Reading and Writing with Little ones

We had an awesome speaker at our HS meeting. Sonia is a dynamic speaker who is passionate about instructing others on early childhood literacy. I gleaned a lot of useful ideas from her that I will attempt to share with you using Sonia‘s handouts and my memory.

Pre-school - Kindergarten: Children’s scribbles, drawings and inventive spellings are the beginnings of written communication. Ways to encourage these activities are through child dictated writing. For example, after reading a book to your child have your child re-tell the story in his/her own words or retell the story and make it better. After visiting the park, friends, or field trip encourage your child to tell you about their experiences. Let them see you write down their words exactly as they dictate them. Another example is to write during dramatic play. Fill out the doctor’s/nurses charts or pretend you’re a waitress and write the customer’s order. This helps if they watch you role play first. Keep a daily journal. Label their drawings as the child describes what they’ve drawn. Display their drawings where they can see and read them. Encourage them to share their drawings and writing with others. Keep a supply of materials for writing: Alphabet chart, variety of paper, writing tools, alphabet stamps, stencils.

K through 3
The main idea I brought home from this discussion was to be a model. If we expect our kids to write, then get a pencil and paper and write some yourself. The writing process she described will help us all!

Prewriting -- brainstorm areas to cover from your main idea.

Compose -- let the ideas flow, don’t worry about spelling and mechanics at this stage.

Revise -- by 2nd grade encourage your child to add to the story. A suggestion here is to copy their work,
cut the paragraph/sentence in half then add to it and paste it together to keep re-writing to a minimum.

Edit -- During this step encourage children to examine their work for mechanical problems, especially spelling errors.

Publish -- Share work with others (with permission). www.studentreasures.com is a website to explore for publishing your child’s work .

Keep writing fun. Give positive praise on the process, not the product.. Provide meaningful opportunities for children to write. If they’re passionate about the topic, they will write with passion.

I truly enjoyed Sonia’s presentation. I hope she will be invited back to speak on spelling!