This blog post was written by NCTE member Angie House as part of a blog series celebrating the National Day on Writing®. To draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing we engage in and to help make all writers aware of their craft, the National Council of Teachers of English has established October 20 as the National Day on Writing®. Resources, strategies, and inclusion in a blog post does not imply endorsement or promotion by NCTE.
As a first-grade teacher, I wanted children in the classroom to be the experts as we started our year together building our community and establishing that each person holds value. Children come to school with an identity of who they are as whole people. We handle each person with care.
In planning how my first weeks of teaching would go, I found this book, Month-By-Month Phonics for First Grade: Systematic, Mutilevel Instruction. Inside was a practice where students’ names were studied letter by letter to think about the sounds and the letters that make up each name. This was an opportunity to grow writers and build a community in our classroom. Names hold our identity, and families contemplate for months thinking of an exact name for each child. To me, children needed to call each other by name, and I wanted each child to feel they belonged because they were known by name.
The materials needed for the lessons were rather simple: a picture of each child, a sentence strip to print each name, and a pocket chart to display the names and pictures. At back-to-school night I took a picture of each child. For students that did not attend I found pictures from the school cumulative folders. On the first day of school, each child’s name was printed on a sentence strip with the picture behind the name. I printed the name before the picture so that children would focus on the letters and sounds before looking at the picture. Each sentence strip was placed in a pocket chart at our meeting area in the front of our classroom. As children came into the classroom on that first day of first grade, they were drawn to their pictures and names. There was a buzz as each child reacted to seeing themselves in the front of our classroom.
Our first day together began with a class meeting. We gathered, admiring the names in the pocket chart. I asked students to talk with a partner about what they were noticing on the chart. I began to hear whispers, “I see my name.” “I know that letter.” “Do you see two of the same name?” I introduced the pocket chart of names to the children gathered at my feet, each child looking at me with anticipation.
“Writers, this is a chart full of the most beautiful names, and each name belongs to a member of our classroom. Over the next few days we will study each of these names, we will look at the letters and listen to the sounds in each name. We will notice who has similar sounds and maybe even the same letters in their names. Let’s look at the first name right now!” I took out an envelope that held a name. I precut the end of the envelope off so that I could slide the sentence strip out letter by letter to study.
Sliding out the first letter we saw the letter M. I asked students to stand up if they thought their name began with this letter. Two students knew that their names began with the letter M, Maria, and Matt. Merriam was not standing, so this gave me information right away about Merriam. I paused and said, “I know one more student that begins with this letter because I see three names on the pocket chart that begin with this letter.” I pointed to all three names that began with M. Merriam, your name also begins with this letter, M.” Merriam stood up and clapped because she too had a name that began with M. We looked at our alphabet chart and talked about the sound that M makes. I pulled the sentence strip out further to reveal the second letter. We saw the letter a. I asked the students that were standing to sit down if the second letter in their name was not an a. Merriam sat down. She recognized on her own that the letters did not match the letters in her name. The remaining children stood because both names still had Ma as the first and second letters of their names. We checked the sounds of the letter a using our alphabet chart. This gave me space to introduce the terms short and long vowels. I was not expecting students to fully understand, as this was not explicit teaching of phonics, but it was a way for me to introduce the language. We repeated this process letter by letter until the name Maria was revealed. The class erupted with excitement when we knew this was Maria’s name.
Chorally, we stretched the sounds to read the name, Maria. In partnerships I asked students to study the letters, by looking for straight lines, tall letters, and letters with curves. We clapped the syllables in Maria’s name and we cheered each letter aloud.
As I was focused on using this time intentionally to apply phonics knowledge and build a caring community, I leveraged shared writing as a method to learn more about Maria. I wrote Maria’s name at the top of the chart paper. Children practiced each letter on white boards, and I reminded writers of the pathway for each letter. The class had an opportunity to ask Maria questions so that we could learn more about her. Children wanted to know her favorite food, the languages that she spoke, her favorite book, if she played a sport, and if she had any siblings. As Maria responded, I repeated the response aloud in a complete sentence. We counted the number of words in each sentence as a class, and then I wrote the sentence across the page. Once our message was complete, we added the name to our word wall and students could then refer to names when they were doing their own composing.
Children’s names supported students in remembering how certain letters sound, especially names that had digraphs or blends, and how certain letters look. If children themselves wanted to write stories about their classmates, they could easily look at the wall and add their friends into their independent writing. Our name study ended with my typing up each of the interviews with the pictures of each child. Within the first week of school we had already made a book together. Across pockets of time druing the first week of school, we studied each name intentionally and learned from each expert in the room.
By studying each child’s name letter by letter, we think about the sounds, the way each letter looks, how each letter is formed in the name, the way it is pronounced when we see it all together across a page. Teaching this way allowed me to ground instruction in what children were bringing to our classroom community and I was able to teach about the ways language works. Letters and sounds became important and relevant for children; they are attached to their identity. Through the addition of shared writing we learn together, about composing and stretching ourselves across the pages, about the uniqueness each individual brings, and the similarities that we each have. Through this process children grow in writing development, both composing and transcription, and they are brought into a community where they are seen and known.
I now work with preservice teachers. In their course work the use of name study brings us closer together. Students learn the routine of studying a name and how to use phonological awareness and phonics in an authentic method of teaching. The preservice teachers are learning how to do this work with their own elementary students who they work with once a week. However, as we learn to do this with children, we too are growing as a community of teachers. This opportunity gives us space, even as adults, to share more about our names, ourselves, and feelings of being known inside of a large university. Preservice teachers are learning about the importance of letters, sounds, handwriting, composing, and so much about what makes our community cohort unique. Our names can bring us together, and it is a way for us all to belong.
Shared Writing with university students
Angie House is a second year doctoral student at The University of Texas, Austin. She spent 23 years as a classroom teacher and instructional coach in two different Central Texas school districts. House taught kindergarten through third grade. She was also an instructional coach to grades preK through fifth grade. Angie House now works with preservice teachers as a field supervisor and teaches a reading methods and writing methods course.
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