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Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten

Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten
By Katie Wood Ray, Matt Glover

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Product Description

 
From the very first chapter of this informative and inspiring book, a clear picture emerges of how even three- and four-year-olds' capacities for serious authorship can and should be supported.
- Lillian G. Katz
Coauthor of Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years
 
By the time they reach preschool or kindergarten, young children are already writers. They don't have much experience, but they're filled with stories to tell and ideas to express - they want to show the world what they know and see. All they need is a nurturing teacher like you to recognize the writer at work within them. All you need to help them is Already Ready.
 
Taking an exciting, new approach to working with our youngest students, Already Ready shows you how, by respecting children as writers, engaged in bookmaking, you can gently  nudge them toward a lifetime of joyful writing. Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover guide you through fundamental concepts of early writing. Providing numerous, helpful examples of early writing - complete with transcriptions - they demonstrate how to:
  • make sense of children's writing and interpret how they represent sounds, ideas, and images
  • see important developmental signs in writers that you can use to help them grow further
  • recognize the thinking young children engage in and discover that it's the same  thinking more experienced writers use to craft purposeful, thoughtful pieces.
 
Then Ray and Glover show you how little ones can develop powerful understandings about:
  • texts and their characteristics
  • the writing process
  • what it means to be a writer.
You'll learn how to support your writers' quest to make meaning, as they grow their abilities and refine their thinking about writing through teaching strategies such as:
  • reading aloud
  • working side by side with writers
  • sharing children's writing.
 
Writing is just one part of a busy early childhood classroom, but even in little doses, a nurturing approach can work wonders and help children connect the natural writer inside them to a life of expressing themselves on paper. Find that approach, share it with your students, and you'll discover that you don't have to get students ready to write - they're Already Ready. 

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #10301 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-01-11
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 240 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Katie Wood Ray is the author of the Heinemann titles Already Ready (2008), Study Driven (2007), About the Authors (2004) and its DVD companion The Teaching Behind ABOUT THE AUTHORS (2005), and What You Know by Heart (2002).A former Associate Professor at Western Carolina University Katie is now a full time writer and researcher of the teaching of writing. With a particular focus on the study of writing craft, she leads teacher workshops and summer institutes across the nation related to the teaching of writing. Her professional background includes both elementary and middle school teaching experience and two years as a staff developer at The Reading and Writing Project, Teachers College, Columbia University. She was also the coeditor of the journal Primary Voices K - 6, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. Katie is also the author or coauthor of Spelling in Use: Looking Closely at Spelling in the Whole Language Classrooms (1996, NCTE), Wondrous W

Matt Glover is coauthor (with Katie Wood Ray) of Already Ready (2008).An early childhood educator and presenter, he is the principal of Creekside Early Childhood School, which includes preschool, kindergarten and first grade children. As a teacher and principal his interests have focused on nurturing the intellectual growth of children. Matt lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife and four children.

Customer Reviews

Already Ready5
Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover's book is a `must read' for all early childhood educators. I also recommend it to parents of young children as well as primary grade teachers who want to know more about how young writers develop.
Although Ray and Glover admit that the skills of writing are complex, they assert that they can and should be supported in even the youngest children--as soon as they can hold a crayon! Even before children can write their names, they can develop ideas and stories using oral language that can be supported by even the simplest of illustrations. Ray and Glover explain, in great detail and using student-created examples, how to support this kind of writing in developmentally appropriate ways.
Interestingly, in their "Afterword," Ray and Glover admit the need for further observation, research and explanation regarding the development of writing in preschool children. I appreciate their acknowledgment of possible shortcomings, and I certainly hope to see more from these thoughtful educators. However, at this point in time, this book provides plenty of information for teachers to currently support writers who are "already ready."

Already Ready5
"Already Ready" by Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover is a very teacher-friendly, easy to read book with a clear message.Preschool children given the appropriate encouragement, modeling, and materials, are ready to write at much earlier ages than we have traditionally thought before. This book documents the writing process of very young writers through pictures and written teacher observations. I was struck by the sophisticated composition taking place in these classrooms of very young students. The mental process occuring for all writers is explained in a clear fashion. This book validates the writing process rather than the writing product in isolation. Although I teacg fourth grade, I found this book insightful.

Early Primary Writing Development4
This is a great book that emphasizes the importance of nurturing young writers. I enjoyed the manner in which the authors provided student writing samples for teachers to evaluate. Further, the authors used those samples to demonstrate and explain the attributes of early writing. As a teacher, I found it enjoyable to read this book as it is straightforward and easy to understand. I also found that I did a lot of highlighting as there were many strengths of this book. In particular, I like that Ray and Glover emphasized what it means for a child to be a writer. It may not be what adults would naturally think of as writing, which is why the student samples are critical. I would highly recommend this book for teachers of early primary literacy.