What did you write today?

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.