One of the students came in very excited about a story she made up at bedtime the night before. We read The Three Little Pigs the previous morning and she had been quite inspired. After telling us a bit of her story, we encouraged her to write it down to share with the class. This is a page from her tale of The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark.
Just in case your kid-reading is a bit fuzzy, allow me to translate:
Once upon a time, there was three little fish. First they made a house out of…
The writing above uses one of the kid-writing strategies we introduced a couple of weeks ago. When you are sounding out a word and you come to a sound you don’t know how to represent, use a dash instead. This shows the adult reader that the child can identify that a separate sound is represented, but that it is not in their repertoire, yet. Teachers and families can use these dashes to reinforce sound connections that are still progressing.