Good readers are often good writers. In order to be effective and critical communicators, students need both reading and writing skill. There is a variety of work children can engage with in order to practice writing. When given freedom in writing, children think more deeply about the things they’re reading in order to incorporate those ideas into their personal writing. Writing allows children to express themselves, their thoughts, and their beliefs—just like an adult would. Teaching children to be critical consumers and communicators is in the classroom important to me in order to teach them how to be critical consumers and communicators in the world.
Evidence #1 Writing Topic Brainstorming
One on one brainstorming with students has helped me get to know the students as well as helped them understand how to brainstorm topics they could possibly write about during writing workshop. We sit and make lists of what the children are interested in and what they know a lot about. The combination of these two lists helps me as a teacher understand who my students are as well as helps my students as writers. This one-on-one brainstorming is also and opportunity for me to model things that students might need to know in their writing about a topic as well as choose mentor texts that may help students shape their own writing. An example of the lists I created with a child is:
What [NAME] Likes and Knows About
pigs
friends
family
video-games
bikes
Evidence #2 Bookmaking
Children’s writing should be meaningful and authentic. This authenticity can come from giving children the opportunity to create real products that others will read and enjoy. Yes, it is good to write for personal enjoyment, but it also feels great to write for others’ enjoyment. Giving children the opportunity to create books not only increases effort but also helps them with the whole writing process: brainstorming, drafting, editing, and publishing. Evidence #2 is an excerpt from the book-making process of a five-year old in kindergarten. It outlines my teaching and guidance of the child as she began to create her own book.
“Upon her arrival to the literacy table, I told AV we were going to make our book. The first step, I told her, was to make a list of all the things our book could be about.
“Friends” was the first thing on AV’s list. Some other things she thought we could make a book about were Marshmallow the class robot, “what everybody does, what people play, what people are making, what people are drawing or spelling, what people are building”. As AV created a list of non-fiction topics, I reminded her that we could make up our own story, too. I mentioned this idea twice, and AV did not react to my comment either time. After creating the list, I asked AV which topic she wanted to write about the most. “Friends!” she exclaimed. I asked which friends she wanted to write about, and she told me she wanted to write about all of them. I asked what she wanted to say about them, and she told me she wanted to write about who is playing together. I mentioned the idea that we could ask them questions to help get information for our book, and she decided the question we would ask them was “What are you doing?”
The next step in our book-making process was for me to ask AV how she wanted the pictures of the book to be created; I told her we could take pictures or draw pictures. “Both!” decided AV. I handed AV my camera, and we went around the room. AV was the photographer, and I was the documenter. AV would instruct her classmates to “get together” so she could take their picture and then ask them what they are doing. I would write down which center we were at, who was playing there, and what they said they were doing.
After all of our photo documentation, I sat with AV and asked her what she would like the book to look like. It was no surprise to me that she wanted the book to look like a traditional book and picked the plain, white computer paper to use as her pages. She decided that she would illustrate the photos in colored pencil. I pulled the pictures she had taken up on my camera and she used the photo for inspiration as she drew the picture. She drew the children in kitchen first. She drew her female classmate (M), but then stopped to look at me. “Is O (her male classmate) taller than M?” She asked me. “I think O is shorter,” I told her. I watch as AV draws a male classmate, a bit shorter than the female she’s already drawn on her picture.
I continued to let AV draw and I simply watched. I saw her pull a red colored pencil out of the bucket and start to draw red on the ground below the drawings of her classmates. “Remember, you’re drawing them in the kitchen,” I tell her. “Yeah. That’s the carpet,” she replies. I look over to the kitchen, and surely enough there is a red carpet on the ground in the kitchen. After finishing this drawing, AV starts another one. She looks at the photo with many students in it and decides that she only wants to draw one person from the picture, AL. AV gets out a colored pencil. After drawing and coloring AL’s face, it is time to clean up, and I tell AV that we’ll have to work on the book the next time I come to school.
The following Monday, I arrive at school and AV automatically asks me if we can work on her book. I pull the materials down from the teacher shelf and pull the photos up on my camera while AV gets the colored pencils from the art shelf. AV reminds me she has a page to continue work on, and I give her the drawing she’d been working on. “That’s AL.” she tells me as I pass the paper to her. Over the weekend, I had forgotten that she had been drawing a picture of AL, but AV remembered easily. I allow AV to work while I observe. She puts her pencil in the bucket of colored pencils and says, “Okay! Now we have to write art. How do you spell it?” Another child that is in our room in the morning spells it “A-R-T” for her. I notice AV look up at the ‘creative art’ sign next to the art shelf and check each letter as she writes them.”
Katie Fife 