Reflective Writers at 6 Years Old?
by Natalia Mykytiuch
Teaching kindergarten for my third year, I needed to transform the way I taught writing in my classroom. Every year we had daily journal writing and Writer’s Workshop four times a week. However, I found that my students’ stories were not as meaningful as I had hoped. Their stories and journal entries seemed tedious and mechanical. Their writings were mere descriptions of the pictures they drew and lacked emotion and thought.
I was fortunate to attend PhilWP’s Summer Invitation Institute I this past summer. Through various readings and colleague discussions, it seemed that reflective writing was a great vehicle for more meaningful writing from my students. The problem was how to achieve this on the kindergarten level. This became a process that now I am very pleased I went through.
As a way to better mange behavior, I began reflection sheets in September. The students drew pictures of what they did and below the picture they wrote about it and what they would do next time. This was a starting point in having the students reflect about what happened. My goal was to have the students eventually transfer that reflective knowledge into Writer’s Workshop in December/January. The class was using the reflection sheets as a behavior tool and that presented the problem that not every student will have enough practice with this form of writing.
In October, I began reflective writing in our daily journal entries. I introduced it to the students by telling them that good writers do not just write how they think about things but also how they feel about things. We use a big emotions poster which expands simple feelings like happy and sad to more complex emotions such as excited, surprised, anxious, upset, and jealous. We refer to this poster daily. We start journals with a little cheer with me asking, “What kind of writers are we?” and the students respond, “Reflective writers!” “Why?” I ask. “Because we write how we think about it and how we feel about it.” I explained this by telling them we think with our brains and feel with our hearts. Good writers use their brain and their hearts to write.
Since October, my students have written two to three sentences in their journals. At first the writing was still mechanical, such as “I am playing with my sister. I like to play with my sister” or “I am cooking with my mom. I love my mom.” After a month or so their writing evolved into, “This girl I know appreciated me because she hugged me. It made my heart happy.” and “I am so excited I am going to the park after school. I will play on the swings with my sister.” Not only are the students intertwining their emotions into their writing, they are also adding more details and descriptors. Because this is kindergarten, they draw a picture first with a lot of detail and color, which they then use as springboard to their written words.
After a few months of reflective journal writing, modeling and conferencing with the students, we were ready to transform this information from a one-page journal entry to a three-part story with a beginning, middle, and an end. I had “books” pre-made for their stories. We used “drwriting paper”—papers where the top is blank for drawing and dotted lines were printed on the bottom for writing. I stapled three pages together; the first page became the title page and the next four pages were for the story. The students continued to write two to three sentences per page. This is when the magic happened.
We began Writer’s Workshop in January by going over rules such as using quiet voices, quiet feet, working really hard, and putting everything away properly when it’s time to clean up. I also slowly introduced the students to the steps of the writing process and how important it is to remember that writing is a process. A poster displayed prewriting, I can think about it, and then progressed to drafting, I can write about it. Slowly we began the third step of revising, I can make it better. The last stages of editing and publishing we did together through individual conferences. They read their stories to each other and discussed their work with one another just like real writers do. The writing process poster also hangs in the room along with the rules, which are reviewed before each session.
All students have their own Writer’s Workshop folder where they keep their writing. Finished pieces are placed on the left side and pieces in progress are placed on the right. Each folder has a copy of the writing process on the front—identical to the poster hanging in the room.
The students are really receptive to Writer’s Workshop. They enjoy writing and sharing their stories and they are adopting the idea that writing is a process. When we have to stop and clean up for the day and some students become upset because they want to finish, the others simply tell them, “It’s ok, we’ll have time tomorrow, it’s a process.” One student came up to me during Writer’s Workshop and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m done my story but I’m not really done. I need to go back and revise it and make it better.”
I also utilize mini-lessons as much as I can. We are currently working on making our stories “juicy” and not boring. This involves using details, details, details – this word is used frequently in my classroom. They implement the use of color words, size words, and many other descriptors to make a juicy story that gives the reader the capability to better visualize the story written.
I found that through the consistent daily writing in journals and embedding the reflective writing process in Writer’s Workshop, my students are producing more meaningful, imaginative, and descriptive stories than in the past. Their characters are more developed and thoughts and feelings are portrayed not only in the illustrations, but the writing as well. The students also develop more coherent stories with a plot containing a problem and a solution. In the past stories were simple, such as:
The Bunny
One day the bunny was outside. He saw a dog. He ran away. He found his mom. He was not scared anymore. The End.
This year’s stories are more developed and thoughtful:
The Scared Lion
The lion was very scared. She could not find her babies. She looked everywhere. She even asked the giraffe if he saw them. He said no. The lion kept looking. She went home because she was sad. When she went back outside she found her babies. They were playing in the yard. She was so so so happy and excited! The End.
Watching my students becoming authors and illustrators is magical. They have become motivated and dedicated to the writing process. They also take the process very seriously. During Writer’s Workshop my students focus and there is a productive buzz in the room that is very exciting to watch. Our students are only as capable as we believe they are. I believed that I could have my students produce quality writing using this reflective writing process. I am very pleased to say that they have surpassed my vision and are always surprising me with their insights and enthusiasm.
Natalia Mykytiuch teaches kindergarten at Henry C. Lea Elementary. Natalia became a PhilWP teacher consultant in 2010.