Westford Kindergarten: a pumpkin soup publishing party

The Kindergarteners have been working hard to prepare their writing for publication. Throughout the writing of their teaching books children have been looking for feedback from peers, practicing adding detail, stretching words and hearing all of the sounds, and growing as writers within their community. I try not to use the words, "make your writing the best it can be", because the word best holds a lot of pressure. Synonyms for best include- perfect, unbeatable, top, and supreme. Our writing should be meaningful and powerful. Children should feel proud as writers. Our goal is not to be the best, our goal is to grow.

This one word (best) can destroy the writing process for young children. We celebrate the mistakes we make, we learn from them, we often keep them in our writing. So, to prepare for publishing, we talked about making our writing more powerful by using what we know about teaching books. We also talked about publishing as a way to share what you've been working hard on with your larger community. We invited the first and second graders from Ms. Richardson's class to join us for a community snack and a publishing party on Wednesday afternoon.

We read the book pumpkin soup and made our own pumpkin soup to share with the first and second graders. The Kindergarteners were so proud of their writing and loved talking with their "big kid" partner. At the end of our share, when I asked how it felt, Dylan said, "It felt great. I made a new friend and I can't remember his name or if he is in first or second grade, but after we shared our writing he taught me that 10 times 10 is 100 and now I can't wait to tell my family that!"

A few pictures from our pumpkin soup publishing party and a little glimpse into some of the children's writing;