Have you thought of how you can use the Language Experience Approach (LEA) with your students? I promised in last month’s blog to share how I use LEA with my kindergarten class. If you missed that blog, check it out here for a review on what LEA is and why I love it so much! Also feel free to check out my other blogs in this Literacy Improvement Series, which explain how I, the English teacher in a Two-Way Immersion program, utilize biliteracy strategies to strengthen the literacy development of all of my students. In addition to the LEA 1st grade example, there are blogs on Oracy Development, Vocabulary, and Phonics/Dictado.

Now: LEA in the Kindergarten Classroom!

With my kindergarten students, I move from a concrete, shared experience to giving everyone the opportunity to think of one essential thing they want to remember from the experience. Recently, I used LEA as an end-of-unit activity for our Earth and Human Activity unit.

This is what I told my students before we began writing:

“Boys and Girls, we have learned so much about taking care of the Earth. When we went around school and picked up the trash, there was SO MUCH. It seems that not everyone knows or understands why taking care of the Earth is important or how to do it. If you were to tell the students at our school one thing about how or why we should take care of the Earth, what would you say?”

They had the chance to talk with their Thinking Partners. I intentionally did not give them sentence frames for this activity because the way that they formed their sentences/ideas would be an informal assessment as to where my students were with regards to sentence structure.

I try to plan the first day of LEA when I have extra help in the kindergarten classroom. At this point, after my students have shared with their Thinking Partners, my adult helper and I take one idea from each student and write it on a sentence strip.

We ask each student the question again, “If you were to tell the students at our school one thing about how or why we should take care of the Earth, what would you say?” We write exactly what the child says, regardless of grammar, sentence structure, or if it even is related to the question. Each child then has a sentence strip with their exact idea written on it. We do not write their names. Ultimately all of the ideas are put in one gigantic pile, celebrating their conscientiousness on taking care of our planet.

The next day we take a look at the ideas and read them all aloud. I prompt the students to listen to the ideas and decide whether it is an idea about WHY we should take care of the Earth or HOW to take care of the Earth. I am teaching them to organize their writing ideas. We now have two piles.

As we read through, it typically naturally occurs that students notice repeated ideas. “Well look at that!” I say, “This was such a great idea that two kids thought of it!” Then I ask their permission to edit; after all, these are their ideas, “Our audience might lose interest if we repeat ourselves too much. Would it be okay if we took one of these ideas out since they say just about the same thing?” This is why I do not put names on the sentence strips – so our shared ideas belong to everyone and no one’s idea is “thrown out.”

They enthusiastically agree, and usually one of the children will pipe up with a reason to keep one over the other. As needed, I will chime in and explain the differences, which is where I get to infuse some minilessons on complete sentences, word order, or other age-appropriate grammar.

Here are the ideas that they decided went together because they answered the “why” we take care of the Earth question.

After this point, we have two “paragraphs”, each with some ideas that most likely do not flow! The next day, we look at one of the paragraphs.

Me: “What were these ideas about?”

Students: “They were about why we should take care of the Earth!”

Me: “That’s it! When we’re writing we need what’s called a topic sentence to tell our readers what they will be reading about.” I then take their answer to my question What were these ideas about? and show them how to make a topic sentence out of it. This year, we crafted our topic sentence into a question: “Do you want to know why we should help the Earth?”

At this point we take all the ideas that fit that topic sentence and we edit. We move the sentence strips around and decide which ideas should be where in the paragraph. I rip apart sentence strips to combine ideas, change word order, or add missing words. We read it over and over and over again, making sure that what we’ve written makes sense and conveys our intended message.

The next day we work on the second paragraph the same way. Topic sentence, reorder, revise, rip, replace, read, read, read!

Then we put our paragraphs together and read them both. When the authors are satisfied, I type them up on the computer and print out a copy. After reading that version, we decide on one title together (sometimes I let students decide on their own title – everyone gets their own copy of the typed copy and they can write it in). I add the typed title, print a copy for each student, and they illustrate to match. They now have a typed, two-paragraph final draft all about what we learned during our unit, which they wrote, edited, and illustrated – and can READ. I was merely the facilitator and typist, sprinkling the process with minilessons on writing craft, conventions, and grammar.

This kindergarten student decided to add her own comments/captions to her illustrations. She wanted to extend the class’s writing.

This student thought that multiple pictures would be best to illustrate all of the ideas!

My students wrote for an audience (their schoolwide peers) with purpose (to teach them how and why to take care of the Earth) using the knowledge they gained from our unit (formative assessment for me!) and numerous writing standards (check, check, check!). They then practice their fluency and expression by reading it aloud to others (another check!).

LEA has the power to transform writing in your classroom. Watch then how your students begin to apply the lessons they learned through LEA into their journal writing and independent writing assignments!

I will share one more installment to my literacy improvement series next time: The Myth of the Literacy Block. I figure it’s a good topic for summer as you may be examining your units and decide how to fit it all in. Come back mid-July for some ideas on how to plan more efficiently.

Happy summer, everyone!