Writing in Kindergarten

Writing in my Kindergarten classroom has developed from learning about letters and what sounds they make, phoneme-grapheme correspondences, to finally using their knowledge to form words that they think sound right. They are all still emergent readers except for a select few who can read books designed for beginning readers. Writing is still very closely connected to reading. The only writing that I see in my Kindergarten classroom is the writing of their name, labeling of a drawing they made during an activity, or copying of words onto lines that are already printed on the page. We have a center during literacy center time called “The Clipboard Cruise” where they have to walk around the classroom writing down words that they see. I am not sure the validity of the center because I know that sometimes they may not be reading what they are copying down onto their paper. What I do like seeing, however, is when they students are copying down word wall words that are frequently used such as: I, am, he, she. It, play, ball, etc.
Going back to the basics, every Kindergartener is at a sufficient level when it comes to their concepts of print. They know which way the words go, when to put spaces before words, where punctuation should go (basics such as periods and question marks), and they can begin sentences with a capital letter.
I think what helps is the shared reading time that our CT involves our students in each day. They are immersed with writing all around them. The Clipboard Cruise helps them be even more surrounded and familiar with words and writing words on paper. Our CT is doing everything right with our emergent readers. Our only worry, though, is that when they are presented with a book with a lot of words on one page, it overwhelms them. They are able to recognize a single word such as “see” on a single piece of paper. But if they saw a sentence that read, “I see a dog.” They would stare blankly at it and not take the risk to try and sound out the sentence.
What I would like to see more of when they do activities is that they would begin to start writing brief and simple sentences to explain their drawing. This would push them to take risks and sound out the words they want to write on paper. We do not see enough of this when we are in the classroom on Wednesdays. We know that there is a writing teacher that does come into the classroom at 2pm every Wednesday, so we assume the bulk of their writing during the week happens then, but we never see it because we leave Lyons Elementary right at 2pm.