Mollie Jamieson's Portfolio Page:

About Me

Hi Everyone! My name is Mollie Jamieson and I am from Warwick, NY. I am in my third year of teaching and have been working with first grade students who struggle with emotional disturbances and behaviors in the classroom. I graduated from Mount Saint Mary College in 2021, and am in my third semester here at UAlbany. One thing I love most about my job as a teacher is teaching students how to write. I absaloutly love keeping their writing from the beginning of first grade and seeing how much it changes throughout the year. Elementary students have such creative imaginations and I love encouraging them to use their imaginations in their writing and watching as they get excited to write!

My Topic and Purpose

Welcome to Wonder Writers! The purpose of this course is to show educators the best way to teach students the foundations of writing. Teachers will learn the main writing skills that need to be taught to kindergarten or first grade students so that they will be successful in future writing lessons.

I have always felt very passionate about writing and teaching students the proper writing skills that they can build upon each year to make them successful and sufficient writers. As a first grade teacher, I find that many writing curriculums are lacking beginning writing skills. This course will provide teachers the information and lessons that they will be able to carry out in their own classroom.

Scope of Learning Outcomes and Content

After each lesson, students will be able to meet specific learning goals. The objectives for this course include...

Students will be able to match illustrations to their writing.
Students will be able to use sentence starts to help generate new ideas.
Students will be able to formulate sentences independently.
Students will write a story and include a beginning, middle and ending.

Needs Assessment

The Educational Problem:

Writing is a topic that a great amount of students struggle with on a daily basis. Formulating sentences, spelling, punctuation and grammar are all lessons that students learn in elementary school. Why are students having such a hard time with writing and why is the writing ability of an elementary school student declining? When researching this problem a little further, I came across an article from National Association of Scholars titled, Student Writing: Strategies to Reverse Ongoing Decline. Throughout this article, Carter & Harper, (2013) explained that class size, technology, grade inflation, testing and social media all play a role in the declined of writing abilities in students. A study from this research article stated, "One recent examination of graduate student writing proficiency using the SAT II Writing Test, Part B, supplies evidence of a downward trend, finding that graduate students do not write much more skillfully than the average high school senior.", (Carter & Harper, 2013). This education problem needs to be addressed as we can't afford to keep up with this downward trend.

Reference: 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

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:

Currently, students have prerequisite skills that they are expected to build upon as they go through each 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

Throughout the course, students will be learning a new writing skill and be practicing it in their own independent writing. 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:

Currently, students participate in multiple writing curriculums that focus on building the main foundation skills to writing. Specifically, 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.

Analysis of the Learner and Context

This course is designed for kindergarten and first-grade students ready to build on their already-known writing skills. Throughout this course students will learn the importance of matching illustrations to their writings, how to use a sentence starter, how to formulate a sentence and ultimately will write a 3-page story that includes a beginning, middle and ending. Students will need to have the following prerequisite skills to be successful in the course-

Students can spell most sight words on the Dolch Sight Word List #1 correctly.

Students can identify the sound of a letter and write it

Students can “sound out” a word by saying each letter sound

Students will complete these lessons on a weekly basis and will be used as additional support to the school curriculum. Each lesson is designed to take 2-3 days. Ideally, teachers will teach the lesson in whole group instruction by teaching the new skill, modeling it and having students apply the skill in independent work. As the students are working, the teacher is walking around assessing how the students are grasping the skill. If they find that any students are struggling, small groups or 1:1 instruction should be implemented.

Teachers that are using this course as a guide to teach these new writing skills should be familiar with the curriculum being addressed, as well as up to date on the NYS Next Generation Standards. Each teacher should take these resources and implement it in their writing lessons.

Performance-Based 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.

Task and Content Analysis

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

Curriculum Map

References and 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