Sentence starters can be incredibly helpful for beginning writers in kindergarten. Pair them with a picture prompt, and you’ve given students a solid place to start without the overwhelm of staring at a blank piece of paper and trying to figure out what in the world they’re supposed to write.
But there’s an important distinction we need to make when we use sentence starters in kindergarten writing.
Completing a sentence starter is not the same thing as independently writing a sentence.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them. I’m a big fan of sentence starters for beginning writers. The key is understanding what they’re helping students practice, what work the sentence starter is doing for them, and how we eventually help students need less support.
Learning to write sentences in kindergarten is much more complicated than it looks to us as adults. Students have to come up with an idea, turn that idea into a complete thought, remember the words they want to write, listen for sounds, connect those sounds to letters, remember high-frequency words, form letters correctly, leave spaces, and eventually begin thinking about capitalization and punctuation.
That’s a LOT for a five- or six-year-old to manage at once.
A sentence starter takes away some of those demands. Instead of handing a student a blank piece of paper and saying, “Write a sentence about something you like,” you’re giving them somewhere to begin.
I especially like using picture prompts with sentence starters because the picture takes away another hurdle. Students don’t have to come up with a topic before they can even begin writing. They have something concrete to look at, talk about, and eventually write about.
For example, a student might see a picture of a dog eating and be given the sentence starter, “The dog _____.”
Now they can look at the picture and think about what the dog is doing. They already have the beginning of the sentence, so they can focus their attention on completing the thought and getting those words onto the paper.
That’s what a good writing scaffold should do. It gives kindergarten students enough support to successfully practice a skill they aren’t quite ready to do independently.
The problem isn’t using sentence starters. The problem comes when sentence starters are the only way students know how to write.
If every kindergarten writing activity starts with “I like ___,” “I see ___,” or “My favorite ___ is ___,” students can become really good at filling in that blank.
And it can LOOK like they’re independently writing sentences.
There are words on the paper. There’s a capital letter at the beginning. There might even be punctuation at the end. The finished product checks all of the boxes we expect to see in a sentence.
But then you remove the sentence starter, give them a picture, and ask them to write a sentence about it.
Suddenly, they don’t know what to do.
That doesn’t mean using sentence starters was a mistake. It means the scaffold was doing some of the work that we eventually need the student to be able to do independently.
This is the big distinction I want kindergarten teachers to make.
Sentence starters can help students practice writing sentences, but sentence starters don’t actually teach students how to write sentences.
If you give a beginning writer “I see a ___,” you’ve already created the sentence structure, chosen most of the words, and put those words in the correct order. Depending on the resource you’re using, the capital letter and spaces may already be there, too.
The student still has important work to do. They might need to decide how to complete the sentence, stretch out the final word, listen for the sounds, connect those sounds to letters, and get those letters onto the paper.
That’s valuable kindergarten writing practice.
But we don’t want to confuse successfully completing that task with independently understanding how to create and write a sentence.
The goal isn’t to get kindergarten students really good at completing sentence starters.
We’re teaching writers.
I really like the word starter because that’s exactly what these supports should be: a starting place.
Some kindergarten students may need a sentence starter and a picture right now. Another student may be ready for the picture without the words and can orally create a sentence before writing it. Another student may be able to come up with an idea and write a sentence with very little support.
They’re kindergarteners. They’re not all going to be in exactly the same place at exactly the same time.
Instead of asking whether kindergarteners should use sentence starters, ask yourself:
What support does this student need to successfully write right now, and what do I need to teach so they eventually need less of that support?
That second part matters.
We can’t simply take away a sentence starter one day and expect students to know how to independently write a sentence if we haven’t explicitly taught them the skills they need to do it.
There’s a pretty big gap between a kindergartener labeling a picture and handing them a blank piece of paper and saying, “Okay, now write a sentence.”
That gap is where our sentence writing instruction needs to happen.
When we want kindergarten students to become more independent writers, there are lots of questions that come up.
What should you teach first? How do you help students come up with a complete sentence and hold onto that thought long enough to write it? What should they do when they don’t know how to spell a word? When do you teach capitalization, spacing, and punctuation? And how do you give students the support they need without sitting beside them and practically writing the sentence for them?
These are the pieces that need to be explicitly taught and scaffolded in a way that makes sense for real five- and six-year-olds.
And there IS a logical progression.
Beginning writers can move from labeling to listing and then into sentence writing as they build the foundational skills they need. We don’t have to jump straight from writing individual words to “Write a sentence about something you like” and hope they figure out all the steps in between.
My How to Teach Them to Write Sentences Workshop walks you through those steps.
I’ll show you how I teach sentence writing to beginning writers, what I teach first, and how to scaffold the process so students can move from needing lots of support toward writing sentences more independently.
You don’t have to piece together your kindergarten sentence writing instruction from random ideas you’ve saved on Pinterest or Instagram. We’ll walk through the progression together so you know what to teach next and how to make it work with real kindergarten students.
Join the How to Teach Them to Write Sentences Workshop
Sentence starters still have a place in that process. Use them. Pair them with pictures. Give your beginning writers a solid place to start.
Just remember that we aren’t trying to create really good sentence-starter completers. We’re teaching writers, which means giving students the support they need now while explicitly teaching the skills they’ll need to eventually write without us.
You’ve got this.
Ready to move beyond sentence starters and actually teach your kindergarten students how to write sentences? In the How to Teach Them to Write Sentences Workshop, I’ll walk you through how to teach sentence writing to beginning writers so you know what to teach, how to scaffold it, and how to start building more independent writers.
Teaching Exceptional Kinders Links and Resources:
The Kindergarten Writing Toolbox
The Kindergarten Management Toolbox
Follow me on Instagram @teachingexceptionalkinders
More about The Kindergarten Toolbox Podcast
Welcome to The Kindergarten Toolbox Podcast, your go-to guide for creating calmer classrooms and more confident writers in the wonderfully unique world of kindergarten.
I’m Amy Murray — former kindergarten teacher, Type C “organized-in-piles” human, and vanilla-latte enthusiast. After years of helping teachers streamline their classroom routines with tips and tools that actually make sense for 5- and 6-year-olds, I created this podcast to support you with the practical strategies you’ve been craving.
Each episode is short, actionable, and designed to help you:
✔ simplify classroom management
✔ reduce behavior chaos with systems that stick
✔ teach writing in a way that meets beginning writers where they are
✔ build routines that make your day flow
✔ use visuals, tools, and expectations that really work in K
Whether you’re a brand-new kindergarten teacher or a seasoned pro looking for clarity and calm, you’ll find step-by-step support to help you feel more confident and in control.
Because kindergarten isn’t just the new first grade, it’s a world all its own, and you deserve tools that actually work.
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Here’s to calmer days and more confident writers!
