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Build a Strong Literacy Foundation Rooted in the Science of Reading.

Amie Burkholder Amie Burkholder

Beginning Writing Doesn't Start with Writing Part 4

Every Child Deserves the Journey

When I first became a teacher, I thought my job was to help children become better writers. Fifteen years later, I see that job a little differently.

Today, I believe my job is to help children discover that they have something worth saying. Because when you really stop and think about it, writing has never just been about handwriting, spelling, punctuation, or paragraphs. Writing is communication. It's how children tell us what they know, share what they wonder, make sense of their experiences, and tell the stories only they can tell.

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Amie Burkholder Amie Burkholder

Beginning Writing Doesn't Start with Writing Part 3

The Roadmap We've Been Missing

By this point, I knew writing was developmental.

I understood that my students weren't struggling because they lacked ideas. They simply hadn't yet developed all of the skills required for writing.

But I was still left with one question.

If writing develops over time... what does that progression actually look like?

That question became my obsession.

I started watching my students differently. I stopped looking only at the writing they produced and started paying attention to everything that happened before they ever picked up a pencil. I watched the conversations they had with classmates. I listened to the stories they told during play. I noticed the pictures they drew, the way they held a pencil, the sounds they could hear in words, and how confidently they could express their ideas out loud.

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Amie Burkholder Amie Burkholder

Beginning Writing Doesn't Start with Writing Part 2

Writing Is Developmental

When I started asking a different question—What has to happen before writing becomes successful?—I found myself looking at writing in a completely different way.

The more I studied child development, the more I realized something that now seems incredibly obvious.

We already understand that reading is developmental.

No one expects a child to read a chapter book before learning letter names and sounds. We don't skip phonological awareness and move straight to decoding. We don't expect fluent reading before students learn to blend words.

Every reading skill builds on the one before it.

Every stage prepares students for the next.

We honor that progression because we know children can't skip developmental steps.

So why don't we think about writing the same way?

Somewhere along the way, we've started treating writing as though it's a task instead of a developmental process. We assume that if students have something to say, they should be able to write it.

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Amie Burkholder Amie Burkholder

Beginning Writing Doesn't Start with Writing Part 1

Fifteen years ago, when I started my career as a first-grade teacher, I thought I had writing figured out.

Looking back now, I can't help but smile at that version of myself.

I had the lesson plans, the mentor texts, the writing prompts, and all the enthusiasm of a brand-new teacher. I truly believed I knew how to teach children to become writers.

Then one student changed everything.

She sat in front of me with a sharpened pencil in her hand and a blank piece of paper on her desk.

Around her, the room buzzed with the quiet sounds of writing time. Pencils scratched across paper. Some students whispered as they stretched out words, while others eagerly raised their hands to tell me they were finished.

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Amie Burkholder Amie Burkholder

Alphabet Instruction: A Simple Framework for Teaching Letter Sounds

One of the biggest misconceptions about teaching the alphabet is that children need a new "letter of the day."

They don't.

In fact, if we want students to build a strong foundation for reading, they need repeated exposure to letter names and sounds—not isolated practice with one letter every few weeks.

That's why I love teaching the alphabet using an explicit, systematic approach—and I like to call it an Alphabet Boot Camp because it's so much more than traditional alphabet instruction.

It's a simple, streamlined framework that helps you teach letter names and sounds explicitly while cycling through the alphabet multiple times throughout the school year. Better yet, you can easily use my Alphabet Curriculum Resources with this framework because the lesson stays the same each week—you simply switch out the target letters.

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