Reasonable Writing Goals for Kindergarten

As your child’s teacher, it’s important to identify reasonable writing goals for kindergarten. If you use writers’ workshop you’ll discover there are plenty of reasonable writing goals for kindergarten.

Writers’ workshop puts children in charge of their writing. You teach them developmentally appropriate writing skills and strategies to build a good foundation, helping them gain control over writing mechanics to compose meaningful, understandable text.

What if My Child Isn’t Writing Yet?

Kindergarteners typically start writing by composing with pictures. This means we can’t dismiss their drawings as part of their writing development. Illustrating is equally important as writing words. You can teach into your child’s illustration making just like you would with writing.

Kids may be scribbling, so why not show them how to draw stick figures with lines and circles? This growth in their drawing ability is another step forward in conveying a clearer message to the reader.

Just because a child has not mastered representing letters for sounds in words, it doesn’t mean she can’t tell her story through pictures.

What Makes a Writing Goal Reasonable?

Developmentally appropriate and attainable

Kids naturally move through writing stages. A child in the random letter writing stage is not ready to copy words he sees in his environment. Reasonable writing goals are those your child can actually attain.

Based on what’s been previously taught

The writing goal should be based on a skill you’ve already taught your child. If you haven’t taught her how to write lower case letters, she can’t be expected to use lower case letters.

Takes individual child into consideration

Children learning in a traditional school ultimately get compared to others based on standards. Treating your child as an individual is the luxury of homeschooling. The common core doesn’t rule your life.

Kids learn to read at different rates. Some kids don’t become proficient readers until the upper elementary years. Other kids learn when they’re three-years-old, and their parents didn’t even try hard! Every child is different, so don’t expect your child to fit in the perfect box you envision.

Your writing goals for kindergarten must take into consideration attention span, fine motor skills, interest, and language skills.

My daughter was writing books in kindergarten, but my son was drawing and labeling. I didn’t expect him to perform at the same level as his sister, because he’s wired differently. His writing ability may develop more gradually over the years.

List of Writing Goals for Kindergarten

I hesitantly share this list of writing goals. But I know it helps to have some kind of framework, so you know the kinds of skills and strategies to work on during writers’ workshop.

Although tempting, this list is not meant to be a checklist of goals your child should meet by the end of kindergarten. You may not cover all these goals in kindergarten, because your child may not be able to do these yet.

Some of these writing skills take years to develop. You may have a third grader working on some of these same goals. But, these are writing skills and strategies that young writers can start developing now.

Use this list as a guide to think about what you might teach your kindergarten writer next.

• Draw pictures that match my story.
• Point to parts of my picture and tell it like a story.
• Label my pictures.
• Write left to right and top to bottom.
• Go back to a piece, reread, and add more.
• Keep my pencil in my hand the whole time.
• Make my words and pictures go together.
• Say words s-l-o-w-l-y and write each letter that I hear.
• Start sentences with an upper case and end with a period.
• Write words with lower case letters.
• Write my words neatly so they’re easy to read.
• Put spaces between words.
• Spell the best I can and keep going.
• Use the word wall, dictionary, or a book to spell a word.
• Reread and use an editing checklist.

How to Choose Reasonable Writing Goals for Kindergarten

You Choose the Goal

To choose reasonable writing goals to work on with your kindergartener, think about where she is in her writing development. What does she already do well? What would be a helpful next step for her? There is no right or wrong way to do this. Go with what feels appropriate for your child.

Here’s an example. My kindergartener was doing more drawing than writing most days. When he did write, it was all over the page and in no particular order. A logical next step for him was to learn to write on the paper from left to right and top to bottom.

Let Your Child Choose the Goals

You can make writing goals together with your child, like this kindergarten teacher does with her students. She uses a cut-and-paste goal sheet to keep in their writing folders. I love the idea of helping kids take ownership for their learning!

Support the Writing Goals

Check in Regularly

After you’ve chosen a writing goal, check in weekly to ask how your child is doing. See if he can share with you a specific example in his writing that shows it.

For example,

“You’ve been working on making your words go with your pictures. Can you find a place in your book where you did that?”

Keep it positive and notice any success. But, encourage your child to keep at it every time he writes. Start each writers’ workshop with a reminder of current writing goals.

Use Mini-Lessons to Reinforce the Writing Goal

Don’t teach a skill or strategy once and expect your child to remember and apply it every day. Use several mini-lessons to reinforce the writing goal.

For example, if your child’s writing goal is to start each sentence with an upper case letter, you can do quick lessons to help it sink into his mind.

• One day you look at a page in a published book and ask him to find all the upper case letters at the beginning of sentences.
• Another day you model writing a sentence in your book, talking aloud about how you need to use a capital.
• Finally, you have your child play detective, finding all the missing upper case letters in a written piece.

When to Make New Writing Goals

When Your Child is Struggling

If your child is struggling to meet a writing goal after much time and effort, it’s time to evaluate. Is the goal reasonable? Is he unmotivated or uninterested? Have you taught her the necessary skills? Has she had enough modeling? Think about whether you need to modify the goal or drop it completely.

When Your Child Shows Success

If your child no longer needs reminding of a goal and can demonstrate consistency, it’s time to check it off and choose another goal. You might want to make a chart to keep track of goals. Keep it in your child’s writing folder or on the wall to reference during writing time and record progress over time.

Concluding Thoughts

Teaching writing in kindergarten is easier when you know what kinds of writing goals to work on. Use the list as a guide for what you might teach next. Once you’ve taught a certain skill and your child seems capable of implementing it, consider it one of your reasonable writing goals for kindergarten.

When you intentionally work on specific writing goals, you’ll be thrilled at seeing how much growth your kindergarten writer can accomplish when given the opportunity. And that’s worth celebrating!

Resource:

Serravallo, Jennifer. 2017. The Writing Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.