Anchor Chart Linky Party.

I am pretty frustrated because I lost the fabulous post I spent an hour writing last night.

So this is not my original post but hopefully you will get the gist. Here is a bit of a post I posted about a month ago sharing how I teach my Kinder ELL  kids how to use beginning, middle and ending leads/ sentence starters/ transition words in their writing.

I teach leads as "Story Starters". They "lead" the story, like our line leader. We talk about good ways to start a story and how it is pretty boring to always start with "I". "We", I, brainstorm possible ways to start our stories, out loud and create a list. I type the leads on my laptop and have my kids watch. I started doing this this year, because I realized my students weren't recognizing my anchor charts after I had typed them up. This way I have a clean poster that the students recognize. The story starters are mounted on green construction paper to match the train's engine. (For more on the color coding please visit the original post, Beginning, Middle, and End.)

In a few days time I introduce transition words. No surprise they are also color coordinated to match their cars.

I realized once I had them up I should have added the trains to them too. Oh well, they color will have to be enough.

Finally, (like my transition word?) I also print these on colored paper and place on the board for easy referencing.

Most kids won't use transition words. Only the really quick kids will pick up on it. However, I find that having them up and referencing them when I model writing really helps my students understand what I am talking about. They start to use them when they are talking, which is a fantastic side effect for me as an ELL teacher.

So a freebie for you... the transition posters. Just click on the links below to get a copy for your room.

Story Starters

In the Middle

The Finish

If you have some time you might want to revisit the original post, as I share some writing tips and freebies.

Can't wait to see what you have to share with us. Please link up Kinder thru 2nd grade anchor charts below.

Please remember that if you have a 3rd thru 6th anchor chart hop on over to Kristen's blog to link up there. Just click on the button below.