Beginning Writers

I always struggle with writing at the beginning of the year.  I want my kiddos to progress more quickly than they do.  I forget what beginning of the year looks like sometimes.

After attending a couple sessions about Writers Workshop at I Teach K, I decided to start with working on some good illustrations.  Over the summer, I picked up a packet on directed drawing.  There is one picture for each letter of the alphabet.  I also picked up a handwriting set with hidden pictures.  Best investments!

My kiddos are loving writing time!  Some of their stamina gets lost once they get to the coloring part, but they are doing a great job.  We start out with the drawing "lesson" for the day.  I model on the SMARTboard how to draw the picture following the directions at the top of the page.  Students then go to their seats and complete their own drawing.  This week I started asking them to try to write a word to tell about their picture.  Many of them chose a color word to describe their picture.  I'm ok with that at this point because we have been focusing on our color words.  A few have been a little more "adventurous" and have been attempting describing words or labels.

When their directed drawing pictures are finished, they turn to the back and practice writing the upper and lowercase letters.  After writing the letters, they circle their best one.  Finally, they use their color word knowledge to color the mystery picture.