What Are the Research-Based Principles That Guide Our Teaching of Writing-to-Read Heart Words?
- Children learn best when you give them a crystal-clear achievable target to work towards and you acknowledge and celebrate their success: Each new colorcoded set has 16 words! Student, parent, and teacher all know what the next learning target is! We teach for mastery. (See Dr. Hattie's research: Visible Learning.)
- The brain is a musical brain: singing releases happy chemicals. We sing, sign, spell, and write “heart word” sentences for mastery.
- Multisensory instruction with fingerspelling accelerates learning of “heart words” and phonics-based words for ALL learners.
- Emotional engagement is the key to powerful learning: We make writing real and personally motivating.
- ABC Phonics Immersion with fingerspelling is part of a comprehensive writing program that allows us to systematically reinforce phonemic awareness and phonics instruction throughout the day.

Kindergartners are absolutely able to write and illustrate 8-page books by the end of the year!
All students deserve a comprehensive writing program!

Nellie’s “Thank You” gift this month:
“This is such a great, motivating way to build young writers! I am amazed at the children’s art.” -TPT quote
These gifts are ways to thank our loyal blog readers with some of our best resources. Watch for a link to your next monthly Nellie Edge Thank You Gift!
We appreciate your feedback on our TPT products: we enjoy responding to every comment! We are a small and growing TPT store, so your current 5-star reviews inform others about our resources and increase our exposure.
Simply a couple of sentences, short and sweet (about 50-100 characters), is all it takes. Thank you again.
ENJOY!
Nellie Edge
This gift is part of the Kindergarten WRITING BUNDLE