Narrative Post-Prompt

With soft music playing in the background, our students took 45 minutes today to complete their last prompt piece of the year, this time a small moment narrative. Most of these students we have had for two years. Some came in drawing detailed pictures with the ability to orally tell us about the pictures. At most, they could write a few words, like love, mom, dad and their name. A few came only able to scribble.

Lucky for us (and for them!), Lucy Calkins and Teacher's College, introduced their new writing units as we began kindergarten with this group. We eagerly embraced the new units the day they were in our building. We are so fortunate to have a Reading Coach, Melanie Holtsman, in our building that has been steeped in Lucy's work for years and is an often participant in the summer professional development offered by Teachers College, so we had help along the way as we implemented. We had discussions and saw demo lessons.  This is not the adopted writing curriculum for our county, so we are so fortunate to have a Principal with vision that can see the value and find the money to offer this curriculum to our students.  We were able to teach three of the units before kindergarten came to a close last year and then have been actively engaged with the four first grade units all of this year.

We can see the difference it is making in our youngest writers and today the students will produce this final on-demand piece. As I walked around, I could see that students were going back, rereading and editing.  They had their personal word wall outs to check words, and you could see them stretching words that were unfamiliar.  They were going back to check punctuation, and you could see them erasing and adding capitals. But even more than the conventions, I could see that they were adding dialogue (part of the second grade standard for narrative).  They were adding details to their drawings, speech bubbles and labels.  The best thing is that almost without exception, they worked solidly, without a sound, totally engaged for the entire 45 minutes!  Writing stamina is simply a way of life! As we took the booklets up, I wanted to stop right there and read every one!  We can't wait to see what they have written!

The First Bend

Today we came to the first "bend" in our narrative writing unit. We have been using the new units of Study from Teachers' College.  After a few weeks of writing small moment stories, the children used a red pen to edit one of their finished pieces. And then, like a museum, the students put out their work and invited their friends to stop by and read their completed story.

After looking at each other's work, the students compared their own baseline pieces to their finished piece and discovered that they has really grown as writers. A few years ago I would never have imagined that first graders could do this type of peer review or self-assessment but today, they did! Thank you, Lucy!

Narrative: Is this really Kindergarten?

I have been watching a series of lessons on narrative writing in a Kindergarten classroom that have just blown me away!  Below is an example of one student's narrative story.  She has worked on this one story for a couple of weeks - an accomplishment itself for such a young writer! The red indicates where she used a red pen to edit her story.

It was a really chilly (red pen edited from the word cold) in my glass room.  I was freezing. Brrrrr.

Mom didn't know what was wrong with Shadow. Shadow was eating.  Hmmmm.  Shadow was eating - crunch - mulch with germs in there.  I was frightened.  I screamed on top of my lungs, "MOM!"

I didn't know what to do.  Ahaaaaaa.  Mom got an idea.  Mom went outside - creak - and mom took my hula hoop - chch - and shook the hula hoop at Shadow and Shadow ran away from the mulch.  Shadow is a yellow lab.

Make sure you watch your dog if you have mulch because maybe your dog will eat your mulch up.  I hope you learned a lesson.

I hope you can see all the lessons that were taught that are evidenced in this student's work.  First of all, children were taught to think of a "story" with a main character, a setting and then a problem and a solution  Then they learned to think through the beginning, middle, and end of their story by telling the story over their fingers (a Lucy Calkins technique).  They started with the characters and the setting in the beginning of their story, as you can clearly see in this work (Shadow is the main character and the author is in her glass room - the Florida Room on the back of her house.)  The students then thought about a problem with the main character and finally a solution.  After they had written the beginning, middle and end, they were taught to develop a closing for the story instead of the typical kindergarten closing of "The End."  This work clearly shows that closing by telling the reading to watch dogs eating mulch and hoping the reader learned a lesson!  Students were taught to make sure that their pictures matched their words and in these pictures the student has even labeled  much of her work. 

But this teacher took it even further.  This is kindergarten and this child is using a red pen to edit her work!  Oh my!  One of the extension lessons was about choosing extraordinary words to replace ordinary words ( a vocabulary in synonyms!)  This was actually a series of lessons where students chose words and then brainstormed some extraordinary words they could use in small groups.  This work was transferred to a word wall that students were taught to use.

The teacher also took a group of six of her top flyers and taught them to use the Thesaurus on the Microsoft Word program so that as she taught the class to replace words using their own imaginations and the word wall, she taught this small group to replace words using the Thesaurus - which is what this student did with the word "cold" changing it to chilly.  She set up six laptops at the back of the room for these students to use.  This is a skill that these students will use for the rest of their writing careers!

The next series of lessons were on writing craft, onomatopoeia.  You can easily see how this child was able to add in these sound words with her red pen!

To continually assess the work the teacher used a rubric as she worked through each part of the narrative standard. She worked with the students to write each element, adding them one at a time, deciding with the students what would be a 1-2-3 for each part of the rubric. (S on the rebric stands for strategies which were the extention lessons.)

The children self-assessed by dropping a popsicle stick in one of the 1-2-3 buckets at the end of each element lesson.  The amazing thing is that as they dropped the popsicle stick in a 1 or 2 most of them were each able to talk about what they needed to move their stick to the next number point.

What is astounding about this unit of work is that the teacher had 18 of her 35 students exceed the class rubric (which far exceeded the kindergarten standard for narrative writing) by forming a story with a beginning, middle and end and by editing their work to include both extraordinary words and onomatopoeia!  She actually pushed her student well past the standard simply because she had so many students ready for the enrichment! WOW!

Update:  I had a very angry e-mail from a reader after this post that told me to quit posting writing that obviously a parent had done!  I had to laugh, realizing how little some teachers expect from their kindergartners!

Rubric with Response to Literature

As we begin to complete our written responses to Kevin Henkes' books to go in our portfolios around our Kevin Henkes Author Study, the children are given a rubric to help them decide when "good is good enough." We want them to be able to look at their own work and then look at the expectations for a response and begin to work on the revision process by themselves and during conferences with the teacher. We also want them to begin to internalize some of the editing techniques that we have taught. Revising and editing are not always easy for a first grader! Above is our Response Rubric and below Dazha's response to Kevin Henkes' Wemberly Worried with revision and editing comments in red. Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes

Have you ever been worried a lot? If you have, you will know how Wemberly Worried was feeling when she was worried.

This first page and the last page were actually added after the retelling was complete. As Dazha went back and compared her work to the rubric, she realized that she had not included an opening to hook her reader, a connection (which was optional) and a closing, so she added them as the last pieces of her response.In the beginning Wemberly Worried was worried about everything. She was unique because she worried a lot. She worried about big things, little things, and things in between. Wemberly worried in the morning. She worried at night. And she worried throughout the day. And she worried about her doll Petal.

The second sheet is actually the back of the first sheet which shows that Dazha used a technique for inserting information of putting a star on the front page where the insertion is to take place and then writing the information on the back of the page. In this case, Dasha wanted to get extra credit for using one of the vocabulary words, "unique," that we had been studying as part of this Kevin Henkes Author Study, so she added it during the revision process!In the middle she went to school and was worried but she made a friend that had a stuffed animal just like her. They played with each other.At the end Mrs. Peachum said, "Come back tomorrow!" Then Wemberly said, "Don't worry. I'll come back tomorrow." And when she got home Wemberly, her mom and dad danced around in a circle.

Remember when I told you that have you ever been worried a lot? Well I have. When my mom goes in the car washer I get scared, but things come our okay. If you have things that you were worried about they will come out okay.

When Dazha came to this writing conference she wanted to close her response with a connection which she had written, "When my mom..." but when she reread her closing she decided that she wanted it to connect back to the beginning so she added the first sentence on this page and then used the insertion editing mark to add in the middle of the last sentence.

Dazha has learned so much during this unit. She began with the retelling (which was easy for her) of a beginning with the characters, setting and problem and then moved to the middle with its events and then finally the ending which solves the problem. Then she used her rubric to identify the missing parts of her response and added an engaging beginning and a closing to wrap up the piece. She also showed that she had learned some techniques for inserting information by using a star and writing information to be added on the back of the paper and also by using the insertion editing mark to add right above the writing. She even thought about adding a connection which was optional and a vocabulary word for extra credit! Look out Dazha - I might be standing in line one day getting your autograph after you publish your first book!

Writing in the New Year

As we came back to school in 2010, the children began writing about their holiday memories. Today as I walked through one of the kindergarten classrooms Lexie was sharing her original piece in a closing meeting of the Writers' Workshop. (She's quite an artist, don't you think?)

Presents overflowed the tree and he brought us candy in our stockings and he brought us Pez and a giant marshmallow.

The mini-lessons for this first week back have been about revising work by adding an interesting and engaging beginning to your small moment, as seen in the charts to the left. The children have been adding examples of some of their great beginnings to the charts.

So today, after Lexie finished reading her original piece, she pulled out a second piece, the piece she had written today, which included her revision - the addition of a new, delightful beginning (below) to her story.
Once upon a Christmas night, I heard a bang! and bells. I sprang from my bed at the stairs. My family was waiting for me. When I went down Santa I saw.

Can't wait to see what her ending looks like!

Writing Partners

As children begin to write their small moments each day they learn new routines. The chart below is one of those new routines that establishes long-term writing partnerships!

1. After the mini-lesson each student finds her name at a place at the table. Teachers have pre-decided which students will work together matching their ability and paying attention to students that will work well together.

2. Students have a few minutes of quiet time where they envision their story. They are told to imagine their small moment in pictures in their mind, like they are seeing a movie. They are visualizing.

3. Next the students choose the type of paper that they want to use. Some students prefer booklets while others choose several sheets of paper with room for pictures and room for words.

4. "Touch and tell." Touch and tell means that each child is going to have a turn telling her story orally. The children choose who gets to go first and have learned several strategies for making that choice. The first child tells her story. She touches each page as she tells what is going to be on that page. Her partner listens.

5. When the first child finishes telling her story, the listening partner gives her some suggestions. Right now the suggestions are very surface such as, "Make sure to draw pictures that match your words," but as the children continue to talk to their long term partner, the feedback will begin to have depth as they begin to know more about each other. After the first partner finishes telling her story and getting feedback, the partners reverse roles.

6. When both partners have practiced telling their story and have gotten feedback, they are ready to put the stories on paper. Children have had mini-lessons on using the date stamp, on stretching words that they do not know how to spell, on where to find color words on the color word chart, on where to find children's names and sight words on the Word Wall, on how to use the alphabet chart on the back of their writing folder if they need to know what a letter looks like, on how to "sketch" so they don't spend all of their time on their drawing, on crossing out if they make a mistake, and on not throwing stories away. They know that great authors call mistakes, revision. All of these mini-lessons come together as these authors write about their young lives.

Now this is Writers' Workshop!