to Make Slime by Lori Shores
What child does not like slime? This book is a perfect high-interest book that includes using simple materials and easy step-by-step instructions! That clarity of message is really helpful for writing how-to texts.
Caring for Your Lion by Tammi Sauer
This book is hilarious. The illustrations are priceless! Young kids will be able to use this book as a mentor text for caring for an animal.
Even reluctant writers will get excited to write about their pets.
This step-by-step guide is everything!
How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth by Michelle Robinson and Kate Hindley
This is another fun book for emergent writers that will model how to care for an animal. Even if it is a woolly mammoth!
How to Babysit a Grandpa by Jean Reagan
There are few of these books in this series. I love how the author included “tips” for the reader to follow. That is something we want to ensure to include in our writing mini-lessons.
Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
We included this favorite picture book in the kindergarten writing curriculum since we published them in 2011.
It is a classic and a wonderful mentor text for how to writing. Early writing skills are reinforced in the simple tasks such as making vegetable soup.
In Your Monster Won’t Go To Bed by Denise Vega
In addition to being a great mentor text for how to writing, this books is also great for discussing the author’s voice or tone. The word choice is pretty spectaculary too!
Real Kindergarten Writers at Work
There’s nothing more motivating than seeing what their classmates are doing. Here are a few samples from early November:
- A student showing how to slice an apple—with an adorable illustration of the slicer and clear steps.
- Another student focused on adding more detail with “telling more” strategies.
- Even when capitals end up in the middle of sentences (we’re working on it!), I love celebrating the effort.
We talk often about making our writing clear and neat—so the reader can follow along easily. And more importantly, we cheer each other on every step of the way.
This student example is from a little later in November. She was really focusing on “telling more.” I am proud of what she came up with.
During the time when students are composing, I do not tend to focus too much with handwriting. We can focus on letter formation during other parts of our instructional day when I am composing the message (during dictation practice.) During dictation our writing practice is centered around attaching speech to sound and the letters of the alphabet that make up those sounds.
However, children’s writing should be neat so the reader can understand their message.
I think she did a great job. We will get those capital letters out of the middle of her sentences with time. Right now, I just want to say, “Well! Done!”
WANTING MORE ON WRITING?
Since I LOVE talking about writing, I have a few (dozen) blog posts about writing.
- Writing Folder Organization FREE file!
- 5 Things You Need to Know About Writing
- Or HERE to read them all
Writing Through the Years – Print and Teach Writing Curriculum
If you are looking for help with your young writers during writing instruction, Deanna Jump and I have created detailed writing instruction units. They will help you with day-to-day lessons for those just starting out or you can use them to supplement your own writing curriculum.flowdesk
We know you are busy and having one more thing to plan may feel overwhelming. Don’t worry… we’ve got you covered.
Our writing units are so easy to follow and will save you so much time. We have taken the guesswork out of planning with a lesson sequence that will take you from the first unit to the last.
These are written for primary grades by teachers with detailed, scripted grade level appropriate lesson plans that are quick and effective. We have multiple grade levels to meet your needs.
Deedee Wills
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12 Responses
Love this post. Their writing was AWESOME!!
Thanks for sharing, Deedee.
My autumn tells me all the time "how-to" do things… I can't wait to get her to start writing them down! I seriously think I could homeschool my girls with all the wonderful resources from all of you out there in blogland! but then I think… do I really have the patience to have them at home ALL. THE. TIME. haha!
I love your writing and math units. They are very effective and certainly some of the best TPT purchases I have ever made. Tried and true! These writing samples show so much growth! I need to remember to concentrate on the objective and let things like capitals in the middle of words go. Thank you so much for the reminder! 🙂
Kid writing is the best! And, clearly, you are nailing it as a teacher!!!!
I know this is unrelated but I wanted to know if you continued with the whole brain teaching techniques.
Hi Dee Dee! I love your students' writing! I show my students them everytime you create a post as teachable tools. I have a question about your bundle. When or what unit would you specify discusses handwriting per say? I want some lessons where I can take out those capital letters in the middle of our sentences! Any recommendations. I would love to use this to supplement because we already use the Lucy Caulkins Series.
Thank you! We actually address it continuously in all parts of our day. It is a tough nut to crack for SURE!
Thank you so much for sharing, Deedee! I am from Australia and teach the same age group. It is always wonderful to see how everyone around the world teach and learn.
I totally agree! I love peeking into other classrooms!
I’m curious how your students are already able to write using spacing, punctuation, phonetic and real word spelling in November??!! Especially when kids come to you/us not knowing what a letter yet a word is. It’s the end of the 2nd qtr for us this week and my students are just beginning to write like your November students. What am I not doing? I feel like I model constantly, give them writing experiences daily, but every year it takes until at least the end of 2nd qtr before they look anything remotely like your November writings
Hi Toni! Certainly, not all of my students are writing flawlessly, but the majority are. I am doing guided reading (with guided writing), interactive writing with our Guiding Readers close reading units, and writers workshop. I also used our Read, Trace, Glue, Draw pages which offers daily opportunities to reinforce these skills as part of our morning work. I think the daily and consistent activities help.
I taught at a title school with ESL students, so I don’t think my students can in with above average skills. In fact, I had about 40% with little letter identification skills (under 15 letters) and about 60% with little sound ID (like under 5 sounds). It is a hard push all year for sure! But I love to see their progress and I celebrate every victory along the way.