Second Grade
First Grade
Writing News
[pic] April 2015
Dear First Grade Families,
Spring Greetings! Spring is all about new growth and I hope you will join me in celebrating your first grader’s growth in writing. As you think about the growth your child has made in the area of writing, please take a moment to praise your child for his/her accomplishments.
For the last couple of months the students have been working on expository writing. The students began with opinion pieces and then transitioned to informational/factual pieces. The students have been taught to use a particular graphic organizer as a pre-write tool to help them organize their ideas and expand and/or elaborate as they construct a six sentence paragraph. In fact, students were recently asked to challenge themselves and write a ten sentence paragraph after doing some shared research on an arctic animal. Your child’s research project will be sent home at the end of the school year and you will be able to observe the hard work your child put into this extensive project.
The first graders will continue to be encouraged to pick their own topics and write about what interests them as a way to make writing more meaningful. In addition, I am encouraging the students to use interesting words in their writing; like adjectives and descriptive phrases that really “paint a picture” in the reader’s head. The importance of appropriate sentence structure and the use of conventions continue to be a major focus.
Below you will see what your child will be working on in April and May.
Spring Writing: The first grade students are now being introduced to a new form of writing; it is called narrative writing or story writing. The students began the unit by learning how to retell a familiar story while including specific story elements. Next, the first graders will learn how to write their own stories that include elements such as; setting, characters, problem, events, and solution. After the students have had ample practice with story writing, their learning will be assessed.
Below I have provided some ideas of what you can do at home to help reinforce the importance of writing.
Ways to share and encourage writing
with your child at home!
[pic]Ask your child what a Shape Story Planner is used for (a prewriting tool to plan out a
fictional story).
[pic]Ask your child what the three story elements are that need to be included at the
beginning of a story (setting, characters, and problem).
[pic]Ask your child what transition words are used for (to show the sequence of events in a
story). Then ask your child to give you some examples (i.e first, next, then, after that,
meanwhile, a while later, last, finally, etc).
[pic]Ask your child to tell you what story element is to be included at the end of a story
(solution).
[pic] Ask your child what solution means (how the character(s) solve the problem).
Periodically ask your child to tell you about what he/she is learning about in writing. Talking about writing with your child will help reinforce what he/she is learning at school. Please review the writing activities sent home with your child. You may encourage your child to finish any incomplete work; however, it is NOT homework.
If you ever have a question or a concern regarding your child’s writing progress, please contact me at (253) 931-4976.
Mrs. Holly Lancaster
First Grade Learning Specialist
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