Wow....AMAZING writing K-1!

In class today, I have seen how much my kindergarten friends are growing as readers so I decided to take their writing a step further by asking them to begin labeling their pictures when we are journaling during our writing block and start to begin writing words on their own to reading responses. Today we read a informational text with our HMH program called Places In Our Community. As I read the book to them out loud we had a wonderful class discusion about what a community is and what community helpers we have in Arlington Heights where they live. They had many great examples and we talked a lot about places they like to visit in our community. When we were done reading the book, I asked the class to do a reading response sheet where they drew a picture of what they thought the most important place in the community was and write the name of it on the lines below it to complete the sentence. I was so very, very impressed with their drawings and their "brave spelling!' They ALL did AMAZING! As I walked around as they were drawing and writing, I saw huge smiles on my kindergarten faces as they realized they could spell the words on their own sounding out the words how it sounded to them. I was so beyond proud of them and I LOVED all the detailed pictures they drew too! Way to go, K-1!