Kid Writing-The Mini Lesson

A typical writing day in a Kid Writing classroom begins with the teacher providing a focused mini-lesson to the whole class based upon a learning objective that is centered on developing student writing abilities (i.e., phonemes, phonics, and spelling). Here’s a snippet of a transcript from an observation in a Kindergarten classroom during the teacher’s first month of testing out Kid Writing. In the transcript, you can see how the teacher reviewed the concept of labeling pictures while reminding students to stretch out their words. When the teacher showed the students the picture she drew in the previous day’s lesson, she had the following conversation with the class.

TEACHER: We’re gonna label my picture today, so let’s take a look. What is this?

CLASS: A dog!

TEACHER: A dog. Now when we label, we stretch our words. Let’s practice. Are you ready? Here we go. Dog (emphasizes the first letter). What do you hear?

CLASS: “D!”

TEACHER: “D,” good. I’m going to write my “d” right here. “D,” dog, duh. Let’s go again. This time a middle sound. Ready? Dooog (emphasizes the middle sound). What do you hear?

CLASS: “O!”

TEACHER: “O.” Very good. Last one. Are you listening and watching? Now at the end. Dog (emphasizes the “g”). What do you hear?

CLASS: “G!”

TEACHER: “G.” Good what word did we write?

CLASS: Dog!

The lesson continued with the teacher modeling how to label and stretch out another word, writing her sentences about the picture, and talking with the students about the stories they might want to write that day. Additional mini-lessons we observed in two separate classrooms focused on how to include facts in an informational text, how to add sensory details, and how to include adjectives.

Teachers who are just starting to implement Kid Writing may begin by focusing their mini-lessons on a single objective related to the selected genre and spelling. As time passes the teacher develops more confidence in their abilities to lead these mini-lessons, and the focus began to include more elements of composition like punctuation, letter formation, and parts of speech. By mid-year, teachers can seamlessly integrate English Language Arts Curriculum that had been dictated by their district into their focused Kid Writing mini-lessons.