Celebrating Real Writing

Thank you to Ruth Ayres for inviting us to share our celebrations.  Even in the most trying of weeks, it's refreshing to find the shining moments that sustain us to keep moving forward.

As the reading support teacher and literacy coach in my building, I get to talk to a lot of kids and teachers.  It's one of the things I love most about my job.  Some of those conversations pop up at the most unexpected times as well...

As I was opening ketchup packets and yogurt tubes during first grade lunch duty, a little girl looked up at me and smiled shyly.  "Thank you for commenting on our blog," she said to me.  I brightened immediately.

"I loved your blog," I told her and the others at her table.  "It's so fun to read about all the great learning you are doing in school."

Her friend sitting next to her jumped in next, bouncing on the long wooden bench as she said,. "We have some questions we need to ask.  We get to write the next blog post all by ourselves.  M's mom wrote in colors.  We are wondering how she did that, so we are going to put that in our blog.   Someone else wrote in big letters.  We don't know how they did that either. That's going to be another one of our questions."

There is nothing I love more than seeing kids be excited about reading and writing.  I marveled at the important lessons their teacher was imparting:

• Writers write for a real audience.
• That audience extends beyond our classroom walls.
• Writers (and researchers) ask questions when they want to learn more.
• Writers reach out to experts to get those answers.  Sometimes those experts are our parents or even other kids in our class.
• These young writers have been empowered to make decisions about the message they want to share with their audience.  In addition, their teacher trusts them to create that message on their own.  She'll be there to support them as they learn the conventions of print, just as she would if they were composing on chart paper.
• Writing is purposeful.
• Writing is meaningful and fun!

Sure enough, the next day, I received a message from Mrs. Cochran that her students had published another blog.  

If you have a chance to visit their blog and leave a comment, I'm sure that they would love it.  Which means, we'll have lots more to talk about on Monday at lunch.