“But my kindergarten students only want to write ‘I see’ sentences!” How do you help them move on to better sentence writing for kindergarten? You took so much time teaching your students the difference in letters, words, and sentences. Then you helped them with their handwriting, their spacing, and you taught them the ‘I see’ sentence starter. You praised them for inventive spelling and gave them confidence. They only had to ‘sound out’ one word to write a whole sentence! And now that’s all they want to write. And you have so much more to teach them.
Why are they stuck on “I see” sentences?
Hey, don’t worry. It’s not just you! My first year teaching kindergarten I realized I had set my students up to write these simple sentences! They were writing things and I thought we were doing great. I was thrilled that I had taken my littles from scribbles and barely recognizable letters to actual sentences. But… I had failed to focus on other types of sentences. I modeled different types during shared writing and morning meetings, but all I saw were “I see” sentences or “I like” sentences when it was their turn to write.
I was truly struggling to help my kiddos with other types of sentence writing for kindergarten. I kept encouraging them but wasn’t really seeing any changes. I realized it’s because simple sentences were where they were confident! I had to motivate them to try different sentences in a way that was still safe to make mistakes.
Why do they need to vary sentence structure?
Kindergarten writing standards dictate that students use pictures, dictation, and writing to compose opinion, informational, and narrative writing. “I see” and “I like” sentences can form basic writing pieces, but it doesn’t help them get their whole idea across. Students need repetitive easy readers to build confidence and fluency when beginning to read, but they are not super exciting. Definitely not as exciting as when stories have different sentence structures!
I always try to encourage my students to illustrate and write for a purpose to practice with sentence structure . If they want to entertain, inform, or persuade their audience, they have to mix it up! In order to get them on board with mixing it up I had to come up with something exciting and new for them. What did I start using in my classroom? Research!
Research can help inspire better sentence writing for kindergarten!
Young students are famous for asking “why?” I like to put the power back in their hands and incorporate research projects into my kindergarten classroom. My students usually enjoy animals, so in the winter I like to do an arctic animal “research investigation”. Students are engaged through video clips of animals and by bringing in stuffed animals or model figures of the animals. Arranging a virtual zookeeper visit or field trip can inspire students, and nothing makes better sentence writing for kindergarten easier than an exciting topic!
Writing sentences about research
When writing about their research students naturally have to use other sentences. Why? They can’t really tell facts using “I see” or “I like”. With graphic organizers to collect facts like real scientists, students start using different starters such as “Polar bears can, have, eat, are…” or even coming up with their own just to show off their new knowledge! Research projects also naturally incorporate a lot of new vocabulary into their writing, which is always something we want to encourage!
Arctic animals research for better sentence writing for kindergarten
If you want ready made templates for your kindergarten research writing check out my arctic animals research resource! It includes 16 different animals for you to choose from or let your students choose their own! It also has graphic organizer sheets, investigation sheets, showcase writing papers, and interactive notebook folding papers. It pairs perfectly with this set of arctic animal research books! I hope you use research in your classroom and help your students grow as writers!
