Foundations of Writing for First Graders

Overview and Purpose

Welcome to my course! This course is designed for kindergarten and first grade teachers that need some tips or assistance on how to get their students to begin learning the foundation writing skills they need to begin developing as beginning writers. The purpose of this course is to break down step by step writing units that are supported by NYS Next Generation learning standards. Writing can be one of the most challenging skill to learn for the little ones, therefore this course is designed to break down the steps into smaller steps and focus on mastering skills learned before continuing on.

Needs Assessment

The Educational Problem: Formulating sentences, spelling, punctuation and grammar are all lessons that students learn in the beginning grades in elementary school. Writing is one of the most challenging skills for students to learn as these grade levels as so many new lessons are being taught. Due to some of these challenges not being addressed, students go grade to grade struggling and the gap because wider.

Learners/participants: The learning participants include teachers that currently teach kindergarten or first grade. The students of these teachers should have minimal to moderate writing skills. In addition, this course will assist those teachers in giving them a guide to begin teaching the major foundation writing skills in these grade areas.

Analysis of gaps:

Student's prerequisite skills before entering this unit...

Students can currently:

Spell most sight words on the Dolch Sight Word List #1 correctly.
Identify the sound of a letter and write it
“Sound out” a word by saying each letter sound

By the end of the lesson, students will have learned four new writing skills and will be displaying independence in their writing as they will be encouraged throughout the units to rely on their past skills, while incorporating the new ones taught.

Existing efforts: Writers Workshop is used in many classrooms, as it teaches students a new skill every day, in hopes that students can learn and apply it during their independent writing. In this mini course, we will be building on these existing efforts by taking each learning skill and diving deeper into it, giving students the opportunity to become experts on each skill before moving onto the next.

Intent statement: The needs of the students taking this course include improving their writing and getting their already writing abilities up to par with state standards. Students will take the skills they have already and build upon them each lesson to ultimately create a story that includes a beginning, middle and ending.

Performance Objectives

Create, formulate and execute a full sentence with little support.
Add 5 colors to their illustrations and know the importance of matching their drawings to their writing.
Write a story and include a beginning, middle and ending
Write a 3-page story that includes a beginning, middle and ending with illustrations that match their sentences.

Course Units

Unit 1- All module links are attahced.

Lesson 1

Objective 1: Students will be able to match illustrations to their writing

At the end of this lesson students will be able to:

Know the importance of using 5 or more colors in their drawings by looking through grade level books and seeing the various colors on the pages.
Understand the significance of matching illustrations to our writing.
Begin learning the basics of writing and completing Writers Workshop lessons.

Lesson 2

Objective 2: Students will be able to use sentence starts to help generate new ideas.

At the end of this lesson students will be able to:

Use sentence starters such as “One day at the playground” or “I think this way because” to assist them in writing a full sentence.
enhance writing and generate new ideas.
Identify which words make sense to complete a sentence.

Lesson 3

Objective 3: Students will be able to formulate sentences independently.

At the end of this lesson students will be able to:

Develop full sentences that make sense.
Be able to stay relevant to the writing topic.
Formulate and generate new ideas to write full sentences.

Lesson 4

Objective 4: Students will write a story and include a beginning, middle and ending.

By the end of this lesson students will be able to:

Create 3 sentences with minimal assistance.
Use words such as first, then, next, last.
Meet NYS Writing Standard: 1W3: Write narratives which recount real or imagined experiences or events or a short sequence of events

Extended Resources

Student Writing: Strategies to Reverse Ongoing Decline by Heather Harper | (2013) https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/26/3/student_writing_strategies_to_revers_ongoing_decline-2
New York State Education Department. (2017). ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS LEARNING STANDARDS. In New York State Education Department. https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/curriculum-instruction/nys-next-generation-ela-standards.pdf
Sentence Writing Pictures | Watchfield Primary School. (n.d.). Watchfield Primary School. https://www.watchfieldprimary.co.uk/sentence-writing-pictures/
Fernandez, C. (2021, May 6). Help Struggling Writers Improve with Sentence Stems. Region 13’s Blog. https://blog.esc13.net/how-to-use-sentence-starters-and-paragraph-frames//
Smith, K. (2018, June 21). Top ten writing tips. Sweet Sounds of Kindergarten. https://www.sweetsoundsofkindergarten.com/2016/06/top-ten-writing-tips.html
K5 Learning. (n.d.). Sentence writing prompts: Books. https://www.k5learning.com/free-grammar-worksheets/first-grade-1/writing-prompts/sentences/books
Jessica Gill. (2015, October 15). Author vs. Illustrator [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un5c1zS2fgs