My Digital Journey

Writing Progress!

I've been working closely with one of the students in my kindergarten class who has been really struggling in writing. As of February he was still writing random words, using random letters, and sticking to simple sentence frames he's used to like "I see..." that often make little sense.
The first picture is an example of his writing monthly assessment from the month of February where the students are pushed to write more than they might on their own in their journals. The writing below is written by me to have a transcript of what he is trying to write. He also had a lot of trouble even remembering what he was trying to write, and would make it up.
Over the last few months I have been spending time with him during writing, and I noticed that he loves to tell stories and talk (even when not supposed to :)). Often he would also want to tell me about the picture with his writing in great detail. I started sitting with him during writing and having him tell me a story. He would get very into it, giving great detail and acting out parts. As he did this I would help him break down the parts and write one short sentence at a time about what he was telling me. This seemed to start really working, and he was finally showing interest and enjoyment during writing. He was able to and excited to write as much as possible every single time, even starting to go onto the second page and write about things besides just zombies (his favorite topic).
The second and third picture are from his recent April assessment and there is noticeable difference. I was still helping him some with the process, but he was doing much more of it on his own and taking charge of what to write.
Yesterday, as I was working on pulling students during the writing time I wasn't able to work with him on the journal. When I pulled him, he was so excited to tell me all about what he was writing in his journal, how he was already to the second page, and he did it all by himself. As soon as I was done he ran over to me to show me what he had written, and is determined to start filling both the first and second pages of writing.
I'm so excited to see how much his writing is advancing and how excited he is becoming about his writing so far into the year because of the work we have been doing together. (and this isn't only because it has some connections to my action research and reaffirming the idea I'm exploring - the importance of the connection between oral and written language!) I can't wait to see how much more he does during the last 6.5 weeks! :)