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 Three – START FIRST WITH THE ART or ILLUSTRATIONS or PHOTOS
Once the students had a good idea of what they wanted to say in their story, I asked them describe it first to a partner. After sharing the beginning, they drew what their beginning on a piece paper. The next day, the students retold their story to a partner and returned to draw the middle of the story, and drew it on a second piece of paper. Afterward, the students finished telling the end of the story and drew that part on the final piece of paper. More paper and many colors were always available, if needed. Although I usually encourage students to label their work and write sentences, we talked about the idea that they were just illustrators at this point in the process of publishing our book.
TAKE AWAY: Creating the visual before the story – through art or photography – adds to the story and gives the writer (and later, the reader) a clearer vision.