Writing from the ground up!

I knew that Rachel Brodie and Nickie Riley's kindergarten class was going to be about writing, but I had forgotten that writing begins not with essays, paragraphs, sentences, or even words; obviously, it begins with letters. The letter of the day was Y--just like on Sesame Street. I'd never before considered how confusing it is that Y begins with a W sound. Clearly, phonics don't solve all of our problems with English! The kids were very focused in practicing their y's with markers on on individual-sized white boards. Some of the letters were backwards; some had tails too long or tops too short, but eventually everybody had a board full of very credible y's, and they were ready to take on you, your, yellow, yummy, yesterday, and yikes! They even got to practice distinguishing between words that start with Y and others that confuse by starting with W--which, of course, is what Y sounds like!

I came away impressed with the kids' seriousness of purpose and eagerness to get it right. (Well, there was Aiden who needed a little extra attention in the hallway from Ms. Riley!) Even more, I came away awed by the energy and creativity that goes into every lesson with the munchkins. I'm convinced that the younger the kids the better the teacher has to be to achieve success. My hat's off to Rachel and Nickie for making such an important and exhausting job look easy. Dan Kasten