A couple of weeks ago, I gathered my thoughts about the beginning stages of the writing process for primary and upper grades. I’ve meant to come back to write about the next steps, and luckily, my job got in the way. I say “luckily” because I organized and facilitated a writing institute for my colleagues as part of my job. The discussions we had about the writing process were the fuel I needed to manage my ideas. Here we go.
In primary grades (K-2), children move fast because their ideas start flowing after they begin learning various generating strategies; we want them to practice these strategies each day so they’ll be writing a new story almost every day. The goal of increasing volume will impact the pace at which they’ll produce writing.
I’ve learned that to support the transfer of ideas to paper, young writers need to know about storytelling, and we’ll teach them to use storytelling when they plan, sketch, and write. One of my favorite strategies to plan is called “Touch and Say,” in which writers touch each page of the booklet orally, rehearsing what they want to write on it. In Kindergarten, they’ll do this in a 3-page booklet to support story structure (beginning, middle, end), and as their volume increases, they will move on to booklets that have more lines per page, instead of more pages with the same amount of lines. The paper choice is fundamental in setting expectations for writers.
One thing I had to learn was that children need to write about focused ideas instead of expanding on one idea that goes on and on across multiple pages; I’m sure you’ve experienced the well-known case of writing that sounds like, “and then… and then… and then….” Focused ideas support elaboration.
Think about the difference between these two stories; each sentence lives on a single page:
| 3-page booklet: | 4 or 5-page booklet: |
| I got on a swing. I couldn’t move. But then I moved my feet back and forth and I started to swing. | I got on a swing and I tried to swing. Then I swung very high. Then I got off the swing and went to the slide. Then I ran for a while and then I went home. |
In the first story, the student writes about the time she got on the swing; it’s a simple first draft that allows for different revision strategies. On the first page, the writer could add a sentence describing the setting, or maybe write a sentence describing her thinking when she couldn’t move on the second page; she could even end with another setting description to show that “full circle” way of storytelling.
The second story is more similar to what young writers produce when we ask them to “add more.” They believe that more is more pages instead of more details on each page. One of the reasons older writers struggle with elaborating is because they probably don’t get to practice going deeper into each paragraph. Booklets that have only three pages carry the hidden expectation of stretching each moment.
Writers will learn to plan and sketch across pages. Teachers will say something like, “Touch and say, then sketch what you said on each page.” In the beginning, you might notice that Omar is very comfortable with sketching, Carlos and Isa feel the urge to start writing some words before sketching or after every sketch, and Elena doesn’t know how to sketch in a way that shows what she said when she rehearsed. Your teaching will cater to all of those scenarios.
You’ll teach Elena sketching strategies that show action and feelings. You’ll show her that sketching doesn’t mean perfect illustrations, but they need to show each page’s essence. If the first page of her story is about her getting in the car, her sketch needs to include her actually getting in the car. Later on, she’ll add more to the sketch, which will lead to adding more writing. Carlos and Isa will learn about the importance of getting all sketches across the booklet before writing; you’ll tell them that sketches hold the story for the writer and help them remember what they intended to write when they planned. Omar will learn to use his skills to show feelings and other details and then write how every sentence matches his sketches.
Storytelling is essential in the first stages of the writing process, especially for those emergent writers. Through storytelling, writers can visualize their whole story and still anchor it so that forgetting certain parts won’t keep them from moving along. It also helps students see writing as another way of communicating with others; developmentally, emergent writers need to feel that they can still write stories even if they can’t write words. Storytelling makes this possible for them.
Start with a Story 