Sample Writing, Analysis and Lesson 1

Kindergarten Writing from Previous Year

Summary of Teacher’s Analysis
The teacher has noted that many students are not putting spaces between their words. She has taught the concept of noticing spaces and counting words during Shared Reading. She will use writing from a previous year so as not to make any children feel bad about their writing.

Lesson Topic	Making Your Writing Readable: Spaces Between Words
Materials	•    An enlarged copy of student writing that does not contain spaces •    Chart paper and markers
Connection ​Set the tone.  Link the new teaching to ongoing work and NAME THE TEACHING POINT.  “Today I want to teach you…”	Remember the other day during Shared Reading when we read All Kinds of Things? We talked about how many words were on each page, and how we knew where each word started and each word ended by noticing the spaces between them.     Today I want to teach you that, just like in the books that you read, the stories that you write need to have spaces between words as well. Spaces between words will make your writing readable.
Explicit Instruction Show them exactly how to do what is being taught.	Good writers always remember to put spaces between each word. That’s how readers can tell where one word ends and another word starts. I have this writing that was done by a kindergartner in another school (show enlarged sentence without spaces). Can you read it? Let me try.   Model by reading aloud, struggling, talking through the difficulty you have reading the sentence because the words all run together.   That was pretty tough! It shouldn’t take so much work to read someone else’s writing. If this writer had just included spaces between words, it would have been so much easier for us to figure out what she was trying to say! If you need some help getting those spaces in there, you can use your two fingers as a guide. Watch me as I write.   Model writing a sentence on chart paper, using two fingers to space the words.
Guided Practice Ask them to try out what has been taught, either independently or collaboratively.  Coach into the work.	Now let’s try it together. Let’s come up with a sentence to write, and you can take turns doing the writing.    Use interactive writing, having several students come up and do the writing and spacing.
Send-Off Transition students from the lesson to independent work.	Don’t forget to put spaces in-between your words! It’s important that your readers are able to read your writing! If all the words run together, that would be almost impossible. You have such great writing ideas: make sure you write in a way that others can read them!