Kindergarten Writing

Hello everyone! I've enjoyed reading your thought-provoking questions.

Doug - I like that you are linking the question of comprehension to fluency because ultimately, of course, good comprehension is the goal with fluency being the means of getting there. I was wondering if you had considered using reader's theatre as a fluency strategy? My son struggled with fluency and one summer we tried a modified version of reader's theatre with his at-the-time favorite genre - comics. It actually helped and it was easy to do. Let me know if you want to know how we did it.

Rico - Your question really interests me too because of my son, again. He was not a fluent writer, and was allowed to work with a good friend of his who was a very good writer. They were able to engage intellectually with each other in coming up with ideas. The teacher insisted that my son help with the actual "writing down the words" though his friend probably did the bulk of it. It was a great benefit to my son, the struggling one, but did it really help the other child? It helped my son to view himself as a writer and get excited about writing down his ideas but it probably did no not help his friend with his writing. It may have been socially beneficial for him to work with a partner though. Later my son was partnered with a different boy and I remember they really got into writing an acrostic alphabet poem together. They were more equally matched and they both probably benefitted from the parnership. Have you thought about how you are going to pair the boys up?

Now for my question: What happens when I allow students to "turn and talk" before writing? I'm considering this question because I wondering if my students will develop their writing ideas more with an additional "rehearsal" or pre-writing activity. My questions about it are - what are they talking about when they "turn and talk?" (I'm hoping for writing ideas, but you never know in kindergarten!) Does this additional idea development time help motivate and excite them about their writing? Do they write down more letters, sounds, and words or are their story ideas more developed in their pictures? Is what they talked about reflected in their writing? I'll collect data by writing down observations during the turn and talk time or by tape recording the conversations. Then I'll look at the writing from that day too. I want to look at differences between my ELL kids (2/3 of my class) and my native English kids. By necessity I'll have some homogeneous pairs (in terms of native language) and some heterogeneous. I think it will be interesting to observe how this aspect effects the results. I would also like to make some observations about the excitement/engagement/and independence levels of the kids during writing time after implementing the "turn and talk" time. I think I'll narrow my data by just choosing four pairs of students to look at (2 of the heterogeneous pairs and two of the homogeneous pairs). I'm also wondering if the Spanish speakers will speak in Spanish or English during this time. That could be another piece of data I collect through the observations and/or recordings.

Does anyone have any other ideas for data collection? I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thanks.