How do we teach young students to write?! This is one of the most COMMON questions that I get asked — and it’s a doozy! Whilst there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to teaching kindergarten students how to write basic complete sentences, there are definitely lots of different strategies that I’ve picked up over the years which I’ve found are super helpful in supporting beginning writers as they learn this fundamental building block!
This blog post will outline the natural progression of early writing, along with teaching tips for each of the phases, so that you know which key writing skills to include in your direct instruction sessions with your whole class. Keep reading for a range of kindergarten writing worksheets and sentence starters that will help to cater to the varied needs of your students as they build their early writing skills and become independent writers.
Level 1: Scribbles
Young children write using scribbles or nonsense symbols. They may insert or copy some letters, but the sentence is essentially unreadable. They might also put a full stop (period) after every word.
Level 2: Needs full support to copy
Students dictate their own sentences (or sentence fragments) for the teacher to scribe and cut up. Students sort the group of words and put them in the correct order (this may require teacher assistance) and then copy. There may be limited spaces between words and/or letter reversals.
Some teaching tips for this phase includes:
- If a child is still struggling to copy the words written for them, you may also need to write the complete sentence for them to trace.
- Finger spaces between words:
- Use a spacer or finger as a physical scaffold to ensure spaces between all the words.
- Over-exaggerate the spaces between words when re-assembling pieces of the sentences.
- Write the sentence starter on one piece of paper and have multiple ending options that the child can substitute in to create different sentences. E.g. Look at the dog. Look at the cat. Look at the frog. You could also draw pictures above the words as an additional scaffold.
- Alternatively, you might like to use my Kindergarten Writing Station - this is a great addition to your literacy centers and contains a range of kindergarten writing prompts and word cards, ensuring that students are never short of writing ideas!
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Kindergarten sentence building activities with interactive worksheets. Cut up the sentence and provide students with a scaffold to guide them as they glue it in the right order. You might like to put a star under the capital letter to indicate that it is the first word in the sentence.
These sentence writing worksheets are perfect for supporting early writers in building sentences with simple words.
These sentence building worksheets contain sentences with common high frequency words, as they are a cut and paste activity, they are also a fun way to build fine motor skills at the same time.
I recommend modelling as a whole class before students complete the task independently.
You could also use these sentence worksheets as additional practice pages in your literacy rotations or as a writing center activity.
Level 3: Magic 'squiggle' writing and some known sounds
Students attempt to copy sentence starters and write some common high-frequency or sight words. They attempt to sound out some words or write the first sound that they can hear, and use squiggles or ‘magic writing’ for the rest (where they use squiggles for the parts of the word that they cannot sound out).
Spaces may or may not be apparent between some or all words. Students will often need a reminder to remember capital letters and full stops.
Some teaching tips for this phase includes:
- Spaces between words:
- Use a spacer or finger as a physical scaffold to ensure spaces between all the words.
- Model NON-examples to students and discuss where you should have put the spaces.
- Encourage students to begin writing at least the first sound of each word. This will assist you and them in being able to decipher what it says!
- Explicitly teach and practise using magic writing for words and sentences. These examples below are from my Beginning Sentences PowerPoint Slides.
- Remind kids to only using capitals at the start of a sentence.
- Provide extra practice of correct letter formation, focusing on lowercase letters that students are reversing or struggling to form. For some letters, this may be why they are reverting to using capital letters instead.
- Count out the number of words in your sentence before you write it. Make sure you only have that many words or squiggles when you’re finished- this helps to prevent additional words being added to create run-on sentences, like in third example below.
- Another idea can be to count out gems or counters and place where each word will go. This can also help with spaces!
Level 4: Simple sentences with a combination of sounds and scribbles
Students have a basic understanding of correct sentence structure. They copy sentence starters and write some common high-frequency words. They attempt to sound out words, but may flip or muddle some sounds or rely on ‘magic’ writing for some words. This is where they use squiggles for the parts of the word that they cannot sound out. They may also forget to include some words or include stray capitals (see bottom example). They remember some capital letters and full stops.
Some teaching tips for this phase includes:
- Talk about your sentence before you write it. Count the number of words. You might want to review the tricky words that will be included. Discuss a goal for the sentence before writing it e.g. Today we are going to try and remember spaces between all of our words, or today I’d like you to remember a full stop at the end. You might like to have individual writing goals for students to tick off.
- Continue to reinforce spaces between words- use a physical spacer if needed or model non examples.
- Encourage students to only rely on magic squiggle writing for words they are really unsure of- we want to wean them off relying on this strategy and encourage them to have a go at words by writing the sounds that they can hear.
- Have taught sounds and high-frequency words visible for students to refer to.
- Practise common high-frequency words which students are making spelling errors with – map the sounds, and identify the tricky part of the word that we have to know by heart (e.g. is, the, was, are).
- Continue to reinforce the correct use of capital letters and letter formation.
- Model, model, model - as seen below using my Recount Writing PowerPoint Slides.
Level 5: Simple sentences
Students are able to independently attempt full meaningful sentences about a simple subject without relying on a sentence starter or squiggles/magic writing. However, when writing sentences, they will stick to known high-frequency words and simple decodable words which they are able to sound out themselves. They sometimes remember spaces between words, capital letter at the start and a full stop at the end, but this can be inconsistent or require reminders. There may still be stray capitals in some words.
Some teaching tips for this phase includes:
- Verbalise the sentence before you write it and discuss a goal for the sentence before writing it. E.g. Today I’d like you to remember a capital letter at the start of your sentence.
- Encourage students to begin to attempt words that they may not know how to spell- DO NOT feel that you need to correct all of their spelling if they make errors when sounding out words. We want them to have the confidence to have a go!
- Rank spaces between words using a smiley face. Smile for all spaces, straight mouth for some spaces and frown for no spaces.
- Introduce a sentence checklist that checks for all the crucial parts of a sentence. Encourage students to re-read their sentence once they are finished to check:
- Whether or not their sentence is a complete thought and makes sense - this is an important foundational skill and can be modelled through non-examples such as ‘the cat was’ or ‘I went zoo’.
- Capital letter
- Full stop
- Spaces
- If a student is struggling with spaces, verbalise the sentence and count out the words. Draw lines for each word. Ask the student to point to each line and say the word that they will write. You may need to continue to remind them as they then attempt the sentence.
- Model errors and how to correct them.
- Build decoding skills and sentence skills by writing decodable silly sentences.
Level 6: Independent longer sentences with attempts at trickier words
Students are able to independently attempt a full sentence. They attempt to sound out increasingly tricky words and write the sounds that they can hear. They may include letter patterns that they have seen in other words (e.g. ‘or’ in saw). They sometimes forget capitals, spaces or full stops. They may sometimes revert back to squiggle/magic writing rather than attempting to sound out a word themselves and there may still be some stray capitals or reversals.
Some teaching tips for this phase includes:
- Some ideas if students are forgetting full stops:
- Students collect a pom pom or counter at the end of each sentence and place that where their full stop should be.
- Place a gold star or sticker at the end of each full stop that they have remembered.
- Encourage students to write more than one sentence, and to try and include a simple describing word. You could add in checking for a wow word/describing word with the sentence checklist.
- Continue to correct stray capitals and practise letters that students are consistently reversing or struggling to form.
The next steps
To learn more about 'where to next', download my free Kindergarten Writing guide. This includes the next steps for Kindergarten and first grade students, where students include different parts of speech and explore using different punctuation marks e.g. exclamation mark or question mark. Students may begin writing short paragraphs in their creative writing, and write different types types of sentences e.g. compound sentences, complex sentences.
