Picture Writing

Writer's Workshop and "Kid Writing"

Writer's Workshop is a writing program designed by Lucy M. Calkins. This program is a progression of developmentally appropriate lessons that begin in Kindergarten and continue through fifth grade. Each year, there is a developed theme to the units with a set of skills that build upon the previous year's while at the same time preparing students to continue on into the next year. Calkins has written several series of books on setting up writing and reading programs that aim to meet students where their needs are and move them on at a pace individually suited for them. Calkins exhibits a fine knowledge of teaching practices and provides explanations that any primary grade teacher can relate to in her series of books titled, The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing"; in her words, "As K-2 teachers, we know that we will have a variety of writers in our classroom. We know there will be a range of ability levels from children who can write 'squiggles and lollipops' to (perhaps) those who can write pages full of conventional sentences." ⁵ These books are great tools for teachers, offering step-by-step instructions for how to set up a workshop, procedures to follow to ensure success in a workshop, as well as strategies to use within the workshops.

A second program that has been created from a combination of Lucy Calkins's Writer's Workshop and core Vygotskian theories is one titled "Kid Writing," which was developed by two primary grade teachers, Eileen G. Feldgus, Ed. D., and Isabell Cardonick, M.Ed. This program was written and geared toward the lower primary grades of Kindergarten and first grade. I find this program to be valuable for my typical set of students because it has the elements of Calkins's workshop while allowing teachers more opportunities to use their district adopted curriculum; thus, the teachers and students are happy with a developmentally appropriate and challenging program, and the administration has little room for objections as the curriculum has not been tossed out the window. Two of the main points of Feldgus and Cardonick's philosophy come directly from Vygotsky's theories of developmentally appropriate practices and the zone of proximal development: "Children learn best in risk-free environments with high levels of challenge and support," and "Children learn best through social interaction with a more knowledgeable peer or adult." ⁶ With the guidance of Feldgus and Cardonick, teachers can create an environment in which students are free to learn at their own pace, while still being challenged at a comfortable level. When the students reach a point of confusion or tension in their learning, they are encouraged to seek adult and peer help. Conversely, the guiding adult or more "knowledgeable" peer is fine tuning his or her own skills when providing that assistance in the role of an expert.

A second benefit I see in Feldgus and Cardonick's writing program is the continued emphasis on writing throughout the entire day and on linking those lessons to phonemic and phonetic awareness—but only when the child is ready to do so. This point also recalls Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." ⁷ Again, the child is working at a level of comfortable challenge. As we all know, our students come to us with varying levels of literacy development, social-emotional develop, and maturity. In allowing every student to work at a rate that is suited for him or her, we take away the stress and anxiety that some may feel when they look at a phonics workbook only to see a strange combination of lines and curves, while the teacher goes on to name these figures and urge the students to copy them. While some students may come to us ready to name the letters, give their sounds, and practice writing them on lined paper, others have not developed that skill and may need to learn to hold a pencil before they even begin to think about forming the letters.

Many recent studies support the idea that children who are of Kindergarten age are not physically or cognitively ready to master or even practice handwriting until later on in the school year. In one study conducted by Stephen Rushton and Elizabeth Larkin titled "Shaping the Learning Environment: Connecting Developmentally Appropriate Practices to Brain Research," the authors provide a list of the numerous parts of the brain that are active when simply picking up a book to read: "For instance, reading a book requires that the child picks up a book, (activating the motor cortex: movement); she looks at the words, (activating the occipital lobe: vision); she attempts to decipher words (activating the temporal lobe: language); and finally, she begins to think about what the words mean (activating the frontal lobe: reasoning)." ⁸ A task that seems so simple, picking up a picture book to view or read, involves several parts of the brain and uses several skills. If this activity is so taxing, imagine how much it takes to see a letter, interpret it, pick up a pencil, and copy the form. Are we asking too much of our students too soon? I say the answer to that question is, yes. In a case study titled "Relationship Between Visual-Motor Integration and Handwriting Skills of Children in Kindergarten: A Modified Replication Study," Christopher J. Daly, Gail T. Kelley, and Andrea Krauss found that "Developmentally, a kindergarten age child is sharpening fine motor skills and visual perceptual skills that together enable them to perform activities requiring visual-motor integration, specifically handwriting." ⁹ Most kindergarten students are not equipped with the visual motor skills needed to learn to form the figures of the alphabet, let alone ready to decipher the images and symbols that make up written language. To many children the letters of the alphabet are recognizable only because they see them everywhere they go, but not because they have had a chance to decode the symbols and images. What Lucy Calkins, Eileen Feldgus and Isabell Cardonick attempt to do is set up a structure or frame for a writing program that allows teachers to modify it in order to meet the needs of their students.