Are you getting into the swing of things in your classroom? Are you still on summer break? Either way, the school year is right on top of us! Your mind is probably exploding with new ideas to use in your classroom. Have you thought about writing this year? What has worked for you in the past? Maybe you’re up for trying something new. Let’s talk a little about writing goals!
Writer’s Workshop
Probably the most nervous part about being a kindergartener is learning to write. I get it! And it’s not easy for teachers to introduce this new skill. It’s scary for little ones to learn it. It needs deep thought and practice in order to create a system that creates good writers. When I began my teaching career, Writer’s Workshop was just being introduced in the classrooms. I’m a firm believer in Writer’s Workshop. It provides the students an opportunity to work at their own level. Writer’s Workshop also provides the fast learners a chance to move forward on their own time.
What I love about Writer’s Workshop is that it provides the teacher an opportunity for differentiated instruction. We’ve moved away from the ‘one size fits all’ mentality of teaching to meeting our kids where they are at academically. Writer’s Workshop does just that.
Another reason I love Writer’s Workshop is that it makes it easy to set writing goals. Again, not all students have the same goals. With this model of writing, it provides an easy way to meet students independently to work on their specific goal.
Writing Goals
There is no wrong way to set writing goals. Really, my goals that I create change year after year. It all depends on what I see in my classroom. Yes, most years the goals I set are similar, but you need to pay attention to the needs of your students. The following are some of the more popular writing goals that I noticed from years’ past:
- Writing neatly
- Using finger spacing between words
- Starting sentences with capital letters and ending with punctuation
- Matching a picture to a sentence
- Adding details to sentences
What I found that worked well was to set writing goals each week. I used the “I do, you do” method where I model the writing goal correctly and the student then spends the rest of the week working on that specific goal. Oh, the great feeling of seeing them improve in such a short time! With my Writer’s Workshop pack, I can keep track of past goals so I will always remember what I need to watch out for!
My favorite way of watching their daily growth is using my daily writing pages. You can grab them FREE by clicking on the download button below! These writing papers are great to put in folders or binders for writing portfolios or to show parents at conferences!
Looking for more literacy tools to use in your classroom?? Check out these helpful tools that you can use TODAY in your classroom!
Just like Writer’s Workshop needs to be organized, so does your Guided Reading space! Grab my Guided Reading Organization pack and spend more time teaching!
The beginning of the year is so chaotic, but you need to learn as much about your students ASAP! Grab my FREE beginning literacy assessment for a quick literacy assessment of what they know and what they need more instruction on!
A fun way to assess on sight words! Pirate Bingo is a great game and they won’t know they are being tested!
