Kathleen - Good evening, welcome to another Teachers.Net live event!
Kathleen - Teachers.Net is pleased to welcome Eileen G. Feldgus and Isabell Cardonick, co-authors of Kid Writing : A Systematic Approach to Phonics, Journals, and Writing Workshop, available from the Wright Group http://www.wrightgroup.com. Isabell and Eileen are sharing a computer tonight, so my plan to have them field questions in open chat format will not work well. So, what we will do is ask participants to submit their questions at a reasonable pace during the session. Eileen and Isabell will select a question to answer and I will collect any they miss or cannot get to during the hour. Any questions we can't get to during the hour will be submitted to Isabell and Eileen for a written response. Those responses will appear in the June edition of the Teachers.Net Gazette.

Kathleen - Isabell and Eileen, what grade level/s do you target in your very popular book, Kid Writing? Is there another book on the way?
Eileen & Isabell - The target crowd is here now. K, 1, and 2.

Kelly/1/NJ - We can't seem to find a cheap way to keep buying journals
Eileen & Isabell - You don't need to buy journals. Just get some paper and a heavy duty stapler. Parents can put them together for you at home.
Eileen & Isabell - The Kid Writing book explains more about putting the journals together.

pez/K/Fl - When do you recommend that we start journal writing? What time of the year.
Eileen & Isabell - We explain how to get non writers started writing on the very first day of school. And how to keep them growing.

Kathleen - Eileen and Isabell, does your method work with the child who is still at the scribble stage of writing, who cannot form letters?
Eileen & Isabell - Absolutely. They learn by doing. We show you how to give them the support they need.

Jules/K/GA - I noticed in the samples, the teacher did the "adult" writing near the bottom of the page. Do you recommend that instead of writing directly under each word the child has written?
Eileen & Isabell - Yes. We want the adult writing to keep an even flow. We don't want the adult writing to interfere with the Kid Writing. Kid Writing takes primacy.

Tena/K/KS - Do you use any kind of systematic approach to make sure you get to everyone?
Eileen & Isabell - To answer Tena's question. Depending on how many adults you have working with the kids, you may not get to every child every day. But every child is involved with the writing that is going on. Even the writing of other children.

Doug/K/CA - eileen- I have tried your program and I really like what it does for middle and high kids. Some reluctant writers still have a page of magic lines. Any suggestions on getting to the alphabetic principal when i ask: what letters do you hear?
Eileen & Isabell - Because of all the modeling of writing that the teacher does, the children are very aware of letters. So they should not be using the magic line for too long. If you ask the child, "What letter do you think you hear"? they will usually come up with a letter or something that looks like a letter.
Doug/K/CA - eileen- follow up to the question: with some kids, I sound like I am doing the work of sounding out. For example, Tyrone what do you hear in DDDDDDDaaaaaaaaddddddd
Eileen & Isabell - Doug, you need to know your kids well to know how many sounds and which sounds to emphasize in each word.
Eileen & Isabell - Let's talk some more about the sounding out process. The example that Doug gave - the word Dad. ddddddd aaaaaa dddddd would seem to put equal emphasis on each sound in the word. However, the sound that should be emphasized depends on where the child is in mapping out the word. For example, first DDDDDad. After the child writes the D or something to represent the D sound, the sounding out would be DaaaaaaaaD. Finally, The word would be sounded Dadddddd, with the emphasis on the final sound.
Eileen & Isabell - But, we teach the children to identify chunks in words wherever possible, rather than segmenting each sound.
Doug/K/CA - eileen- so if Tyrone hears and records the end part of a word that is what I want him to write- would it look like ________d?
Kathleen - [magic line] d

Terri/K/SC - Even at the end of the year when they are writing much longer pieces, do I still do adult writing for all of it. The kw has become very readable for many.
Eileen & Isabell - Terri, if the kid writing is lengthy and mostly accurate, you may not have to do adult writing for the whole piece. When there are just a few words that are not conventional, you can underwrite those words directly.

Kelly/1/NJ - Should I omit the pictures when the children start writing more or always include them in the process?
Eileen & Isabell - Let the kids decide when to omit the pictures. That often happens around Thanksgiving of first grade.

ashley - How do you encourage kids who never have anything to write about?
Eileen & Isabell - That's why drawing pictures is so important. It helps them to organize their thoughts, so that they can come up with a story. Sometimes, if you zero in on a part of the drawing and ask, "Tell me about this part", they are able to focus on story. We also model for them what to do when we can't think of something to write about. We also tell them that real authors, like Maurice Sendak sometimes have author's block and have to think about what to write.

Kathleen - Eileen and Isabell, what term do you use to refer to the child's written message? "Story" would seem to refer only to a fictional piece of writing. Do you encourage children to work with different genre, and if so, at what grade level?
Eileen & Isabell - We refer to non-fiction as an information book or non-fiction story. Children of all ages are encouraged to use various genres in their writing, but we don't dictate the genres. We praise them for trying new kinds of writing.

Kathleen - Our sponsor tonight is Apples 'n' Acorns School Supply, http://www.applesandacorns.com where personal service by a former educator makes it possible for teachers to obtain the literacy support materials they need at very reasonable prices.

julie - At what point do you stop working one on one with the children, helping them to sound out the letters and leave them to work indecently. I found that when I walk away, many are reluctant to try sounding out
Eileen & Isabell - julie, when the children are able to write so that we can read their writing (sensible semi phonetic spelling), we encourage them to write on their own. If they are reluctant to write on their own, we ask them to write just a phrase. (i.e.: Go ahead and write "My mother and I". Then we'll finish the rest together. It's a gradual weaning process. There is no rush to independence. They learn so much in the scaffolding process!
Kathleen - "There is no rush to independence." This is so true, but teachers now feel MUCH pressure to move the kiddos along QUICKLY.
Eileen & Isabell - If you make a stronger investment in supporting them at the beginning stages will yield a deeper understanding of how written language works, and an excitement about writing that ultimately leads to a higher skill level,

Abigail - Could you give more examples to use for crowns?
Eileen & Isabell - Abigail, we have a love of "of", gent of "went", fuzz of "was", power of "our"... You can make up some of your own. Let us know what you come up with!
Abigail - I have tea of "we", bat of "at", can of "an", hand of "and", pin of "in", shoe of "to", lamb of "am", and bus of "us."
Eileen & Isabell - Please do crowns only for words that the children need support with. For example, they don't need a crown for "we" But, kids even in 3rd grade confuse the word "went" with "want" so the "Gent of went crown gives them the rhyming clue. And in our dialect, the word hand does not rhyme with and. Be careful about this.

teacher2000 - Would creating word walls to emphasis chunks of sound help children who have difficulty spelling?
Eileen & Isabell - Regarding word walls, we recommend a high frequency word wall. Words with chunks in them can be highlighted in some way. That way, the known high frequency words serve as key words for other words within the same word family. Or the same rhyming family with the same spelling pattern. For example, the word make is the key word for the ake chunk.

Queen - Q1- What do you mean by mapping? Q2- How do you strengthen their beginning experiences?
Eileen & Isabell - Kids have to learn not only specific sound-symbol relationships, but they also have to learn how the sounds map through the words (what sounds follow what sounds). This is stretching the words out. Beginning experiences are strengthened through teacher modeling - i.e.: chart writing, mini-lessons, etc. This is all explained in detail in Kid Writing!

Terri - My students (gr. 1) have learned punctuation, contractions, compounds...they are great at all and some are transitioning the knowledge of word forms and punctuation into writing, some have not. when does that usually occur and what can be done to enhance this process?
Eileen & Isabell - Terri, we can't emphasize enough the importance of the mini-lessons. As kids writing becomes more conventional, the emphasis of mini-lessons partially shifts to the craft of writing.
Eileen and Isabell - All of the writing conventions are taught in the context of authentic writing. There are no practice exercises, so transfer is not an issue.
Eileen and Isabell - There is lots of repetition in the mini-lessons so that kids have many opportunities to hear the same issues addressed repeatedly, linked to different children's writing.

Doug/K/CA - eileen- do you feel that using interactive writing with Kidwriting confuses kids? Do you recommend a stronger emphasis with modeled writing instead? Or is the program flexible enough to go with most balanced literacy activities?
Eileen and Isabell - Interactive writing is an important component of balanced early literacy. The skill here is in choosing kids carefully who are likely to be successful with the elements they are called on to add to the interactive writing piece. We recommend doing interactive writing 2 to 3 times a week. Keep in mind that interactive writing , to our way of thinking, is large chart writing, not individual writing.

Marcia/Ca - Eileen and Isabell, tell us when the 2/3 book is coming out...the k/1 was so useful....but I teach 2nd
Eileen and Isabell - Marcia, the issue is not so much grade level as it is the achievement level of the kids and the gradual transition in mini-lessons to a focus on craft.
Eileen and Isabell - We are thinking of doing a book on mini-lessons. How to choose them. ... How they change over time., etc. You may want to read Lucy Calkins new edition of The Art of Teaching Writing.

Mary/PA - I'm interested in knowing what you feel is the best way to address Hand Writing skills. I find that if the children don't have a well established system in place for forming letters quickly and efficiently, they spend too much energy in trying to form the letters they need and lose their train of thought concerning the content of what they want to write.
Eileen and Isabell - Although we selectively call attention to letter formation as we model writing (large chart writing, etc.) we don't have kids practice letter formations. As you can see from the examples given in Kid Writing, the kids writing is understandable ...and gradually moves to conventional construction.
Linda/2/CA - However, many of the state standards in writing saying that the writing has to be legible--so they need to think about this when writing also
rob - I understand that you do not ever instruct letter formation aside from when you write on charts?
Eileen and Isabell - We don't want the kids to get "hung up" on proper letter formation. That's when the problems kick in. Imagine being taught calligraphy and then being asked to write a story using perfect calligraphy in your first draft! (We only do first drafts in kindergarten. By first grade, when some pieces are taken to publication, attention to letter formation becomes more meaningful to the children.
Eileen and Isabell - Rob, sometimes we do call attention to specific letter formations during the underwriting phase, but not more than one or two per child. For example, we might say, "Watch how I make the W."
Eileen and Isabell - Linda, check Kid Writing. The kid's writing is legible. In kindergarten, it is not developmentally appropriate to expect perfection in letter formation. When the children have the opportunity to write abundantly and daily, the handwriting improves!
Linda/2/CA - I am talking about 2nd graders!!!
Linda/2/CA - If asked to write more than one or two words--legibility goes out the window!
Eileen and Isabell - 2nd grade writers should be doing 2nd drafts. By 2nd grade, 2nd draft neatness counts.
mary - Letter formation often becomes important to children when they understand that they and others want to read their written work.

seahorse - Where do you publish the kids' writings? In a school book or are they submitted to some formal publication?
Eileen and Isabell - Seahorse, the children write books all the time. They are placed in the school library for a while and then in the classroom library. These are the most popular books in our library!
seahorse - ok...are these books theme related...does each child write their own book or are these collaborative efforts?

jtck/1/WA - E&I...Can you speak to a half-day program and getting to all this fun writing when math, reading, science, social studies await...
Eileen and Isabell - jtck. We did this in half day kindergarten programs.

Kathleen - Isabell and Eileen, thank you VERY much for doing this workshop! I will send the unanswered questions to you by e-mail.
Eileen and Isabell - It was a pleasure! We love talking about Kid Writing!
Eileen and Isabell - Thanks all. Eileen and I have to go. We hope you've all read Kid Writing and are using it in your classrooms. If so, we know you are as excited about it as we are!
Kathleen - Thank you participants!

 
 

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