January, 2011

Dear Parent,

I hope this letter gives you an overview of the work we are doing in the area of

writing. Our emphasis in school will be on writing, itself. Your child’s writing will

change dramatically this year. At the start of the year, some children will pretend

to write. Soon they will start labeling their pictures with labels that contain a

letter or two. Once those labels become more complete, I will have children write

sentences under their pictures. A child’s first sentences will be hard to read

because they won’t yet have learned to leave white spaces between words, but like

everything else, that will change. The sentences will become easier to read as the

child leaves sentences between words, learns and uses a repertoire of familiar

words, and becomes more skilled with using phonemic awareness and phonics. We

will continue to teach letters, sounds, and the spelling of high-frequency words at

other times of the day as well as writing, and this instruction will help children

write stories that all of us can read.

As a way to help your child draw and write about his or her experiences, we are

please asking you to jot down on a piece of paper two things your child did over

the weekend. These don’t need to be out of the ordinary events. It will just help

your child remember what he or she did and therefore write about it. Please, send

the piece of paper inside your child’s folder every Monday.

Thank you,

The Kindergarten Teachers