How to Teach Kindergarten Students to Write Simple Sentences

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Laura from youngwritersworkshops.com. I'm going to talk about how to teach kindergarten students to write simple sentences. Some writing gurus remind us that students can write from the very first day, but their writing is housed in their drawing. For kindergarten students, expecting them to write a sentence, you know, might be reasonable or might not be depending on the child and generally, students are more living in the world of illustration at this point. So begin with where they're living, where they're creating their work. They're full of sentences but the writing, the creating words, spelling words, stringing words together on paper might be beyond them. When you're teaching students about writing, you're explaining to them that the things that they put on paper are telling a story. So their writing, their illustration is already doing that; you can begin by helping them to identify words that they want to use in their writing, and they may represent these with a string of symbols that looks like nonsense, or just the first letter of each word. But they're beginning to put their ideas down on paper. Depending on a student's approach to their early writing, you may be able to recognize some of what they are trying to write, and you can work with them from where they are, by separating the strings of letters, putting a space in between words so that it begins to actually have the structure of a sentence. You may need to dictate for them; take their words and write them for them and that's how they may begin to see what a sentence looks like on paper. A sentence is a thought and it's a complete thought, and that if students in kindergarten get that idea, then you've taught them a beginning about how they can begin to write simple sentences."