Writing Stickers!

I stumbled across a new blog called Kindertastic and let me tell you I fell in love with her idea of writing stickers for 1:1 writing conferences so much that I contacted her and asked if I could write about it on my blog and she said YES! As I was preparing the post, I went back to her blog and fell in LOVE with her freebie sight word journal. OM~gosh we literally are "kindred" spirits! But let me compose myself and get back to the brilliant idea of writing stickers. I have loved to write since I was a young child. I was an average writer grammatically speaking. Creativity has never really been my problem as a writer. As a child I somehow got the message that I was just not a good writer because I never made the best grades for my writing and I never really knew why. I would see those red pen writing codes for grammar mistakes and it only translated to me that I was not a good writer because if I was, I would have had the smiley face instead of the dreaded symbols.

For most of my life, I hid my writing frustration deep within my own little vault. I never told anyone and I mean anyone that I thought of myself as a struggling writer and that I had literally grown up believing that. And all my life, I have kept journals to give myself the outlet, without judgement, that writing has given me. It wasn't until college that I feel like I was set free... I took a class called Gender and Humor. And we had to write about what we had read in class. You can imagine all of my writing fears came tumbling down on me because I had no choice but to write and I was now in college. Much to my surprise my first essay was returned and it did have the red marks and symbols I was so familiar with but it also had something else... First, it stated the positive aspects of my essay (the creative) and then it addressed the not so positive (the grammar) and then a writing conference was scheduled.  

I have to admit I was kind of excited to actually talk about my writing with a teacher. During this writing conference she told me HOW to improve my writing instead of just telling me what was wrong. We had writing conferences the entire semester and would you believe I grew as a writer for the first time in my life! I felt like I was set free and creatively I really was. Which brings me back to the Writing Sticker! I love the idea of this because it states the positive of a young child's writing AND it reinforces that that element will most likely reappear in future writing. And it gives you a positive start to a writing conference. And then during the conference, I am going to tell the child one thing to improve their writing before the conference is over. I also think the Writing Sticker is a wonderful addition to a child's written work when they share it at home. Parents can read the Writing Stickers and better understand what we are working on and see the writing progression.