Kindergarten Writing Assessments/ #prettyfunnystuff

Mrs. B. gave our class a writing assessment this week. She orally instructed them to write this simple sentence, "The dog sat in the sun." After the children wrote the sentence, they were allowed to draw a picture at the bottom of the page, then Mrs. B. asked me to write the proper sentence in pen underneath the box before filing their papers. At the end of the year, the students will be given the exact same assessment, hopefully showing improvement.

As you can guess, Kindergarten students enter the school year with varying levels of ability, especially when it comes to writing. Here are a few papers that I deemed worthy to share...

The paper above is a perfect example of typical Kindergarten writing. This little learner obviously knows the sight word 'the' and was able to hear some beginning and ending consonant sounds in the words 'dog', 'sat' and 'sun'.

This child did a pretty good job as well, except his poor dog has too many legs and a sore, tailless bum.

With a little help learning the correct use of upper and lower case letters and punctuation, I imagine this Kindergartner will write a near perfect assessment at the end of the year.

I love this picture. Most kids draw dogs standing on four legs, but this little guy made his puppy lay on the grass, belly up, with paws in the air AND holding a flower. Adorable!

NOW--- I saved the best for last. If this one doesn't put a smile on your face, something is wrong with you.

At first glance, it looks like this sentence says 'The dog shit', but let me share with you how to decipher Kindergarten writing...

#1- You can see that this little girl knows the sight word 'the' and the word 'dog'.
#2- You can tell that she heard the 's' sound when Mrs. B. said the word sat. 
#3- She also wrote the word 'in', she just wrote it backwards and the 'n' happens to look like an 'h'. 
#4- Obviously she started to write 'the' again, but for whatever reason, didn't get it finished. 

And THAT, my friends, is how 'The dog sits in the sun' can easily be mistaken for 'The dog shit'.  :)

The Worth of a Child

Do you remember my posts about the student that stole things from our classroom, pooped in a urinal, talked out of turn and pretty much had behavior issues all school year? Well, one morning last week he said, "Mrs. Lancaster. Don't look." (Words every adult wants to hear from a child, right?) He then preceded to ask me, "How do you spell you?", so I had him search for the sight word 'you' on our Word Wall. Then he asked how to spell 'are'. Trying to encourage him, I said, "If you can't find it on the Word Wall, sound it out. You can do it." He then continued to work hard on his 'secret project'. After a time, he got out of his chair and walked over to the table where I was testing students. Handing me a piece of scratch paper, he said, "Mrs. Lancaster, will you write your name?" I quickly jotted down my name and handed it back to him. A few minutes later, he got up from his desk, came back over and handed this to me...

THIS is why I do what I do. EVERY child is worth it!

Less THAN Perfect

I do not claim to know everything about the English language. With all the rules of proper grammar, it is easy to get confused. I also realize that everyone, including me, makes mistakes. With that said, I will share with you something I have become increasingly aware of and that's the misuse of the words than and then. I have seen the two words confused on blogs, YouTube, song lyrics and even my post yesterday by Erma Bombeck. In one of her paragraphs, Erma says, "There is a woman I will bless with a child less then perfect." I didn't change then to than, because I was quoting Erma, but I saw the error right away. I also saw the irony in her less than perfect sentence. Then I began thinking, if Erma Bombeck is capable of confusing the words then and than, do I really know how to use them properly? I decided to search Google and found a few websites that have worksheets and quizzes. I've included one of the links, if you would like to test your knowledge of the then and than rule.

Then Vs Than Worksheets Worksheets

In Erma's defense, because it's an uplifting piece of writing and has been reposted many times over the years, the mistake most likely was made by somebody other than her.

Cody, Valentines and Love Songs

Do you know how hard it is to write a blog post while Cody's sitting in the same room singing, over and over again, the words, "Happy Valentines Guys" to the tune Silly Love Songs by Paul McCartney? Holy crap! Give it a try.




And you thought the title of this post sounded normal enough for this time of year, didn'tcha?