What is Kid Writing?
Based on a study conducted by Drs. Chanel Rodriguez, Betty Coneway, & Elsa Diego-Medrano at West Texas A&M University.
Young writers have to jump over big hurdles to learn to read and write, and with the plethora of methods used to teach literacy, it is easy to get lost in the sea of a district’s latest and greatest “Science of Reading” curriculum. And how exactly does teaching students to write fit in with teaching students how to read?
Exemplary writing teachers know how to systematically integrate decoding, shared reading, word walls, rhyme patterns, and other elements of literacy into writing lessons and match their direct lessons to the development level of the students in their classroom. But what does that look like?
Before we dig in, let’s pay homage to the creators of Kid Writing, the teacher consultants at the Philadelphia Writing Project. The strategies and methods they developed are based on the book Kid Writing in the 21st Century, A Systematic Approach to Phonic, Spelling, and Writing Workshop by Feldgus, Cardonick, and Gentry, 2017. This book is a must-have if you want to implement Kid Writing in your own classroom and figure out how to weave all of those literacy strategies together to have effective instruction for emergent and developing writers.
Now, let’s get started with the Fundamentals of Kid Writing Pedagogy.
When you step into a classroom where the teacher has been trained in Kid Writing techniques, you are likely going to see a familiar early elementary setup with a word wall, student tables, a carpet, etc. The lesson will look similar to writers workshop in the sense that writing happens every day; there are procedures, materials, and a schedule to facilitate learning, which emphasizes that writing is an important part of the day. However, upon further investigation, you will find an environment that helps increase student independence in writing by focusing the lessons on developing the early stages of writing. Kid Writing incorporates researched-based developmental writing stages for early learners, as well as phonemic and phonics instruction to guide children through each stage.
Implementing new strategies can test your confidence as a teacher. Here are some challenges you might face when you start to use Kid Writing strategies and some ways you can overcome those challenges.
