Differentiating Narrative Writing in Kindergarten

Differentiating writing in kindergarten doesn’t have to be tricky! Here is the easiest way to differentiate narrative writing in your kindergarten classroom:

It is unrealistic to assume everyone in kindergarten can write a sentence on each page by November. Sure, it would be nice but if you still have students working on mastering all of their letters/sounds - it is an impossible task for them to independently write a sentence on each page with a beginning, middle and end of a story without tears or complete one on one support.

Here’s what I would do instead:

Give them all different types of books BUT the gist is always the same. 

Let's pretend you're using my Narrative Unit in kindergarten. Each student will receive a book with a front cover, a page labeled for beginning, middle and end. However - the actual pages will look different inside. 

Some students will have a huge rectangle for drawing. Some will have a big rectangle for drawing AND one line with a sentence stem. Some students will have a smaller rectangle for drawing with multiple lines (and no sentence stem).

Every day they will listen to the same mini lesson and given the same task BUT their expectation will be different based on their ability.

The students with the big rectangle? They will be drawing the beginning of their story for the entire writers workshop. When the teacher comes around, they can work on labeling the picture together. This would depend on the amount of letter/sound knowledge the student has AND their fine motor development. 

The students with the smaller rectangle and one line will be drawing and labeling independently. They may need help with the sentence stem or a few letter sounds when they are labeling.

By the end of 2 days working on the beginning page you’d expect them to have a picture labeled and a sentence stem copied down with one of their labels at the end of the sentence. Some students may still need to trace the sentence stem from a teacher but there will also be some students that can do this independently with a little bit of teacher help - mainly sounding out unknown words or tricky sounds.

The students that are given a smaller rectangle with multiple lines will know to copy down their rough draft picture, add more labels and to start writing. These students are ready to WRITE and will probably not need you much during Writer's Workshop. I would still walk around and confer with these students but they are definitely what you would call independent writers. 

I find with independent writers we are focusing on remembering sentence structure (period, spacing, capital letter) and working towards adding even MORE details to our stories!

As you can see from the pictures above, kindergarten writing can range SO much. That's why you need to have realistic expectations for your students. It helps with their confidence and you won't be frustrated trying to have everyone write two sentences every day when some just simply aren't ready for that step yet.

The best thing you can do is to meet each student where they are academically and go from there. Need more writing help? This is my complete Kindergarten Writing Unit that will provide you with scripted lesson plans, anchor charts and TONS of differentiated writing papers for your students.