Leader of the Day

Shared Writing Part 2

The leader of the day provides children with a daily predictable, shared writing experience. It is an interactive writing activity that is done on a daily basis and introduces students to the writing process in a shared experience. By participating in the leader of the day, students learn…


• Name recognition
• Proper letter formation
• Upper and lowercase letter recognition
• Associate letters and sounds
• Number recognition
• Counting

All children get to be the leader of the day at some point through out the month. Depending on how many children you have in a class.

What does our Leader of the day look like?

When choosing the leader of the day, I go through name cards with names and picture of each child in the class.

I choose a child who is ready for the day and say…

• This person is sitting at carpet

• This person has eyes forward

• This person is ready for circle

• This person has seven letters in their name (how every many letters are in the childs name that you are thinking of)

I then draw seven lines on the dry earaser board counting as I draw them.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Then I wirte 7 letters under the lines.

• This person has a vvv sound, who’s name starts with the vvv sound?

• Does Vicky start with the sound vvv?
• Does Valeria start with the sound vvv?
• Does Victor start with the sound vvv?

I write down all the children’s names that we come up with on the board.


Then we count all the letters in each childs name and write that number next to the name.

Vicky 5
Valeria 7
Victor 6

The group figures out which one has the 7 letters (or how many you have put under the lines on board)

I then wirte the name on the lines naming each letter as I write it.

If there is more then one child with the same amount of letters give them a clue by writing the ending letter and see if they can figure out who it is.


If that is not enough then give them verbal clues

• This person is a girl
• This girl is wearing a green shirt
• This girl has long brown hair
• This girl has it up in one pony tail

Once we have the leader of the day we go right into the morning message.

As the year progress you can keep challenging the children with this activity by…


• Asking them who has the ending sound of _____
• Asking who has 7 letters in their name (they will be able to tell you everyone in the group that has 7 letters)

Leader of the day will also help with circle time mangagement because the children want to be the leader.