Spring Semester Writer's Workshop for Emergent, Early, and Transitional Writers

In this introductory writing course we will be establishing trust, confidence, routines, and expectations as we embark on our writing journey together. I believe that participation and risk taking are essential for helping little learners develop a passion and interest in the essential skill of writing. This class will be an exciting and fun time of each day where mistakes are encouraged and the expectation is that students try their best. My most important goal is that students pick up writing tools and write each and every day. 

Students will choose to write about a topic that is of interest to them. Students will learn to write by writing. I will model writing, we will do shared writing together, independent writing, and use published picture books as mentor texts. 

Each time we meet students will share a piece of writing that they completed prior to coming to class, I will  teach a short mini-lesson (mentor text, shared writing, modeling examples of good writing, demonstrating partnering skills), we will learn about the prewriting process and each child will share what they will be writing that day, then students will use the remainder of the time to write. When time allows, we will reflect on the writing of our peers by "noticing and naming" writing qualities that they used. 

January- Writing Personal Narratives
- Week 1- Writing is just telling on paper; establishing parts and procedures for Writer's workshop; Self-assess writing
- Week 2- Explore Narrative Stories, Generate Ideas
- Week 3- Make Your Story Come Alive
- Week 4- Illustrative Study, Adding Speech Bubbles
- Week 5- Writer's Checklist and Celebration
February- How-To Writing
- Week 6- Explore Procedural Texts, Generate Ideas
- Week 7- Make your pictures and words clear, add labels
- Week 8- Explore recipes
- Week 9- Writer's Checklist and Celebration
March- Writing for a Reason
- Week 10- Explore Point of View, Generate Ideas
- Week 11-Writing a Letter
- Week 12- Adding Writer's Voice, Celebration

Background knowledge 
The learners need to be familiar with letters and most letter sounds.  At the beginning, their writing may be one or two phonetic words.  We will work up to writing a letter for each sound we hear and eventually they will be writing complete sentences.  For the ones that can write a complete sentence, we will work on adding details.  They do not need to know how to spell the words correctly.  Phonetic spelling is encouraged because it gives me, as the teacher, great insight into where each student is in their writing development.

This class is geared toward PreK students who have exhibited an interest in telling stories through drawing or writing, Kindergarten, First grade, and Second grade students but all will be welcomed if they are just learning the writing process or feel they may benefit from developmental writing instruction. 

The homework for this course is independent writing and will take 5-20 minutes a day to complete.  We will be working to increase our writing stamina and keeping track of our growth throughout the course.