After learning all the letter sounds and how to encode and decode with them, our students became excited to begin writing and reading stories. To cultivate this new found love of literacy, we began a writing unit. Through this unit, we worked on writing our first books. Most of our class chose to tell a story about a time they did something or created an instructional book about their favorite thing. We find that it is easiest to write about something we know, and what does a kindergartener know better than themselves!

This unit lent itself to many learning opportunities. These included telling a story across multiple pages, naturally bringing out more detailed stories. They also focused on listening for all the sounds that could be heard in each word, beginning a sentence with a capital letter and adding punctuation at the end. Each student also worked with a partner to add more details to their books. The proudest moments for our students came from reading their books out loud to the entire class.