Is It Noisy Writing or Music to Our Ears?

Writing time in Kindergarten is a noisy affair. Jubilant enthusiasm becomes apparent as students cheer with delight when the teacher says it's time to write. Young learners are a-buzz as they talk to their neighbor about ideas for writing. Little mouths are puckering and sputtering as they isolate sounds make their wonderful early attempts at spelling.

This week I have the pleasure of witnessing writing time first-hand in Gina Bennett's Kindergarten classroom at Meadows Elementary. Gina's classroom is alive with stimuli for writing - caterpillars in the process of becoming butterflies, sprouting seeds magnifying glasses sit in a tray, maracas await the Cinco de Mayo celebration, and even a classroom pet - Moe the therapy dog - may inspire ideas. Gina's Kindergarten students are at varying levels of writing abilities from dictating ideas to Gina, to filling in a word to a sentence Gina has written, to writing 2, 3, even 4 sentences on their own. Gina patiently meets each student at his/her ability level and gently nudges the student on to the next level. For the entire class, she reminds them that periods are small dots, a sentence starts with an upper case letter, and a pencil jumps over when starting a new word. Gina's persistence and patience is paying off as students have made progress by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the year.

What a joy it is to see young writers at work! They remind me of where we all began as writers and that progress involves baby steps and practice. They also remind me that writing is not necessarily a silent act!