Joan Sedita

Some people believe that kids in K-2nd are too young to learn the skills like critical thinking, text structure, and sentence development that are necessary to write. Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy, disagrees. She says young kids can learn to express themselves and to grow and revise their ideas through oral language and drawing.

From finding opportunities for students to share ideas, give feedback, and draw together to grow their writing skills to teachers modeling writing and revision, Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy, says that establishing a community of writers helps young students become more engaged and motivated to learn to write.

Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy, talks about the four main stages of writing: thinking, planning, writing, and revising and the fact that the more time and effort students put into the first two stages and the last stage, the better their writing will be.

Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy, explains the two key steps students need to learn in the revision process when writing: thinking critically about what they have written and how they can make improvements and proofreading.

Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy, talks about how research shows that young students improve their writing and alphabet knowledge when they handwrite letters and words while simultaneously learning letter-sound correspondence.

Research shows that learning sentence combining — where students become more adept at manipulating and playing with words in sentences — is far more effective in developing syntactic awareness than is practicing traditional grammar, says Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy.

Joan Sedita, founder of Keys to Literacy, talks about how using “mentor texts” — short pieces of literature students can read and reread for specific learning purposes — can help students become better writers.