Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten [Paperback]

Katie Wood Ray (Author), Matt Glover (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0325010730 | ISBN-13: 978-0325010731 | Publication Date: January 11, 2008

 

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. 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Between her passion for elementary writing instruction and a love of children's literature, Katie Wood Ray found herself asking, "What if children were introduced to key qualities of good writing in the context of illustrations?" This question led to the research behind In Pictures and In Words. The answer was simple yet powerful: "The thinking students do while reading picture books can help them see the connection between what words and illustrations do to make meaning." As an author of bestselling Heinemann books such as Already Ready, Study Driven, About the Authors, and What You Know By Heart and as a member of Heinemann Professional Development Services, Katie has always given teachers resources and PD that transform writing instruction and help children discover a lifelong love of writing. 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 Words: Writers and Writing in the Elementary Classroom (1999, NCTE), and The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And Theyre All Hard Parts) (2001, NCTE). A frequent speaker at conferences and summer institutes around the country, Katie also has extensive experience teaching teachers in workshop and demonstration settings. Katie Wood Ray is a Heinemann Professional Development presenter. EC0410

Matt Glover is a full-time educational consultant and author. He is the coauthor (with Katie Wood Ray) of Already Ready (2008) and author of Engaging Young Writers, Preschool-Grade 1 (2009). Matt is a frequent presenter at conferences and in school districts on topics related to nurturing young writers and supporting children's intellectual growth and development. Matt has been an educator for over 20 years, including 12 years as the principal and instructional leader of Creekside Early Childhood School, a school of 900 preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students. Before becoming a principal, Matt taught first grade. Matt lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife and four children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Heinemann (January 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0325010730
• ISBN-13: 978-0325010731
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Opener, July 16, 2008

By 

K. Hunter (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten (Paperback)

Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten opened my eyes to a new way to encourage writing in preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Allowing kids to "make" books is ingenious. The biggest "ah ha" I had is when 3 and 4 year olds are creating illustrations in their books, even without words, and then they are allowed to talk about them in a manner that sounds like storytelling, they are writers! Ray and Glover explain in depth the complex thinking that young writers go through and it is the same process we go through as adults. The only difference they say is preschool and kindergarten writers are less experienced. However, through reading aloud, having conversations about the read alouds, side-by-side teaching, and sharing these young writers will gain valuable experience. This book has a lot of vignettes and examples of the books young writers have made. Seeing is believing!!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Already Ready, July 15, 2008

By 

Nicole Addy - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten (Paperback)

Katie Wood Ray makes this a book that is easy to read and offers many examples of how her ideas can work in a classroom. She focuses on how preschool children can see themselves as writers and how important this self image is. If you are looking for a book that gives encouraging ideas of how to make your preschool classroom a place where children are excited to write and taking risks in their writing then this book is exactly what you are looking for. If you are studying the development that a child takes through the writing process and the different stages of spelling and phonics/phonemic awareness then this may not be the text that you want to pick up.
One of the things that I loved about this book are the examples and visuals Katie Wood Ray gives of preschool writing. If you are new to education you may not see the writing preschoolers do as real writing. Wood Ray combats this idea saying that she believes anyone, regardless of age, who is creating or making a product that they believe is writing and has a message is writing and their writing should be valued.
Preschool teachers who are looking for new ideas or who are attempting to tell others about what they are doing in their rooms may want to pick up this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two thumbs up, July 13, 2008

By 

Jessica A. Frazier (denver, co) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten (Paperback)

"Already Ready" has given me great insights into how I can better nurture the young writers in my kindergarten classroom. It's a book that is based on a teaching practice I was lucky enough to see happen in my teammates' classroom last year, but never knew how to exactly go about doing myself. This book shines in its ability to inspire teachers of pre-k and kindergarten classrooms to let the children do the writing.

The tone of this book is narrative and provides humorous anecdotes and actual pictures of children's writing. This sort of snap-shot of what it looks like really helped me as a teacher understand the artifact based on the concept they wrote about.

I would recommend this book to primary educators as a resource for honing the craft of writing instruction.