Writing workshop is a daily time for the children to express themselves through writing and drawing. They are allowed to write/draw about any topic of their choice. They are encouraged to have both writing and drawing on every page. The children work on regular notebook paper. Most of the kids ignore the lines, but this paper is cheaper than blank copy paper and already 3 hole punched, so that is what we use. Writing workshop papers are stored in 3 ring notebooks and dated. The children are allowed to work on a page for as many days as they want or go back to a previous page to add to it. They are not allowed to work on more than one page per day and are expected to use the front and back of the pages.
I teach mini lessons several times during the week during which I model selecting a topic, stretching words to hear the sounds, putting punctuation at the end, etc. whatever the kids seem to be ready to learn.
In the beginning most kids start out scribble writing or writing random letters. By the end of the year most kids have progressed to writing that is a mix of conventional spelling of easy words and high interest words and phonetic and prephonetic spelling of other words.
I do not write for the kids on their papers, since I want the kids to have ownership. I have done this in the past and found that it was difficult to get the kids to move on to their own writing when they were ready. Sometimes it is hard to get them started, because they think they can't write, but then as they are complimented and encouraged for whatever they are doing, they will develop confindence and keep trying. As I monitor the room, I have kids tell me about what they are doing and give them hints to help them grow towards conventional writing.
I call this time of my day "writing workshop" rather than "journals" simply because I read in an article that sometimes keeping journals has a bad connotation with parents, like you are encouraging children to share personal thoughts and then the teacher is reading things that should be private. Although this is probably not an issue in kindergarten, I decided to circumvent the entire possibility and use semantics to my advantage.
Also, the whole issue of "inventive spelling" has gotten a bad rap too. I dont think there is anything wrong with encouraging this in the kids as one strategy to improve their writing. Coupled with whole class mini lessons and individual instruction as the kids are working, it does encourage the children to take risks with their writing and explore topics that would be impossible if they were waiting to spell everything correctly. I think it would be wrong to leave the children with the impression that they will be writing this way forever or that it is okay to write things any way you want forever. So we call ours "kindergarten spelling" and I tell them over and over that kindergarten is a special place where we are allowed to use "kindergarten spelling" and spell things the best we can. As we learn and grow as readers and writers, we will be expected to write and spell things more and more correctly. But, for now, we are kindergarten spellers and this is the way we can do it....ENJOY!!!! I also expose my kids to the idea of dictionaries as a place where you can find words correctly spelled, but I don't expect them to use one!
An interesting situation I had this past year, was a bright, precocious student who knew that things should be spelled a certain way and it really bothered him not to have things spelled correctly. Needless to say he would ask how to spell things I would ask him what it started with and he would answer and I would encourage him to go on. But he didnt like inventive spelling at all!!!! So I arrived at a compromise for him and that was he had to try to spell the word he wanted to know first. Then I would write it correctly on his paper and he could copy it if he wanted, but he was not allowed to erase his first attempt. I explained to him that his spelling showed me how he was thinking and what he knew about writing and spelling and I wanted it left on his paper. He would learn the correct spelling from what I wrote and would use it correctly from then on. Also, he learned that I really and truly valued his own attempts, so he became less worried about those and more free to explore the topics he wanted. This helped him to grow as a reader and writer and he made tremendous progress.
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