Rescue Writing considers it an honor to support teachers in their classrooms and parents of homeschoolers. When we started, we thought it would best be suited for third, fourth and fifth graders, since that was when students began to express themselves individually, or so we thought. As it turns out, even kindergarten students want to create their own books!
We invited Rachel Treiser, a kindergarten teacher in Florida to share her impressive storytelling process with all of us. Aside from being a great teacher, you can see she and the kids had a great time creating their book. We are dividing up her process into FOUR parts during four consecutive weeks, so you can do this with your classroom also.
Writing Stories with My Title I Kindergarten Class
By Rachel Treiser
Part One – BUILDING THE EXCITEMENT FOR RESCUE WRITING and THE STORYTELLING PROJECT
I waited to start the Rescue Writing project in the late spring because I wanted my students to feel comfortable with the writing process and have a variety of writing genres available to them. During the school year, we had worked on narrative, opinion, and some non-fiction writing. By the time spring rolled around, the students had a great understanding of the parts of a story.
During “Writer’s Workshop,” I talked to the students about how our class had the opportunity to publish a class book. That meant every student would be an official author and illustrator. When everyone finished their stories and artwork, I would be sending their work to a company for publication. The students had a variety of questions about the book and what they were going to write. Since we were finishing narrative and starting a non-fiction writing unit, we agreed this was the perfect time to begin writing our own book.
TAKE AWAY: Get the students excited about becoming a published author, and encourage them to think about stories they read in class and at home.