Teaching Early Writing and Reading Together

Book excerpt: The writing/reading connection means more than having your students write under the influence of literature that they have read! Noted author and educator Connie Campbell Dierking shows you how to develop a literacy-connected classroom, including using oral storytelling to scaffold primary reading and writing. She supplies more than 50 mini-lessons--organized by their classroom function--to help you explicitly teach foundational literacy skills during writer's workshop or whole-class and small-group reading instruction. Dierking encourages you to make the most of the writing/reading connection by thinking about some basic questions when you're crafting your literacy instruction: How can I connect the conversations in reading and writing workshop? What can I learn about the readers in my classroom through their writing? What can my students learn about reading through writing? How can I teach young writers to support their readers? How can I teach readers how to use a writer's supports intentionally?