Today, I managed to steal Leo away between the fire drills and other classroom interruptions to have a quick discussion of his work. The students had all completed K/W/L charts (something I've done myself this semester!) about turkeys. I was pleasantly surprised upon examining Leo's to see an apparent random string of letters - he was generating his own text! Once I asked Leo what he'd been writing, the words made perfect sense - in the first column, he'd written "they lay eggs," and in the second, "Do they scratch?" Leo got the majority of the sounds in the words, and even spelled "scratch" correctly.
I reiterated my previous teaching point, which was that I'd wanted him to try and write words himself, and he had gone above and beyond my expectations. I will continue to check his writing for evidence that he's writing, and next conference I think I will work on reading with him.
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