Writing Sample- Kindergarten

·         Noteblog (everyone posts on this topic): Study the writing sample(s) you collected from your classroom.  Discuss the ‘stages of spelling development’ evident in each sample (see Tompkins, p. 169) and give examples. Design a ‘literacy center’ activity that would help your students improve their spelling and explain why you think it would support students’ learning.

Because of the snowstorm on Friday, school was canceled and I was not able to collect a writing sample from my students. However, I have seen many different samples in previous weeks during the language arts lesson. After doing assessments with the students, I have found that on average they know at least half the alphabet, and about a quarter of the associated phonemes that go with each letter. This is reflected in their writing samples. One student's writing that I have recently looked at is most definitely an emergent speller- his writing is a bunch of scribbles all over the page and have no connection to any phonemes at all. Another students work shows that she knows how to write her name, and can begin to use the letter sounds she knows to write words putting her at the Letter Name-Alphabetic spelling stage.

Because the students struggle with matching the correct phoneme to the alphabet letter, I planned this literacy center activity to help improve these skills. This literacy center would be a two-part matching game: the first part consisting of the students hearing a recorded version of the phonemes and then having to match it to the letter cards on the table. The second part would be similar to Go-Fish with each student having seven cards in their hand- a mixture of phonemes in the form of pictures of familiar things and letters- which they then have to find the matching phoneme for each letter. These activities will strengthen the students visual and auditory understanding of letters and their associated phonemes which will in turn help them to begin spelling.