Grades 1-4 Writing

http://www.writingfix.com/ is good for writing prompts

You must do yourself a favor and get this great writing book by Charles Paslay. It is a great writing book for only 5 bucks. Now, I just read your post again. This is for 5th grade and up, so don’t bother. I’ll keep it on here though in case anyone else teaches a higher grade is needing something.Email [email protected] Geared to kids as a reference. I think its just what you need if you teach 5th and up.

I LOVE Step Up To Writing, but it is a complete writing program and costly.

I’d try the 4 square, a good bang for the buck.

Is anyone familiar with the K-2 version(I think that is the grade level) of Step Up to Writing? Would you share what you think about it? I am thinking about purchasing it but my kids are mostly MMH so not sure if it would be appropriate. Many are just beginning to write and I would love to take advantage of that by using some good materials with them.

Is MMH Mildly Mentally Handicapped? All the labels vary.

Here’s my take. If the child can write a complete sentence and you want to move that to paragraphs Step Up will do the trick. If the children can not write a sentence…then I would say…..save your money until they can. They will get some out of Step Up but it is pretty expensive. The new primary book is pretty good but I’d say for general ed.

Look at your class, decide if the majority can write a sentence and then decide.

Michelle AZ

Michelle,
Thanks for that writing prompt website. Just checked it out and it looks great! I am currently homeschooling my new foster son and we will use some of the interactive story ideas - he doesn’t want homeschooling to look too much like school while we are awaiting an appropriate placement for him.

Michelle and anyone else—do you have a recommendation for very beginning writers. My kids are not very good at sentence writing yet, but I feel they are almost there. I wanted to try to start off with some good materials. I feel like in other years I worked so hard on getting students reading that I didn’t spend enough time teaching writing. Hoping to do better by this group of students. Yeah MMH is Mild Mental Handicapped.

I don’t have an answer to the program question, but be sure your kids have an oral language level high enough to handle the writing you are expecting them to do. If they can’t speak in a complete sentence, then you have more language work to do befoe you can expect written language to progress.

Janis

Getting into sentence writing: I use photocopies of a lot of old workbooks that go with a lot of old basal type programs. The good ones have a detailed planned progression — first tracing single words, then copying single words into a blank, then sorting mixed up words into a sensible sentence, then choosing the correct and incorrect sentences to go with a picture, then writing your own sentence to title a picture, then (finally) answering a question with a sentence formulated on your own. Also, first these questions are very simple and factual and direct about a story or a picture, then *after* that they ask for personal experience, and only later do they ask for inferences and other higher-order skills. Later the answers develop into two or three sentences and then paragraphs. Each of these types of exercises is spiralled and repeated at a slightly increased level of difficulty every week or two.
My second-language materials have a lot of this kind of progression as well.
If a child has never written anything independently and then you place a blank piece of paper in front of him and tell him to make up a story, well, writer’s block is a fairly normal reaction —same thing happens to adults all the time!
In math, I find the blank sheet of paper anxiety to be a real problem. I try to encourage students to write something sensible for every question. Don’t jump ahead and try to have the whole thing finished before you touch the paper, but think out the first thing you want to say, put it down, and then figure out where you want to go from there.
I find it helps especially in second language but also with my more difficult first-language students to ask formula questions to build the sentence: (subject) Who/What are we talking about? OK, write it down.
(verb) What did he/she/it do? OK, write it down.
(modifiers/object) When/where/how/to what? OK, write it down.
This of course only develops simple declarative sentences, but hey, it’s a start. You can work from there.
If spelling anxiety is a problem, I sound out any longer word syllable by syllable to help, and correct as we go (This one is a k, not a c; don’t forget the e to make the long vowel; etc.) so the student never has to go over and rewrite a bunch of spellings later. We work in pen so there’s a fair amount of crossing out but a picture-perfect page isn’t my goal anyway.