I noticed--during January and February--that we had lost focus on student writing goals. I know, from experience, that when students know their writing goal and really try to work on it every day day during writing time that they move more quickly along the continuum of learning to write. However, for a few weeks I found myself circulating during writing time and looking for teaching points in the students’ writing in lieu of asking them/focusing on each student’s specific writing goals.
When I realized this, I made a commitment to getting myself and my students more focused on their writing goals during the month of March. In this video, you'll see how I 1) give the students one star for telling me their writing goal(s) and 2) give another star when I see evidence that they have worked on their goal(s). Being this focused on writing goals two or three times a week will really move students along in learning to write.
I cannot tell you how valuable these videos are! I learn so much watching you conference with students of all writing abilities. A few questions..
1. Sentence writing - do you have any posts you could recommend from earlier in the year where you are introducing this skill? Admittedly, this has always been a challenge for me. I think it's because I jump into it too soon, and don't have a strong plan for taking baby steps into this skill, leaving students (and me!) frustrated and building bad writing habits. I do have your Writing in Kindergarten book, but am still working through the first section of the year, so if this is addressed in the book, I can look there as well.
2. You commented at one point in this video about not teaching syllables until later in the year after students are segmenting phonemes in words. Have you, or would you consider writing a post more about this? Heggerty does teach syllables first and I would like to know more about why you feel waiting is better. I have always struggled with syllables first too.
3. I am so impressed with how many facts your students remembered and were equipped to write about! Obviously you have done many read alouds, perhaps watched some YouTube videos, etc. How many books and/or videos have they been exposed to prior to this day's writing? When you are reading or learning facts from a video, are you recording these facts on an anchor chart of some kind?
4. I noticed with some of your students you transcribed what they wrote right next to their words. When and why do you do this? Is it to act as a scaffold for the student? I've heard schools of thought that say absolutely never write on a student's work, and others say it's perfectly fine.