Getting Started

·   The journal is a supported teaching tool in Pre-K designed to be used with the teacher individually or in small groups, not independently.

·   Designed for Pre-K students going to Kindergarten next year.

·   Picture development (fine motor & visual discrimination) and oral language are the primary focus.

·   Student orally tells the story before beginning any writing.

·   Story needs to sound like a story. Point to elements on the narrative card during the oral pre-tell process.

·   Teacher helps develop oral language and provides oral support to the story through questioning or adding sentences/words.

Right Hand Side

·   Writing tools should be crayons that “drag”, rather than markers that “slip”. Small golf pencils work well for labeling and writing parts. Color for the picture in Pre-K.

·  Teacher consistently changes child’s hand to a three-point grip on writing tools and/or supplies commercial pencil grip.

·   The first focus is on creating “me” through the use of basic, well formed shapes-Circles, squares, rectangles, triangles.

·   Bodies should be full shapes (ovals, circles, triangles), not stick figures.

·   Student is encouraged to add details to themselves (me) that helps them identify themselves in the picture later.

·   After the student draws the picture and retells the oral story, teacher has child add any missing details to include a critical part(s) of the story or add needed color to emphasize a part (i.e. red lips to highlight an emotion or blood on a boo-boo, etc.)

·   As the child progresses and benchmarks indicate, teachers have students add more complex settings or significant event details such as lines that show movement or action, additions of a speech bubbles with words or random letters.

·   The teacher may also add a critical detail using hand-over-hand or simply drawing them into the student’s picture.

·  If student is capable, they label “me, mom, dad”- sight words copied from the yellow card. Otherwise teacher labels one or two words, while pointing to these on the narrative story card.

·   The teacher writes one sentence of the most compelling part of the story below the line. Teacher doesn’t write word-for-word dictation.

·   As students become more proficient in writing some letters, or no later than the 4^th quarter of Pre-K, students are instructed to write letters (random letter strings or phonetically) below the line.

Left Hand Side

·   Teacher enters the date and number of the entry. When doing an assessment entry, mark A1, A2 etc.

·   Initially, and periodically the teacher scores the level of the student work in an assessment with no teacher help and indicates that score for current level of student work and oral language. Use the Early Writing Assessment for this. The score is carried forward to each entry page until the next assessment is completed and the new score updated.

·   Teachers can demonstrate how to draw shapes, elements, features, actions, letters or words for the student to practice. Hand-over-hand can also be practiced here first and then on the student page.

·   Teacher notes any support they gave to the student- i.e. things the student added, labeled, changed at teacher request; or things the teacher added or did, such as hand-over-hand or adding color, speech bubbles, labels, etc.

·   Teacher indicates the next steps to work on in the next teaching session or during the next modeled writing.

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