In First Grade the amount of growth in writing over the course of the year is amazing! We start the year off working on the importance of our sentence structure and sight word spelling. Before we can write our ideas down on paper, we have to be able to form the sentences out loud. We use hand gestures to help the children remember to start a sentence with a capital letter and end with punctuation. After that, we move on to stretching out the sounds in words and writing them down on paper.
In order to become better writers, we write every single day. After teaching a writer's workshop lesson on one of our checklist goals, the students then free write in their journals. In addition, students have the option to work on a variety of writing options during Daily Five. Throughout the year we learn about a variety of different writing pieces: -Narrative (story) writing -Informational writing using sources -Procedural/How-to writing -Research Report writing -Opinion/Argument writing -Responding to literature Writing in first grade follows many developmental stages and each child learns at his or her own pace. The chart below describes the order in which children progress through the year in their writing. |