Kinder curriculum APS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, they do writers workshop which I agree is absolutely ridiculous. But, for my kid, it really got him comfortable writing and he is very willing to write cards and letters because he practices writing every day (Even when he couldn't write out a single word and still struggled forming letters)

Can I ask why you don't like writer's workshop? I teach K and I do writer's workshop daily with my students. About 85% of them can write 3-4 sentences on a topic with correct punctuation, capitalization and correctly spelled high frequency words. Do you feel like it isn't effective for your child? What do you wish schools did instead?

My thoughts on this is that for new kindergarteners it is a bit overwhelming to be told to write because you are a writer and that it is good to just get your ideas onto a page. I think a better approach is structured writing practice and starting free writing after you can write a few words. Then you can provide feedback on what was written to teach grammar, sentence structure, and the like. I only observed it for a week of virtual kindergarten and my big concern was that the expectation that 1) you should write like you talk (this favors white, educated families over English learners and those who speak a dialect), 2) it is better to write something than to worry about how to spell the words and get them correct, and 3) if a kid cannot come close to doing the assignment-- in this case my kid could not write legible letters or blend them into a word-- it seemed like it just wasn't developmentally appropriate yet. By the end of K, he is fine and it is good. I just would not have done it so early.

The writers workshop is not a hill I would die on, just something I am willing to bet would have null effects if studied and negative effects if compared to some systematic writing interventions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, they do writers workshop which I agree is absolutely ridiculous. But, for my kid, it really got him comfortable writing and he is very willing to write cards and letters because he practices writing every day (Even when he couldn't write out a single word and still struggled forming letters)

Writer's workshop made my kid recalcitrant to any writing. She's finally started being willing to write this year when the upper grade curriculum introduced scaffolding.

What types of scaffolding did the upper grades use? And when you say upper, do you mean 2nd and 3rd or 7th and 8th? When I taught first grade, I used the scaffold of providing possible opening sentences, closing sentences, and we did a lot of work on writing details and supporting sentences. Most of my students could write very strong paragraphs. I think different people use the term writer's workshop to mean different things. In my writer's workshop, I did about 20% whole group instruction, 50% small group instruction and then about 30% of the time I co-taught or had other teachers in the room to work with kids individually on the exact skills they needed to move forward. I suspect that writer's workshop isn't the problem...it's how it is implemented. I'm a little OCD about my students' progress and every weekend I spend several hours looking at kids' work and figuring out exactly what they need the following week to keep growing.

Ah, that's poor teaching then, not the fault of writer's workshop.
We've seen a huge turn about this year in third grade writing. The teacher told me it's because she's doing more scaffolding that was part of Lucy Caulkins. I don't know most of it as I'm not in the classroom, but I've heard talk of an adjective wall and seen note cards with ideas and topic sentences.

In 2nd grade (by Teams) the kids were just given topics and asked to fill a page. The teacher would give her own example or two, but the writing was assigned as a single step. This didn't work for my child, though I'm sure many can do it. She'd end the hour long writing class with a blank page every day and burst into tears if you asked her to keep working on it.

From my experience trying to help, she does better if you ask her first to identify a setting, then a problem, then to talk through what would happen first, then second, etc. When she has most of the bits, then she'll be able to put it together. But she needs those steps to help her.

She basically wrote nothing in K-2. We even showed at her 1st grade conference and the teacher was shocked to open her writing folder and find it blank. She'd sat quietly without writing a word from the beginning of school until late February without the teacher noticing. This is a huge issue for a kid who is many grades ahead in both reading and math. I think she wants to write like the author of a middle grade novel but doesn't know how, so you get nothing.

[Anonymous]

So this isn't kinder but my first grader just came home with phonics work books. They are called "95 phonics core program." The first one is complete but the second one is only partially done (the letter says they just didn't get to it yet). The teachers sent it home so we could work on it over the summer.

Anyway, I assume they are using it at the K level too so I figured I would mention it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, they do writers workshop which I agree is absolutely ridiculous. But, for my kid, it really got him comfortable writing and he is very willing to write cards and letters because he practices writing every day (Even when he couldn't write out a single word and still struggled forming letters)

Can I ask why you don't like writer's workshop? I teach K and I do writer's workshop daily with my students. About 85% of them can write 3-4 sentences on a topic with correct punctuation, capitalization and correctly spelled high frequency words. Do you feel like it isn't effective for your child? What do you wish schools did instead?

My thoughts on this is that for new kindergarteners it is a bit overwhelming to be told to write because you are a writer and that it is good to just get your ideas onto a page. I think a better approach is structured writing practice and starting free writing after you can write a few words. Then you can provide feedback on what was written to teach grammar, sentence structure, and the like. I only observed it for a week of virtual kindergarten and my big concern was that the expectation that 1) you should write like you talk (this favors white, educated families over English learners and those who speak a dialect), 2) it is better to write something than to worry about how to spell the words and get them correct, and 3) if a kid cannot come close to doing the assignment-- in this case my kid could not write legible letters or blend them into a word-- it seemed like it just wasn't developmentally appropriate yet. By the end of K, he is fine and it is good. I just would not have done it so early.

The writers workshop is not a hill I would die on, just something I am willing to bet would have null effects if studied and negative effects if compared to some systematic writing interventions.

Explicit, systematic instruction is better for everyone, most especially those who don’t come into school with the requisite background to hit the ground running in K, ELL and kids with language/reading disabilities. It’s a time waste to have kids who can’t even write words yet “writing” stories. It’s great art instruction, but not particularly useful for learning how to write. My kid is still not writing particularly well in 3rd grade and they only correct her mistakes about 50% of the time, but her illustrations are gorgeous.

At what point is it more important that she knows proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling than has “confidence?” Come on! She knows she isn’t getting it right and already feels dumb! Just help her learn how to do it FFS!!!! You’re not doing her any favors. Her CoGAt score doesn’t match her work product. At what point might that be the school’s problem to solve? I’m exhausted.