Writing Workshop Showing not Telling

An ongoing lesson in kindergarten is to tell how you are feeling and to try to get students to go beyond I was happy. It was fun. I went home. At this point in the year, I am trying to get students to tell more details.


We made a strong feelings chart last week and now we are working on what the feeling looks like and sounds like.  We played charades using our bodies and trying to guess the feeling. I love the book The Bad Mood! It is the perfect book to show feelings and have students make predictions about the ending.



I know Showing our feelings are BIG ideas for kindergarten. This lesson is planting the seed for what good writers do.

After reading, talking and acting out our different feelings, we began to work on a feelings anchor chart for the classroom. Our guiding question: what would a person act do or say if they were feeling ______?  You will see that students worked in groups answering this question. 

  After reading lots of feeling books, the students worked in groups on the sheet below.  

click here for the feelings sheets

Showing Chart for Feelings