Don’t expect them to start writing. When you put those expectations on them and they’re not ready for it, that’s when behaviors happen. They get disconnected, disengaged, and again, that’s when the behaviors happen.
~ Zeba from Episode 98 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast
Episode Summary
A common mistake in kindergarten is starting writing too soon. In this episode, I’m walking you through what I actually do in the first month before introducing Writer’s Workshop – and why skipping these steps can lead to frustration for everyone (you included!). Writing in kindergarten is a journey and it takes time. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s confidence, progress, and connection. I’ll share how I set realistic expectations and build a strong foundation that leads to joyful, engaged writers later on.
In this episode I share:
- Build fine motor skills with my Cutting Academy
- Teach drawing step-by-step using lines, shapes, and detail
- Strengthen oral storytelling and language skills with daily warm-ups
Resources:
- First Month of Kindergarten Success Kit | Back to School Activities Mega Bundle
- Fine Motor Skills Products BUNDLE – Handwriting & Learning to Draw & Cut
- Writing Warm Up Slides
First Month of Kindergarten Success Kit
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey, teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe. Today, I want to talk to you about how I introduce writing in kindergarten. Let’s just dive right in.
[0:10] Music. You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[1:05] So I think a big mistake that a lot of teachers have in teaching kindergarten is starting writing too early, like writing with words and writing with sentences. It is a process to get kids to the point where they’re able to write sentences, and it takes a while, and that’s developmentally appropriate. That’s normal. That’s expected. Sometimes curriculums don’t understand that. Sometimes they are not the most developmentally appropriate, and that’s frustrating. But I’m going to tell you what I do before I even jump into writing and then how I kind of introduce writing. So the first thing that I spend time doing during our quote-unquote writing block is building up fine motor skills. So I always do a week-long cutting academy with students before I start writer’s workshop. I want to teach them how to cut with scissors, how to hold the scissors. They’re doing different kinds of lines and shapes and all that. I also use this to have them trace the lines with their pencil. So this is a chance to introduce how to hold the pencil, how to draw on the line, how to draw the shapes, that kind of thing. But it’s just very introductory for drawing the shapes and the lines. It’s good practice to introduce it.
[2:18] But the real goal is building up those fine motor skills, building up the muscles in the hand, and introducing how to cut with scissors, because that’s important to know in kindergarten. The whole week-long cutting academy is part of my fine motor packet, and I absolutely love it. And at the end, they make a little crown out of all the things they’ve learned how to cut, and it’s just so cute. So I definitely recommend spending a little time, spending a week. Might take a little more than a week. I spread it out because it’s like I said no two weeks ago on the first month of kindergarten you want to have a lot of different activities because their attention span is so short and so this is a quick thing to fill in time if you need a little extra time you could do another cutting academy activity whenever you need so generally I try to do it within one week as like the main focus and then I’ll spend a second week just doing some bonus activities when I need to fill in the time. And like I said, when I’m all done, we do a little celebration, they make a crown, and it’s so much fun. The next thing that I do is I introduce drawing, and I spend time teaching students how to draw. So I have a drawing journal. You can get that in my store. It’s part of the fine motor bundle, as well as the first month of kindergarten survival kit.
[3:34] And first, I introduce drawing different lines, different types of lines. And then I introduce how to draw different shapes. And we talk a lot about how drawing is made up of lines and shapes. And so we start with how to do those things. And when we’ve had practice with that, then we add in how to combine the lines and shapes to make drawings. And so I love in my drawing journal that I have like dotted lines for the different shapes for them to trace for different kind of scenarios, different scenes like the backyard or underwater or a city and so they spend time tracing the shapes but then I encourage them to add in details because that is like the next step is once they’ve put together their shapes and lines to make drawings we want to add details and add color and so it’s all a step-by-step process to do that and I work on that for a while with my students.
[4:36] To help them learn how to draw effectively. Because the drawing will be an important part of writing. It will be an important part of storytelling. As kids are drawing, they will be thinking about details in the background, right? That’s all information that eventually, as they get better at writing, like they would be putting into their writing. They would be adding those details in words. But for now, they’re adding those details in pictures. And so it’s good to start getting them to think about those kinds of details. Who else was there? Where were you? What did it look like? What was the weather
[5:10] like? That kind of thing. And the third thing that I do before I start Writer’s Workshop is encourage storytelling because I’m not expecting kids to write sentences or words yet. I want them to just orally tell their stories. We want to work on that oral language. One way that we do that is through writing warm-ups. So I’ll put a like prompt up on the board and we start writing every day, even up until the end of the year, we start writing every day with a writing warm-up where the kids are telling a story to their partner.
[5:41] And so it’s a great way to practice planning out their story, telling their story. But at the beginning of the year, it plays a really important role of getting kids to practice and build up their oral language so that when they are ready to start writing, they have that strong skill in place. This also connects really well with telling stories, retelling stories for reading, because it’s Loving students to build the narrative structure in their stories. Like what is the storybook language that they should have in their stories using words like in the beginning or first, next, then, last, in the end, finally. Like transition words, so, and then, but. They always laugh at that one. But it’s important for them to learn those storytelling words when they’re retelling storybooks, but also that will help them when learning to write because they’ll know what kind of language is expected in their writing. And that’s something that you can practice when you’re practicing storytelling with your students.
[6:46] So those are the three things I do before even launching Writer’s Workshop. When I am ready to launch Writer’s Workshop, it’s about a month into school. And at that point, my goal is mainly about building stamina in their writing and confidence in their writing and are we are seriously just drawing and storytelling.
[7:03] They’re drawing and they’re telling their stories to others. When kids are ready, we will start adding some labels with the first sound first, then the ending sound, and then maybe like some very, very simple words. But we won’t get to that for a while because they haven’t learned all the letter sounds or letters names or anything.
[7:24] We need to spend time in phonics teaching them all that stuff. And until they’ve learned most of the letter sounds, we can’t expect them to use those in their writing. So until then, just focus on drawing and storytelling. It takes time. The goal is progress, definitely not perfection in kindergarten. And it’s okay for it to take time. It’s okay for them not to be writing right from day one. That’s definitely not expected.
[7:51] So build fine motor skills, teach drawing, give them practice storytelling opportunities. Do all of that before doing writer’s workshop. And when you are ready to do writer’s workshop, focus on the drawing and the storytelling until kids have actually learned enough letters and sounds that you’ve taught them in phonics. Until then, don’t expect them to start writing. When you put those expectations on them and they’re not ready for it, that’s when behaviors happen. They get disconnected, disengaged, and that’s when the behaviors happen. So we don’t want that, and we want to build up their confidence. We don’t want them to think, I can’t do it when it’s perfectly normal to not be able to do it. So take your time in really making writing gradual and the expectations gradual.
[8:38] And be very purposeful when you start introducing labels. Maybe do it as a whole class, do it with some shared or interactive writing, though don’t expect it independently for a while. And that’s normal. That’s okay. So I hope you found this helpful. If you’re looking for more literacy support, let me know because I’ve got a ton of literacy episodes for you to check out and even a literacy workshop that you can check out. So let me know if you’re looking for more literacy support and I could send the supports your way. And like I said, if you’re looking for any of these materials, they’re all in my store. The writing warmups are on their own in my store and then everything else you can get in my first month survival kit or you can get them individually up to you. And I am asking you to spend one minute not even leaving a quick review to my podcast because it really helps the podcast and I’m almost at 100 episodes. I’d love to have some more reviews to celebrate. If you found anything helpful in this episode or other episodes, please consider leaving a quick review. It means a lot to me. Thanks so much.
[9:46] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies if you liked this episode the best ways to show your support are to subscribe leave a review or send it to a friend i’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips see you then.