Kids Can Write the First Week of School

Children say they can write but that they can not read. They can hold a crayon, marker, pencil or some other kind of writing instrument and they can produce some form of written expression. When this school year began I wanted to find out what my first graders attending the Atkinson Academy, the public school in Atkinson, New Hampshire, could do as writers. On the first day of school I gave five of them an A4 exercise book containing forty sheets of unlined paper. I told them that these were for them to write in. The other seventeen children were /assigned to other areas in the classroom.