Customer Reviews

Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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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!!!

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.

"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.

"Already Ready" by Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover is a thoughtful portrayal on how pre-school children are ready to write and that good teaching helps them develop their identity as a writer. Pre-school age students are given blank page books stapled together, an assortment of markers and other writing utensils, and are gently nudged to let their creativity lead them to writing books. The pages of these student generated books consist of pictures in a sequential order. As students become more savy, individual letters that represent beginning sounds begin to emerge. As they become even more comfortable as writers, they start to string letters together on their pages. This book is a powerful reminder that early writing should not be scripted by instructors, and should instead be left to the creativity and understandings of the student. Writing is a natural outlet of literacy, and many students modeled their books on shared texts that were enjoyed in the classroom. Creativity needs to be nurtured and encouraged in these early, and crucial, literacy stages.

The book, Already Ready, is essentially a "how to" book on developing writers in Pre-K. It is a book about teaching writing, but not in the sense that you teach children to form letters or spell words-- it focuses on teaching composition. It uses a project-style approach by using bookmaking as an ongoing class project which helps children feel valued as writers. Your students will feel like real authors who write real books.

I highly recommend this book to Pre-K teachers. While you could implement bookmaking on your own, this book will give you more insight into a child's process of becoming an author and creator of books, and will help you understand how to evaluate their efforts and progress. The book gives many ideas for supporting children as writers and for teaching children about the elements of books (e.g. authors, illustrators, genre, etc.)

This book can easily be overlooked by kindergarten teachers who are searching for direction in writing workshop that includes "readable" words and representational drawings. The most important thing that this book taught me is what a writer really "is". The authors give plenty of writing samples from young authors that help you to revise and deepen your understanding of the real work that is happening.
The change in mindset has really helped me to think about meaningful opportunities for my kindergarteners. The authors give plenty of examples of what makes a writer a "writer" outside of the product and help you to re-focus your lense of what IS possible in kindergarten...instead of what SEEMS impossible.
Lot's of great examples of ways to invite children into the world of being an author, help them to deepend their learning, and find joy in writing.

As a preschool teacher, I was enthused while reading this book. It provided great insight for a pre-k teacher could implement in the classroom to stimulate his/hers students' writing center. The book stimulates teachers to think of ways that will enhance children's writing through language, modeling, read-alouds and how the writing process should be just like that of a more experienced writer. I especially enjoyed the author's validation for 4 and 5 year olds and their vast capabilities in exploring the writing process.

Throughout the book the reader is given tips on what is a developmentally appropriate, different type of writing and how to make them effective but mostly the authors discuss ways to help young writers create books. I must say that I have been inspired to change my writing center this fall when school begins. Because of this book I am anxious and ready to encourage my students to become the writers they already are!

This is a great book that emphasizes the importance of nurturing young writers. I enjoyed the manner in which the authors provided student writing samples for teachers to evaluate. Further, the authors used those samples to demonstrate and explain the attributes of early writing. As a teacher, I found it enjoyable to read this book as it is straightforward and easy to understand. I also found that I did a lot of highlighting as there were many strengths of this book. In particular, I like that Ray and Glover emphasized what it means for a child to be a writer. It may not be what adults would naturally think of as writing, which is why the student samples are critical. I would highly recommend this book for teachers of early primary literacy.

I received this book quickly from when I placed my order and it was perfect!

This book by Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover provides great insight into early writers. It focuses on pre-k children and pushes adults to understand that children can be both four years old and be a writer. Wood Ray and Glover push the reader to understand that the more we show our young writers that we believe in them as writers, the more they will begin to see themselves as writers. The authors use their experiences with children along with several student work samples to show the reader the various ways in which our young writers can produce, create, and read their own stories. As a first grade teacher, this book provided insight into where my students have been, and reiterated the importance of making sure my students believe in themselves as writers. It would be ideal to meet individually with each student in a classroom as often as the authors would like however; I feel that it seems just that, ideal and not quite realistic. Ultimately, this book was enlightening and discussed great foundational understanding of where our young writers begin.