If first-grade creative writing were a language, it would be an obscure one. And Gini Shoulberg would be fluent.
The nekes stashun.
My fimliy luv miu.
The wepuns.
Under Shoulberg’s direction, hand-penciled passages like these are carefully translated into comprehensible nuggets and, eventually, strung together into stories.
The next station.
My family loves me.
The weapons…
For more than a decade, the first-grade language arts teacher at St. John Catholic School has led weekly writing workshops for all the school’s first-graders. While spelling and punctuation are important, she says, children don’t need to wait to master those skills before they start writing.