Taking a sneak peek before we being a book
Readers slide through the sounds as they read words
Whenever we write there is a process to follow. No matter the genre of writing, we want young writers to learn to go through the entire writing process. In fact, we want them to go through this process many times with each different genre taught. (personal narrative, nonfiction stories, opinion writing, fiction stories....). The more times they go through the entire process, the easier the steps will become.
Step 1: Think of a story idea
Step 2: Tell the story (to a friend or a few friends)
Step 3: Plan each page (touch and tell what you plan to write on each page)
Step 4: Sketch and write labels and words
Step 5: Reread and edit
Genre: Writing Personal Narratives: (September)
We are teaching first graders to write the small stories of their lives in step by step interesting details. Their stories should have a beginning, a middle and an ending. We want writers to tell watermellon seed stories rather than gigantic watermellon stories. So rather than writing a story about their entire summer (this is a watermellon story) or even about going to Canobie Lake Park (this is a slice of the watermellon story), we want them to write the seed story. We want them to write about waiting in line for the log ride. How did they feel, what did they see, what did they hear, what did they say?
Genre: Writing Teaching Boooks:
In this writing unit, we ask students to observe the world around them and to get ideas from the classroom about what they could teach. This is an opportunity to use what we have already been learning about writing and to write nonfiction. Looking around the classroom gave the students lots of ideas. Here are some of the topics that students are writing teaching books about: "The Math Shelf", "1M Classroom Jobs", "Books in 1M", "The Word Wall", "All About Rasheed", "All About Mable", "A Holiday Book", All About Sports", and more. Ask your child to share what they are writing about at school.
Genre: Opinion Writing (Writing Reviews)
Opinion writing in first grade is a fun oppotunity for students to choose favroite and to provide reasons why they like or dislike something. In the beginning, they pretend they are "judges" and must judge toys in a collection. They are to use the different attributes that make the toys likeable/ unlikeable to defend their opinions. After they jodge the collections, they are asked to write reviews. Some of the things we invite students to review include: movies, restaurants, vacations, toys or stuffies, books, games and more. The expectation for this type of writing is that students have an exciting beginnig that clearly states their opinion (perhaps giving a score or rating for their review). They also must have 3 or more reasons for their opinions and be prepared for opposing arguments. Finally, they need to have a good ending that restated their opinion.
Kindergarten Words to Review:
Unit 2 Words: I, a, the, and, is his, of
Unit 3 Words: as, has, to, into, we, he, she, be, me, for, or
Unit 4 Words: you, your, I, they, was, one, said
Unit 5 Words: from, have, do, does
Unit 6 Words: who, what, when, why, where, there, are, were, here
Unit 7 Words: why, by, my try, put, too, two, very, also, some, come
Unit 8 Words: would, could, should, her, over, number
Unit 9 Words: say, says, see, between, each
Unit 10 Words: any, many, how, now, down, out, about, our
Unit 1:
Review letter sounds and letter formation. (m.n, r, v, y, and z)
Review and practice writing "tall letters" (f, t, b, l, h, k)
Review letter sound and formations for magic c letters (c, o, a, d,g,q,s)
Review sounds and how to write "hanging letters" (g,q, j,p, y)
Review vowel sounds and how to write vowels (especially the e since it starts in the middle of 2 lines)
Unit 2:
Tapping out and writing cvc words. (examples: mop, led, dig, bet, sob, bed, bat, red, mix)
Writing a sentence with a capital at the beginning and punctuation at the end. (example: " Mom and Meg got on the bus.")
Marking short vowels with a breve. (a small "u" mark above the short vowel).
Unit 3:
Reading and writing words with a digraph (wh, sh, ch, th, ck)
Tapping and writing words that contain digraphs
Marking the short vowel with a breve, and underlining the digraphs.
Writing sentences that contain snap words (words we know quickly.. high frequency words) and words that can be sounded out using what we know about phonics.
Unit 4:
Adding a bonus letter short vowel words that end with an f, l or s. (examples: will, Jeff, tell, stiff, puff, bell, mess)
tapping and mapping the sounds in these words
Marking the short vowel with a breve, underlining the digraphs, and drawing a star over the bonus letters f,l, or s
Writing and marking the glued sound "all". While it ends in ll, this is a glued sound that sounds like /ol/. It is marked with a box around the entire "all" as it makes 1 sound. For example, ball has 2 sounds, /b/ and then /all/. Wall has 2 sounds. But a work like stall, has 3 sounds, /s/, /t/, /all
Writing sentences that contain snap words (words we know quickly.. high frequency words) and words that can be sounded out using what we know about phonics.
Unit 5:
glued sounds /am/ as in ham, and /an/ as in fan. This is a nasalized vowel sounds and even though there are 2 letters, it makes 1 sound.
Marking the glued sound with a box around the glued sound
Writing sentences that start with a capital letter and end with punctuation
Writing sentences that contain snap words and words with the spelling patterns and rules we have learned thus far.
Unit 6:
adding the suffix /s/ to a base word. We are learning to spell the base word first (so we hear and write all the sounds), then add the s
spelling the "question words" (most start with the digraph wh) who, what, when, why, where
marking words. Circle the suffix, underline the base word AND do all the previously learned markings. For example: shops . The word shop is underlinesd, the suffix s would be circled, /sh? would be underlined and o would have a breve because it is a short vowel.
Unit 7:
8 new glued sounds introdiced: (ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk, unk)
blending and reading words with these sounds.
segmenting and spelling words with these glued sounds.
Writing sentences that contain snap words and , words with glued sound and words with the spelling patterns and rules we have learned thus far.
Unit 8:
adding the suffix "s" (bluff, bluffs)
blending and reading words with 4+ letters
reading and writing words with blends at the beginning and ends of words ( star, plum, fast, stamp, etc)
reading and writing blends attached to a digraph (shrimp, punch, thrift)
reading and writing r controlled vowels (ir, ur, er) (ar) (or)
Unit 9:
closed syllables (short vowels) example words: block, act, drill, spells
closed syllables vs. open syllables
vowel teams (ai, ay) (ee,ea, ey) (oi, oy)
Unit 10:
reading and writing longer words
adding the suffix s, ed, ing
vowel teams (oa, oe, ow) (ou, ow) (oo, ue, ew) (au, aw)
example words to write: blends, blended, blending, plants, planted, planting, clumps, clumping,,,,,)