Teaching writing in kindergarten is exhausting. In a perfect world, students are sitting and quietly writing while you walk around, provide positive reinforcement, encouragement, and have a few “teachable moments.”
The Reality
In reality, writing time in kindergarten looks a lot like this. You are trying to help a student stretch out the sounds s/he hears in a word while 5 other students are surrounding you, all asking you their questions at the same time. Another group of students is sword fighting with their pencils because they’re not even sure what they’re supposed to be doing, and students across the room are calling your name saying, “I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT!” And there…quietly amongst the chaos, are a few students trying their best to draw their picture and write a sentence to match, just like you modeled every day for the last week.
Does this sound a little bit like your classroom? If it does, rest assured, because teaching writing in kindergarten is HARD work. And not hard like “how am I going to run 2 miles at the gym” hard, but hard like “how am I going to help all 25 of my students at the same time” hard. Yeah, impossible.
I was being stretched so thin at writing time that I couldn’t actually be helpful to anyone. Every time I went to help a student, I wound up spending my time helping them re-do the work from the day before when they weren’t working with me.
The Solution
It wasn’t realistic for me to see all of my kids at the same time… or so I thought! Then I realized that when my kids needed help, I was often prompting them to use a resource that we had in the room… Not sure what letter makes that sound? Look at the alphabet strip. Need to spell a sight word? Go look at the word wall. Don’t remember how to write that letter? Look at the letters on the wall.
I started giving my kids their own “writing offices” to use that had all of these resources right in front of them so they could access them whenever they needed to.
Of course there were still things that they needed my help with, but most of their questions could be answered right there with their writing offices. I was finally free to pull groups of students to help them with their writing, and wasn’t constantly running around and putting out fires.
If your writing time has you feeling like you’re being pulled in a million different directions, consider making mini versions of things in your classroom that can help your students problem solve, like your alphabet strip and your word wall. Give these resources to students to keep in their writing folder so they can access them when they need to.
And if you don’t have the time, I’ve already done the work for you! Click here to check out my independent writing offices resource to just print, laminate, and give to your students!
