Units of Study for Writing

This engaging new book-length unit will transform your kindergartners into inventive spellers, giving them the tools and strategies they need to approximate the words that are most meaningful for them in their own writing. The unit celebrates invented spellings as kids develop foundational skills, knowing that your front-and-centre goal will be to persuade your kids that they can write, that they too can be members of the literacy club.

Show and Tell fits tongue and groove into the original Units of Study in Opinion Information, and Narrative Writing series as well as the new Units of Study in Phonics, although it can also be taught as a self-contained stand-alone unit. Throughout the unit, focused minilessons, independent writing time, and interactive writing sessions help students learn how to:

• engage in the inventive spelling process: drawing, then labelling part by part, and revising to add more and more labels
• write the most salient sounds in words and then “stretch out” these sounds into full words
• string together words learned through inventive spelling into full sentences
• create their own books, dividing their subject into chunks that can be captured across the pages of a book
• make decisions about page layouts by studying mentor texts
• talk about their writing with excitement and ease
• write lots of sentences across pages in a pattern, using high-frequency words as well as words learned through inventive spelling
• select some of their books to make “bookstore ready” and publish them

This unit is designed to be taught after Unit 1 of the Kindergarten Writing Units of Study and in conjunction with Unit 2 of the Kindergarten Phonics Units of Study. Bend 1 of Show and Tell and Bend 1 of Word Scientists, the second kindergarten unit in the new Units of Study in Phonics, were written to align perfectly with each other.