This week we have been having many discussions in anticipation of our quickly approaching Literacy Day being held this Friday. We have been discussing our upcoming guest speakers by watching YouTube videos of Danielle Wade singing and discussing how Ben Van Dongen and Christian Laforet are authors. In our discussions about authors and how they write the words, the students became motivated to produce their own pieces of writing so that they can be authors too! They have been working on posters, picture books, and books with only words.
As children develop these skills at different rates, we have been supporting them at their different levels of development. Your child may be representing their thoughts using scribbles, symbols or mock letters, random strings of letters, groups of letters, initial letters as labels for a picture, by copying words they see in the classroom, by using the first letter to represent a word, by using first and last letter sounds to represent a word, by using beginning, middle and end sounds in words, by writing only known sight words, by beginning to write phrases, or by writing full sentences. At this age, reversals are quite common and are not concerning. All of these stages of writing demonstrate that your child is solidifying the idea that words are represented in print. You can help at home by asking your child to read you what they have written and by encouraging their efforts. We often discuss letter sounds as part of whole group writing and reading activities. If your child is looking to write a word, we often encourage them to write what they hear either by slowly modelling how to stretch the word out (like an elastic) and slowly saying all the sounds as they write, or if they are more developed, encouraging them to sound out the words for themselves. Check out the pictures below of our young writers hard at work!
