Teaching Letter Writing and Story Elements

I use the bookmarks as a guide to help my students with spelling and as a reminder of what I expect in their letters.

On Monday each child picks a book at his/her reading level.  Then they practice reading it in class by themselves and with

their friends each day. They take the books home each night to practice with their families.  I also try to check in during the week.  

On Thursday the students begin to write their letters to me.  When I introduce this project each year I start simple with

one or two elements and we add a new element each week as we feel comfortable writing.

When the students complete their letter they sit down and conference with me. We talk about each sentence and we discuss the positives and what we can work towards next week.  After our conference the children draw a picture on the back of the paper.

You can get your FREE copy of the bookmarks and letter writing papers at my TPT store HERE. 

Five for Friday -- Sept. 23

1. The highlight of my week was watching my little grand daughter crawl up the steps with ease.  She is working so hard at PT to learn how to walk and become mobile and each time she makes it over a hurdle we can't help but shout it out!   

2. I love the term "Whole Body Listening" and have been using this with all the groups I am working with.  I have also shared this information with all the teachers at my school.  

3.  Another thing I did for all the teachers at my school was to find some Kevin Henkes resources for them.  

4.  The Best Part of Me is an awesome writing lesson.  It is a must in your writing workshop repertoire. One of our are first grade teachers did this lesson all week in class and it was amazing. It is a great lesson for teaching adjectives and adding more details in writing. Below are some links I found that will help you put together an amazing lesson.

The Best Part Of Me Scholastic Lesson

The Best Part of Me Lesson With Laughter

The Best Part of Me Youtube Link by Ms. Schenkel's First Grade Class

5. Finally, I read the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society.  It was an interesting format to read.  It was written in letter form which makes it easy to read and find breaking points.  I would give it 3 stars.  

Thanks Kacey from Doodle Bugs for hosting this linky party.  

It's Almost the First Day

The first day of school is just around the corner and every teacher is going to ask their students to do the same assignment no matter what grade you teach.....

Write a sentence or two to describe your summer vacation.

This assignment generally puts kindergarteners and first graders into a panic.  I don't know how to write or spell yet.  

Even though the teacher says spelling is not important right now or just sound it out the best you can..... the children still panic.

So I put together a word chart to help the children get started with thinking about their summer as well as spelling some of the big words.  

Click Here for a FREE copy

Hopefully this will ease the stress your little writers feel on that first day of school.  

Writing Checklist for Students

Today I created the last thing I will be putting in my students' writing folders.  It is a Writing Checklist.  I want my students to go through the list and think about their writing before coming up to me for a conference. 

I plan on using this sheet as I conference with each student as well.  I am also going to change my writing rubric so it is similar to this as well. 

My goal is to get my first graders to do some self assessing.   

Expanding Word Choice and Build Vocabulary

When conferencing with my kindergarten and first graders I find it very frustrating when they write words like: fun, cool, great, and best friend.  What do the words really mean?

Last year I spent several mini lessons throughout the year trying to get the children to expand and build upon their word choice.  I love teaching through literature.  So as I read stories during Shared Reading I would always stop and point out big words.  Here are a few of my favorite books that the students really enjoyed and engaged with.....

What I wanted to add to my lessons is some kind of follow up something that the students could easily access and refer to as a reference after the lesson when they were writing.  

So this year I am putting together a binder for the students to use sort of like a dictionary.
I created a cover...

I know how much my first graders and kindergarteners love legos so I am tying this idea in to something they love.  I am going to print a bunch of lego pages to have on hand when a lesson presents itself. My idea is similar to the ideas I have seen on Pinterest.  I am going to write the word we are focusing on for example, fun, on the red block. Then as a class we will brainstorm synonyms, one for each color block left.  

I will keep all our class sheets in a binder in the writing center. There will be a tab for each letter of the alphabet so the students can look up the word we discussed during large group time.

Teaching Adjectives in First Grade

 I found some amazing books for teaching adjectives to my first graders.  All these books were in my library and they are full of adjectives.  An extra bonus is that they are stories my first graders enjoy.  So during the week when we are learning about adjectives these will be the stories I will read during Shared Reading.  

My favorite teaching strategy is to create a anchor chart to match the chart below.  It will not be exact because the words on the chart will be the words the students brainstorm from our reading. However I will put this chart in their writing folders so my students can easily find adjectives to add to their own writing.  

I found this idea on Life in First Grade I did something similar to it during my Morning Meeting time.  

Life In First Grade

1.  Each student drew a picture of his/her self. 

2.  Then each morning after we picked our star student we would put up his/her picture and then the children would brainstorm adjectives to describe the person.  
3.  We put all the pictures together to make a class book.  

Making a poster or a class book is a great way to get the students excited about using adjectives.  

Teaching Verbs to First Graders

Today I am focusing on teaching mini lessons about verbs.  When I introduce a new concept I like to start with something fun and exciting.  I found this cute 2 minute clip on youtube about verbs. I am always nervous about showing things on youtube because you never know what is going to pop up.  So I use a site called viewpure to clean up the clutter around the song so I don't have to worry about pop ups.  I have the original link and the cleaned up link below.  

Twinkle Trails Episode 19 - The Verb Jungle (Musical version)

Video by hosunSG on Youtube

Cleaned Up Version: http://viewpure.com/uJZf_N7GZn4?start=0&end=0

After we watch the The Verb Jungle we will begin to create a chart to list the verbs we heard in the song. 

For the remainder of the week I will read the books below during shared reading, as we read we will again add the list of verbs to our chart.

At the beginning of each Writing Workshop time I will try to use some of the verbs we found from the chart in my own writing.  This always leads to a discussion of word endings.  Generally I am not ready to teach all the ins and outs of word endings yet so I made a quick chart for my students.  If they come up with more words on their own I will add them to their dictionaries.  

Writing Transitions

I have to admit I am not the best writer, so teaching children to write is a bit of a challenge for me.  I have read MANY books on the subject and purchased many TPT packs to guide me.  However I like the children to write about what they are excited about.  I provide mini lessons to my students to help aide them as they write.

I get the ideas for my mini lessons as I observe them write when I walk around the room.  However I don't have an exact structure of what I am doing.  That is my goal with my writing folder this year to provide more structure to writing. 

One of the things I noticed  this past year about my young writers was that they tend to write pattern sentences.  So during Shared Reading for about a week I tried to find stories that had some good transitions for us to notice.   

I  found this poster on Pinterest and we made our own chart with the words we found...

source

I typed up something similar and added our words plus more I thought of and put it to their writing folders. It helped a lot to get the students to move beyond pattern sentences. 

However during conferences with the students I was struggling with them using the traffic light as our visual symbol.  I wanted them to visualize it more in terms of the story elements of beginning, middle and end.  So I transformed this idea into book terms and came up with this chart for their folders.

  
I am calling it storybook transitions because that is what the students are writing....stories.  I combined a lot of the transitions from the chart with what my students noticed in the books.  I think this will be a great resource for them in their folders.  

2016 Updating Writing Folders

Last year I read the book, First Grade Writing Workshop and I loved the book.  I created writing folders for my students based of ideas from the book.  As the year went on I found that we were missing valuable information in our writing folders and I was constantly tweaking the folders throughout the year.  So this year I am making some changes.  

First I want to add a basic alphabet chart for the beginning of the year when we are focusing on sounding out the consonant sounds.  I am not about recreating the wheel if someone else has already invented it so I found a great free one on Pinterest by Lavinia Pop. She offers it for free on TPT and has a variety to pick from.  I am going to use one that labels the pictures as well.  

source

Next I created a short and long vowel page for my students to use as a reference.  

Then I found another vowel combination sounding sheet on Pinterest for free by Amanda Hagaman that I am putting next to mine.

source

This is what my students will start the year with I will be adding more as I introduce more mini lessons.  Next week I will show you a few more pages that go along with a couple mini lessons.  

Making the Most of the Student Dictionaries

There are pros and cons to everything in life and it really comes down to how you use something.  Each year my first graders receive dictionaries during the first week of school.  It had taken me a while to adjust to these.  There is a fine line between trying to spell yourself and using the dictionary as a crutch. I really want my students to try to spell on their own.   

In 2015 I started incorporating the dictionary as part of my weekly spelling program.  

On Thursdays I would have the students search in their dictionaries for their spelling words.  First as a class we would put the spelling words in alphabetical order.  (I used the word cards I would be putting on the word wall in a pocket chart.)  If the word was in the dictionary they would highlight it, if not they had to write it on the correct page. The students loved this activity.  We did this as a guided activity for several weeks and adventurually they did it as an independent center activity.  

However I noticed when it came to writing workshop my students were not using the word wall or their dictionaries for spelling. They continued to come to me to spell words for them.  So I created a poster and introduced it with a mini lesson.

We were still going through quite a few post its and they were still relying on me to spell.  Then I started to have them actually bring their dictionaries up to me with the post it because a lot of the words were in the dictionary or were spelling words.  I would show them the word.  

They could point out the word in the dictionary if they were unsure or give it a try on the post it, however that dictionary had to come up with them.  After I guided them through sounding out the word they had to write is correctly in their dictionary. This was useful because they could now reference the book if they needed this word again.  

                                          

A couple words I would have your whole class put in their dictionaries:

1.  Print the names of all the students.  (We did that the first month.  Each day we added the star student's name to the dictionary as a morning activity.)

2.  Add your name and the principal's name to the dictionary.

3.  Add the name of the school and city and state to the dictionary.

(This helped cut down on my line a lot.)  

4.  We reuse our post-its.  (Since I spend a lot of time teaching about recycling and reusing in the classroom the students keep the post it on the front of their dictionary or the front pocket of their writing folder for the next time they have a word.)  

                                   

At the end of the school year the first graders have an amazing resource to take home with them and use through the summer and second grade to help them spell.  

**I used a free dictionary from themeasuredmom.com for this post, however you can use any dictionary you feel works best for your students.  FYI...The Measured Mom has a variety of dictionaries of different levels and formats.  

Dear First Graders......

Dear First Grader,

In first grade you will learn Social Studies that's when you learn about people, places and presidents.  You will also learn about religion.  That's when you learn about God, Jesus and saints.  Handwriting is

another thing we do in first grade.  In math we solve hard problems.  You will learn about responsibility.  A responsibility is something you have to do by yourself.

From, Ellie

At the end of each school year one of my last writing assignments is to write a letter to the incoming first graders.  We go back over the pictures from our school year time line as talk about the different things we learned throughout the year. Throughout the discussion we also include things that are the same about kindergarten so that we know what not to repeat in our letters, for example gym class or lunch. In addition I remind the students to use their class dictionary to look up the hard words and sound out the new words and give it a try in their dictionaries.  

Above is just one letter from this year.  There were several cute letters.  However, I liked this one because we discussed a lot this year about what it means to be responsible, apparently it home with Ellie.  

Thank You Notes

I am sure most of you are familiar with the Flat Stanley project. It is a fun activity I have my first graders do toward the end of the school year.  We send out our Stanleys and wait patiently for our family members and friends to send them back.  While we are waiting we read a variety of Flat Stanley chapter books.  

After all the Flat Stanleys are returned it is time to write to our family members and friends a thank you note.  Thanking them them for all their efforts in writing back about Stanleys' adventures. 

I think is a good chance to teach the importance of writing a thank you note as well as teaching how to write a letter.  

First Grade Prayer Book

Each year I have my first graders write prayers towards the end of the year in their journals.  Five of the prayers are picked to read over the morning announcements.  All the prayers are typed and illustrated in black and white outlines.  Then I make a copy for each student to create a prayer book for all the students.  Then they color it for a keepsake.  

They also color a copy for me as well.  I make a class book with that copy.  It is a favorite in our classroom.  

How To Cook A Turkey

It took a while but I got it done.  I have been in and out of class the past several weeks as I finished up my radiation treatments so it took a little bit longer to finish this project than I thought.  

I had all my students write a little piece using transition words for How to Cook a Turkey. 

First they wrote a rough draft in their writing journals.

Then we went to the computer lab to type up our stories and illustrate them on ABCYA's Story Maker.  Most students took three computer classes to finish however other students needed more time.  

I think all the stories hung up in the hallway for two days and then I had to take it down to make room for Christmas.