From the time that a young child picks up a crayon and makes marks on a paper to when an older child puts the finishing sentence on an autobiography or a poem, a young author is developing the skills that will be used for a lifetime. In this course, you’ll examine the developmental stages of writing, from scribbling to the standard spelling stage, so that you can foster your students’ skills and gently nudge them to grow as authors. This course is full of practical ideas that you can use to motivate students in your classroom.

You’ll look at tools such as the writer’s workshop, the six traits of writing, and genre studies for ways to teach students about writing. You’ll see how each of these tools can be used by teachers to encourage early elementary writers. As your students become better writers, they will become better readers, and you’ll see how well reading and writing instruction work together to support each other. The course also covers ways to support the writers who struggle, whether due to a lack of motivation, fine motor skills, or ideas. And of course, you’ll explore techniques for getting parents involved so that they can help with writing at home. By the end of the course, you’ll have a new enthusiasm for teaching that will ignite your students’ love of writing!

Learning Objectives:

• Understand why it’s important to teach writing to young children, and learn ways to grow young writers.
• Learn the multiple developmental stages and six traits of writing.
• Discover how to implement writer’s workshop in the classroom.
• Explore how to support students as they write in different genres: narrative, expository, procedural, persuasive, and transactional writing.
• Find out how to build the home-school connection so parents can extend the writing practice at home.

View a course syllabus

For our online course refund policy, click here.

Requirements: Internet access, e-mail, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins.

You will need to create a login for your online classroom. Go to www.ed2go.com/ksuconed. Find your course by browsing the catalog or using the search bar. Click the ‘Add to Cart’ button. Select your start date and then create a Username and Password. You must make an 80 or higher on the final exam (online) to successfully complete the course. You may only take the exam once. 

If you have questions about this course, please contact the online coordinator at 470-578-6693 or online@kennesaw.edu.