In the morning, we write during our Daily 5 Reading time. Students have one assignment to turn in each week. The rest of their writing is student choice in their red writing notebooks. We have learned that good writers begin their sentences with an upper case letter and end them with punctuation (period, question mark, or exclamation point). The rest of the letters in a sentence need to be lower case, unless it is a proper noun. We use a finger space between each word. We also use our best sound spelling strategies. If we get to a letter or sound we don't know, we can make a line.
In the afternoon, we have Writer's Workshop. This is when we learn about different genres of writing, as well as specific conventions and the writing process. We began our year with narrative writing, did some informational writing, and now are doing journal writing. We will continue to develop each of these types of writing throughout the school year.
Practice writing with your child at home. If your student does not yet know all the letters, work on writing upper and lower case letters. If your child is ready, start working on writing simple three word sentences. From there, your child can work on putting sentences together and write paragraphs.
Happy Writing!