Emergent Writing
Emergent writing has important behavior milestones that set up students for future success as writers. For example, after understanding the alphabet principle, children gain phonemic awareness, which is the best predictor in kindergarten for reading achievement. When students can recognize and represent all the phonemes in a word, they have accomplished a major milestone in emergent writing.
When I conduct writing lessons, I make sure that students must be taught from the beginning to stretch out words during drafting to capture all the sounds instead of merely telling students a specific spelling. I expect all my students to find words on "word walls" for site words that have already been taught. This gives students tools that can help them find various spellings and will also help to prevent students from falling back on "safe words" when writing.
Just as literacy centers are beneficial in teaching reading, writing workshops and centers are just as important for teaching writing. Group activities or individual work can include free-writes, themed writing, journals, letters, responsive entries, and much more. Additionally, connected text is real writing. As a teacher I cannot simply give copying exercises to students. Students must emerge as writers by practicing phonemic awareness, phonics, etc. I can explain to students that writing can take many forms and can look like pictures, squiggles, letters, words, and full sentences. With this support and continued practice, students will have the tools necessary for writing with confidence, expression, and accuracy.
Preletter stage: Directionality, Right to Left, Top to Bottom, Marks represetnts words, develop naturally
Random Letter Making Stage: Student doe not match letters to the sounds, this stage they work on matching letters with sounds.
Examples: LHHAAKKLL
Early Phonemic Stage: Student develops idea of writing, begins to hear sounds and match sounds.
Example: LFNT (elephant)
When I conduct writing lessons, I make sure that students must be taught from the beginning to stretch out words during drafting to capture all the sounds instead of merely telling students a specific spelling. I expect all my students to find words on "word walls" for site words that have already been taught. This gives students tools that can help them find various spellings and will also help to prevent students from falling back on "safe words" when writing.
Just as literacy centers are beneficial in teaching reading, writing workshops and centers are just as important for teaching writing. Group activities or individual work can include free-writes, themed writing, journals, letters, responsive entries, and much more. Additionally, connected text is real writing. As a teacher I cannot simply give copying exercises to students. Students must emerge as writers by practicing phonemic awareness, phonics, etc. I can explain to students that writing can take many forms and can look like pictures, squiggles, letters, words, and full sentences. With this support and continued practice, students will have the tools necessary for writing with confidence, expression, and accuracy.
Preletter stage: Directionality, Right to Left, Top to Bottom, Marks represetnts words, develop naturally
Random Letter Making Stage: Student doe not match letters to the sounds, this stage they work on matching letters with sounds.
Examples: LHHAAKKLL
Early Phonemic Stage: Student develops idea of writing, begins to hear sounds and match sounds.
Example: LFNT (elephant)