Lucy Calkins Writing + TpT FREEBIE

Good morning! As we jump back into school, a new year is an excellent time to reorganize. In my classroom we follow the Lucy Calkins Writing Units of Study (it is the mandated writing curriculum from the county). Not only is this my first year teaching writing in Kinder, it's also my first exposure to Lucy Calkins (talk about a learning curve).

Before beginning writing, I set up a writing folder for each of my students. Calkins suggests that the folders have one side for pieces the students are working on and one side for finished pieces. I created these easy to read (Kinder friendly) labels to use in my folders. I wanted something that was going to be understood by all of my students (ESOL and nonreader friendly). Simply place the "GO I'm working on." green label on the left pocket in the writing folder and the "STOP I'm finished." red label on the right pocket. I've also included a writing folder label for the front of each folder. Grab your FREEBIE below!

Click for link to FREEBIE download!

Next, check out Learning At The Primary Pond and her post about using writing folders to support independent writers. I referred to her post several times while creating my writing folders. She has an awesome freebie included in her post. Thank you Alison!

Click for a link to the post.

Everyday during writing my students use their writing folder. Every. Single. Day! In the prongs I have added several writing resources for students to use during independent writing time. All the resources I chose to use are from TpT. Check out these fantastic resources and those who made them! (Click on the images for links to the resources on TpT.)

This resource is phenomenal!
I especially love the personal word wall.

I love, love, love this rubric!
So much that I created an anchor chart version of it.

Food for thought: How do you organize students writing materials in your classroom? What curriculum do you follow? What do you find challenging about teaching writing in Kinder?