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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.2
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.2.A
Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.2.B
Recognize and name end punctuation.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.2.C
Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.K.2.D
Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.4
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on kindergarten reading and content.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.4.a
Identify new meanings for familiar words and apply them accurately (e.g., knowing duck is a bird and learning the verb to duck).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.5
With guidance and support from adults, explore word relationships and nuances in word meanings.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.5.a
Sort common objects into categories (e.g., shapes, foods) to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.5.b
Demonstrate understanding of frequently occurring verbs and adjectives by relating them to their opposites (antonyms).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.5.c
Identify real-life connections between words and their use (e.g., note places at school that are colorful).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.6
Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.

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English Language Arts Standards " Language " Kindergarten

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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on kindergarten reading and content.

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Writing Assessments in Kindergarten. This blog post contains student writing samples that I used to assess students writing progress across the writing continuum. It compares October kindergarten writing samples with December kindergarten writing samples. These samples were collected during our kindergarten writers workshop time.

Kindergarten Writing Assessments

This week we gave our district's writing assessment. Each kindergarten class performs the same assessment in the same manner.

Our prompt was, "Write about something you like to do in the snow". Teachers do not confer with students during this assessment and we do not give a writing mini-lesson before the assessment. This is an independent task. Students are permitted to use classroom resources like our word walls or the writing center.

The October sample was also an assessment (same hands-off rules applied).

As a district, we will score our student's work together during a PD day. However, I included what I anticipate their score to be.

NOTE: These images are small, but if you click on them, you will get a bigger image and you will be able to read the kid's handwriting.

Analysis of Writing Sample 1

This writing sample was determined to be proficient.

Analysis of Writing Sample 2

This writing sample was determined to be basic.

Analysis of Writing Sample 3

This writing sample was determined to be advanced.

Analysis of Writing Sample 4

This writing sample was determined to be advanced.

Classroom Sample

I think these samples are pretty indicative of my class population. I am not convinced our scoring guide for 2011 was rigorous enough. As a district, we are committed to not making any changes. Because this was a district scoring guide, I am not permitted to share it.

Anchor Chart for Book Making

On another note, during writer's workshop we co-created this anchor chart that was very helpful with our book writing. This helps students self-monitor and check when they they think they are done.

UPDATE since 2011!

WANTING MORE ON WRITING?

Since I LOVE talking about writing, I have a few (dozen) blog posts about writing.

LOOKING FOR PRINT AND TEACH WRITING LESSONS?

Deanna Jump and I have created simple, yet powerful daily lesson plans to teach writers workshop. We have taken the guesswork out of your instruction.

Each unit is carefully planned out.

And it walks you through each day's lesson.

You can shop our writing curriculum below:

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Writing Assessment in Kindergarten. Student writing samples used to assess students writing progress across the writing continuum. This blog post compares October kindergarten writing samples with December kindergarten writing samples. These samples were collected during our kindergarten writers workshop time.

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Elkonin Box activity for early recognition of segmenting phonemes

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Elkonin Box activity for early recognition of segmenting phonemes

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This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
PS PK K 1 2 3 *
(This post contains affiliate links.)
Elkonin boxes are a wonderful tool to help kids learn phonological awareness!

Have you heard of Elkonin boxes? These simple tools help kids build phonological awareness by helping them divide words into their individual phonemes.

Some quick vocabulary review:

phonological awareness - the ability to hear differences in the ways words sound. If children have phonological awareness, they can identify beginning sounds, count syllables, and rhyme.

phonemes - the individual sounds within a word. For example, "rake" has four letters but only three sounds - /r/,/ā/,/k/.

Read it: 21 Games to Develop Phonological Awareness

Elkonin boxes help kids hear phonemes. They're a fantastic way to develop an important pre-reading skill.

Here's how they work!

Print and cut apart the Elkonin boxes. ( Laminate for durability if desired.) Then grab small manipulatives that are fun to use. We used these colorful glass gems.

Place a card in front of your child. Start with a simple one that has only two boxes.

'Today we're going to say the picture on each card and listen for the sounds in each word. We're going to put one gem in a box each time we hear a sound. Let's start with this first one. What picture do you see?"

"Bee."

"Right. So when we say the word bee and separate it into its sounds, it sounds like this: /b/ /eee/. I can put one gem here for /b/ and one gem here for /eee/. Can you point to each gem as I say the sounds again? /b/ /eeee/."

Continue the activity with the other words that have just two phonemes. /b/ /ō/.

Move to words with three phonemes if your child is ready. /m/ /oo/ /n/

Finish with the words that have four phonemes. Always remember that we're counting the sounds we hear, not the letters we'd spell. Elkonin boxes are an oral activity. /k/ /l/ /o/ /k/

I pulled these cards out for my Four, who knows his letters very well (thanks to our letter of the week activities), understands concept of word (because of our work with voice to print cards), and is even starting to read simple sight word books.

But.
Another way to use Elkonin boxes
These were hard for him! It surprised me. He wasn't able to isolate the sounds in each word, but he was willing to watch me do the activity and point to each sound as I named it. We'll do the activity that way for now, and I think that one day soon he'll be ready to try it himself.
Read it: Hear beginning, middle, and ending sounds with these clip cards

Name the picture and a particular sound. For example, say the word "moon" and tell your child to show where he'd mark the sound "/n/". He should put a gem in the last box on the card.

Grab your free cards below!

P.S. The download contains cards with images AND with clip art (in both color and black and white). Make sure you mark the pages you want to print so you don't waste ink.

p. 3-11 (real images)

p. 12-20 (color clip art)

p. 21-29 (black & white clip art)

BUILD A STRONG READING FOUNDATION

Watch the member workshop!

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This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. PS PK K 1 2 3 * (This post contains affiliate links.) Elkonin boxes are a wonderful tool to help kids learn phonological awareness! Have you heard of Elkonin boxes?

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Writing Center | Kindergarten and 1st grade MARCH

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Writing Center | Kindergarten and 1st grade! This writing center offers resources for MARCH! Help your students work independently with these monthly themed writing centers / writing work station. You can see each month by clicking on the individual units.How to use this writing center:This resource...

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5 Ways to Build Confidence in Beginning Writers

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Today I want to talk to you about ways we can encourage our beginning writers to have confidence in themselves and their skills! If your kids are like mine, you have some that are willing to jump in with both feet and test out the writing waters and some that are not. Every year, I have some that are very fearful to ta

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Build and Write: Hands-on Phonics Activities

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Build and Write Phonics Cards Do you need hands-on phonics activities that students can complete independently and develops their foundational skills AND meets their instructional needs? Well, I have the perfect small group activity for you! Build and Write: Phonics Cards is a hands-on, phonics activity for students th

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Activity for ages 3 to 5. Elkonin sound boxes are a great way to build phonemic awareness with new readers because they encourage children to focus on one sound at a time. Print off your set below and grab your stash of magnetic letters for some engaging, hands-on learning! Getting Ready Prepping the sound boxes …

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These dictation sentences are the perfect writing warm-up. This quick writing activity will hold students accountable for using proper conventions. You also have the option of focusing in on a specific phonics pattern, which emphasizes transfer between what you're learning in phonics that week to th...

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Sounding It Out - 52 FREE Activity Cards

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Sounding It Out is a universal concept when teaching a child how to read and spell. These activity cards make the activity so much more fun!!

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5 Things Teachers Can Do to Improve Learning for ELL students

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5 Things Teachers Can Do to Improve Learning for ELL students

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It is resolution season! In January we reflect on past joys and concerns from the previous year, and take the opportunity to make a resolution that will improve our lives in the New Year. Of course, we all know that resolutions are hard to keep and can often be unrealistic. The expert advice I've received on resolutions (mostly advice from women's magazines) states that you are more likely to be successful if your goal is specific and measurable. So, instead of saying, "I want to save more money" you might say, "I want to save enough money each month so that I can buy a new computer in August."

Teachers are always looking for ways to improve in the classroom; to assist with any of your New Year's resolutions that relate to instruction, I will recommend five specific and measurable actions you can implement to assist ELL learning in 2009. To increase the likelihood of success and continuity, I suggest teachers pick one item and stick to it for the rest of the year. It is better to do one thing consistently and do it well than to try to do all five and possibly lose focus and motivation, becoming a Jack of all trades and master of none. I also suggest teachers employ the "support group" method to ensure success and use the chosen strategy as a topic for a professional learning community. Sharing successes and challenges with colleagues will help you all grow professionally, and more students will benefit academically.

All of the following strategies have been featured on the Colorín Colorado website, and the Resource section has links to helpful articles and websites for further support. When choosing an instructional strategy, frame it as a specific and measurable goal and display it next to your desk to remind you of what you want to accomplish.

2. Explicitly teach English language vocabulary and structures.
Specific and measurable resolution: I will identify, teach, and post key academic vocabulary and structures for one content lesson each day.
In, "What Teachers Need to Know about Language" by Lily Wong Fillmore and Catherine Snow, the authors state that:

Teachers play a critical role in supporting language development. Beyond teaching children to read and write in school, they need to help children learn and use aspects of language associated with the academic discourse of the various school subjects. They need to help them become more aware of how language functions in various modes of communication across the curriculum. They need to understand how language works well enough to select materials that will help expand their students' linguistic horizons and to plan instructional activities that give students opportunities to use the new forms and modes of expression to which they are being exposed. Teachers need to understand how to design the classroom language environment so as to optimize language and literacy learning and to avoid linguistic obstacles to content area learning (Wong Fillmore & Snow, p. 7).

The need to understand English language structures and language acquisition theory is increasingly important as the number of ELLs increases in classrooms. However, very few teachers have had the formal training required to be prepared to identify and teach the English vocabulary and structures found in specific content areas. When I first started teaching ESL, my students knew way more about grammar than I did. I joked with them, "I don't know English; I just speak it."

Content teachers can begin by reviewing a content area lesson and identifying not just the vocabulary that every student needs to know, but other vocabulary words and grammar structures that ELL students may not be familiar with. See the Hotlinks section for resources on how to provide explicit instruction on English vocabulary and structures.

I hope that this list of "Five Things" will be helpful as you set academic goals for the rest of the year. You may find, of course, that if you create your own they will be more meaningful, and you're more likely to stick with your plan. I hope you will be able to pick at least one thing and give it a try. The other thing I have learned from the resolution experts at women's magazines is that baby steps are better than no steps at all. So give it a try and go easy on yourself if it doesn't go as well as planned or if you get busy and don't keep up as well as you'd like. The most important thing is that you explore an instructional area that you know will improve the academic achievement of ELLs, and commit yourself to continued improvement in 2009. Happy Teaching in the New Year!

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Five Things Teachers Can Do to Improve Learning for ELLs in the New Year

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It is resolution season! In January we reflect on past joys and concerns from the previous year, and take the opportunity to make a resolution that will improve our lives in the New Year. Of course, we all know that resolutions are hard to keep and can often be unrealistic.

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Helping students with special needs learn to write

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Helping students with special needs learn to write

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Written expression is a huge part of life inside and outside the classroom. When students with disabilities learn to write, type, and/or select appropriate communicative responses, it opens the door to greater opportunities to reach their learning goals, communicate their preferences, and establish rapport with the people around them.

Today's post shares 7 important steps to consider when designing programs for teaching written expression to students with disabilities. These are excerpted and adapted from the excellent guidebook More Language Arts, Math, and Science for Students with Severe Disabilities, edited by Diane M. Browder and Fred Spooner.

Assess Students' Current Repertoire

Which words and communicative responses does the student already use? Before you select a student's instructional targets, start by determining his or her current writing and communication repertoires through formal and standardized assessments. An assessment of communicative functioning should target:

Speaker skills, or expressive skills: communication skills that affect the behaviors of others

Listener skills, or receptive skills: communication skills that involve responding to the words of others

To help you easily determine instruction objectives, you might also use a curriculum-based assessment tool that uncovers information about a broad array of skills relevant to writing-such as a student's fine motor skills, communication, visual discrimination, and imitation.

Make Writing Meaningful

Focusing on the mechanics of writing will often prevent a student from understanding and accomplishing the purpose of writing. Think beyond the traditional ways students have learned to write, and focus on making writing meaningful.

Ask what's important and potentially reinforcing to students, and use the answers as engaging topics for written narratives. Try presenting pictures of characters from a book and asking the student, "Whom would you like to write about?" Let the student select their three most preferred characters to focus on during writing instruction.

Teach students to request desired objects by exchanging pre-written words for preferred items. For example, you might instruct a student to get a cookie by handing the written word cookie to a partner. Once the student masters this, he or she can be taught to combine the written words big and cookie to communicate a desire for a larger cookie. This is a powerful way to give students direct control over their environment as they learn the functional use of written words. As a bonus, it allows students to use pre-written words without having to learn more complex fine motor and cognitive skills first.

Deliver reinforcement right away. When your student displays any type of writing or prewriting behavior-holding a crayon, scribbling, pressing keys on a computer, drawing on a SMART Board-follow it up with immediate praise and reinforcement. This will hopefully increase the frequency of their writing behavior and improve the fine motor skills they need for handwriting or keyboarding.

Teach students how to copy words from labels, books, and other sources. Provide lists of words your students can copy from to increase their engagement in academics and leisure activities. For example, you can provide a list of words students can copy into search engines to access educational content for school (solar system, dinosaurs, U.S. presidents, etc.) and locate information on hobbies (computer games, stamps, scrapbooking). Once you teach students this skill, they can also use the print within their environment to develop their spelling proficiency. A student who can't remember how to spell the word "milk," for instance, can consult a milk carton for a model of the word.

When learning to copy words, some students may need assistive technology to circumvent weaknesses in fine motor skills. You may need to use adapted keyboards (alphabetical, onehanded, large print), AAC selection displays, and/or scanning technology for students who have physical disabilities that affect their gross and fine motor functioning.

Once students learn to copy other words, they can progress to spelling words after hearing them spoken. Try these strategies to boost emerging spelling skills:

Backward chaining strategy. Present the spoken word and then provide a written model for the student to trace. Fade the written model by incrementally removing the letters in the word from the last letter to the first.

Computer-assisted instruction. Show the student a word/picture combination, and then ask him to select letters from a computer-based array to construct the word shown.

Cover, copy, compare (CCC) technique. Give the student a piece of paper divided into four columns. The first column contains the targeted spelling word. The student copies the word and writes it in the second column. Then the student folds the first column on the left toward the center (covering the second column) and writes the word from memory in the third column. The student unfolds the paper and compares, and if she's made an error, she copies the word three times in the final column.

Video models. Record a video of yourself writing new words on a chalkboard, and display the video on a computer while students type or write the words. Insert a pause in the video to allow the student time to copy the word. Then insert a blank screen, during which the student writes the word from memory, and show the original model once more. (Share the videos with parents to help them support their child in practicing writing skills outside the classroom.)

Encourage Sentence Construction

Begin instruction by teaching students to write, type, or select words when presented with a picture or object.

Once students have acquired a small word-to-picture repertoire of about 50 words, start using sentence starters ("I see a _____," "The boy is ______") to expand the length of these responses.

Fade the sentence starters gradually so that students are independently constructing sentences.

Once students can write a single sentence about a picture, encourage them to write multiple sentences about a picture. Present pictures containing a variety of stimuli and highlight features of the picture to help students identify content in which to describe or label. These prompts can then be faded to ensure students can choose to write about the stimuli that they deem important.

Fade the use of pictures so that students can eventually write about things they have learned. Slowly increase the amount of time between the observation of the picture and the writing response. This fading is important, since students will rarely be asked to write about things immediately present in their environment.

Note: If students have not acquired sufficient spelling skills to write sentences, then they may require the use of selection-based writing software in which words or combinations of words are presented within arrays on a computer screen.
Teach Narrative Writing

Students who can engage in narrative writing are able to articulate what they know and share their perspective on the world around them. Carefully plan instructional activities to help students acquire narrative writing skills:

Begin by teaching students to write simple paragraphs. Show them that a paragraph names a topic and then tells more about that topic.

Teach students to apply this rule when writing a paragraph about a picture. Help the student to identify the content of a topic sentence by highlighting a key element within the picture.

Present a visual organizer and show the student how to use it during planning and while writing his or her paragraphs.

To give students a model for simple storytelling, show them a series of pictured events or video recordings of real-life events (e.g., child plays ball, child falls down, child cries). You might also give students a series of pictures to sequence themselves before they write a story.

Once students can write or construct a paragraph about a picture or other visual aid, fade the use of visual supports.

Provide Editing and Revision Instruction

You can help improve the quality and clarity of student writing by prompting them to check their own work. For example:

After teaching a student to write simple sentences, instruct the student to identify whether he or she has included both a person or a thing and something more about the subject.

Direct the student to look for ending punctuation.

Ask students to identify missing elements in their stories. Have them practice by presenting a variety of examples and having the student record the presence or absence of the elements.

Teach students to use checklists to increase the inclusion of critical elements during writing activities.

Show students how to graph their use of writing elements and monitor their own progress, so they can become more independent and effective writers.

Writing instruction for students with disabilities is a complex process that must be carefully and deliberately planned. These were just a few suggestions to get you started. For more guidance-and practical information on how to teach other academic content areas to students with developmental disabilities-check out More Language Arts, Math, and Science for Students with Severe Disabilities.

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7 Steps to Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Disabilities

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Written expression is a huge part of life inside and outside the classroom. When students with disabilities learn to write, type, and/or select appropriate communicative responses, it opens the door to greater opportunities to reach their learning goals, communicate their preferences, and establish rapport with the people around them.