Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten » (1st Edition)

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.

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.