Kindergarten writing is probably the subject where you can see the most growth throughout the year. Students come in scribbling or writing some letters and you have to slowly teach them proper letter formation. Then you teach the difference in letters and words, words vs. sentences, and finally complete sentences with inventive spelling and sight words. By the end of the year many of your students will be writing whole stories with detailed illustrations! But how do you get them there?
Why Teaching the Difference in Words vs. Sentences Matters
One of the things that gives many of my students hiccups in writing is the difference in words and sentences. Leaving spaces between words is challenging! They aren’t sure whether to leave them between each letter or just not leave them at all. Teaching words vs. sentences is important because it helps students understand when to leave spaces. This makes their writing easier for them and others to read.
How to Teach Words vs. Sentences
Anchor Charts
I spend a lot of time making anchor charts with my students. I believe that the classroom is our classroom, not just my classroom. When we make anchor charts together I find my students reference them more because they remember the lesson. It’s also a great tool for them to use independently when they have a question. During reading or writing centers they can look on the wall and use their environment to problem solve. Sometimes I have them copy our anchor charts into their notebooks or make them personal versions for their writing folders.
One of the easiest anchor charts to make for this is to use colored sentence strips and write a sentence on each color. For example you may write “I see the cat” on a green sentence strip and on a blue sentence strip. Then I would cut the sentence apart into word segments on one color and leave the other intact. We would talk about how I divided one sentence into words and left the other sentence whole.
You could also use this lesson to differentiate words and letters. I would simply write the same sentence on another color strip and cut apart the words into individual letters. This is an easy independent activity after you have taught the mini lesson. Simply leave the colored cards in your pocket chart and have students sort by letters, words and sentences.
Mixed Up Sentences
My students have loved cut and paste activities this year, so we have done a lot of that! I have found a lot of resources where students have to cut apart words, mix them up to form a complete sentence, and then glue them before writing. This is a great activity to reinforce the difference in words and sentences. It also makes students read to make sure their word order is correct. Word order and word and sentence discrimination are such an important part of learning complete sentence structure and words vs. sentences in kindergarten!
I also have a lot of mixed up sentences that we complete as pocket chart activities. Students mix up the word cards, build the sentence, and then read or write with a buddy or alone. For some of my students who are really struggling with this concept I will complete writing progress monitoring with them. I have sentences that focus on narrative, informational, and opinion writing. I help them build and write these as part of their interventions.
Engagement
In kindergarten you know you put on a show sometimes to keep them engaged in the lessons you are teaching. I love to use funny voices when I’m reading to show if something is written correctly. For example, I’ll often make purposeful mistakes when writing, such as writing an entire sentence without leaving any spaces. Then I’ll read it like a cheetah without breathing. The students think it’s hilarious and stay engaged. Then we’ll talk about how we need to leave spaces and punctuation to show us where words and sentences end.
I also like to use color coding when teaching writing and words vs. sentences. I’ll underline individual words in one color and then the entire sentence in another. Often I have students showcase and share out when they are writing correctly. This builds classroom community and students will notice if theirs looks different and fix it. Giving students colored Popsicle sticks to use as spacers between their words is another easy motivator to help students remember to separate words in their sentences.
I’m a huge fan of music in my classroom. One of our favorite songs is the Sentence Song from Scratch Garden. It focuses on beginning capitalization and ending punctuation which is always helpful to reinforce!
Progress Monitoring
If you are not sure if students are having difficulty discriminating words vs. sentences or simply not leaving spaces when they are writing, it is time to do some progress monitoring! With writing assessments you can first identify the need such as if the student is not discriminating letters from words or words from sentences. After the need is identified, it can be easily targeted!
I have assessments and progress monitoring sheets for many writing foundational skills, graphs to chart progress, and writing interventions for opinion, narrative, and informational writing. This makes it easy for me to help my students bridge gaps they have with writing. I love that my writing progress monitoring gives me tons of data on how my students are writing and growing that I normally wouldn’t have.
Teaching Words vs. Sentences Takeaways
Teaching words vs. sentences can seem like a big thing to tackle, but just remember how far your students have come! If they’re pretending to read their writing and are forming proper letters, then teaching the difference in words and sentences will come soon. You can help them take that leap and soon you’ll be teaching them to write even better sentences for kindergarten!
Assess Your Students and Target their Writing Need Today!
Use this words vs. sentences progress monitoring freebie to understand which of your students are still struggling with this concept. Once you know who is having difficulty, you can easily target this need and help them communicate their thoughts through writing words and sentences!
