Stephanie J. Sheehan
Tremendous writing development takes place throughout the first grade year and varies greatly from child to child. The types of writing will not change very significantly throughout the year. The greatest changes will be the amount of time and support given to the children and the amount of writing and revising that will be expected. Generally speaking, in the beginning of the year, writing will consist of a detailed drawing and a few words, which will gradually increase to a complete sentence. By the middle of the year, the students will be expected to write at least two complete sentences. By the end of the year, the students will be able to write reasonably well-developed stories, and revise them based upon teacher editing to create published work. The strategies I will use to teach my unit are based on this kind of progress in skill development.
Read Aloud Stories
The teacher reads a story, with pauses for relevant discussion questions. This is a great way for students to hear language and stories that they are not yet ready to read on their own, as well as to build vocabulary and comprehension strategies. Through read aloud, children may explore new genres with guidance and learn about new cultures, characters, and situations. There are two implementations of the read aloud strategy, that build other literacy skills: the think aloud strategy and story mapping.
The think aloud strategy allows me to teach students to make inferences and build basic reading skills. In order to introduce inference making, I may express my own opinions about the characters and events and then give the students opportunities to do the same. At times, I will give my own opinion only after hearing several students' points of view. To improve students' reading skills such as "decoding," I read part of a sentence, cover the next word and talk about what it might be based on context and the first letter, commenting on several possibilities until I "think" of one that makes sense.
Story mapping is a form of book report, which includes sequencing events and identifying story elements such as setting, characters, problem, solution, and main idea. The students take turns telling part or all of the story's events and the remainder of the class judges the accuracy of the information that has been presented. This activity should be done often as a group, both orally and in writing, to model and reinforce the skills necessary for completing story maps independently, which will be expected by mid-year.
Shared Reading
The use of big books with large print allows students to read stories together. The students read chorally as the teacher points to the words. This activity is ideal for working on fluency, comprehension, retelling familiar stories, and many other reading strategies.
Shared Writing
Shared writing is an activity in which the children brainstorm ideas about what to write with the help of the teacher and the teacher records the ideas on a large piece of chart paper. This enables the children to "write" with guidance and see their ideas on paper with proper spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation.
Written Response to Text
At least three times a week, students are required to practice writing responses to literature that resemble the types of writing they will face on state-mandated tests. There are several types of questions for first grade. For each question, the students read or hear a story, have an opportunity to re-tell the main events aloud and discuss the book as a group. They are able to look at teacher-modeled writing (for another book), and the students are familiarized with a rubric that shows the criteria for each score. At first, students give responses aloud and listen to my critique before writing. As they become more familiar with each type of question, they work more independently. After writing, the students read their responses aloud. The group is given an opportunity to practice using the rubric to determine the score and explain what was done right or what should have been done to obtain a perfect score. As another follow-up, I select the best writing samples from the class, read them aloud, and congratulate the writers publicly.
Making Connections
This is a reading comprehension strategy, which is integral to this unit and is also the first required written response. When making connections, students are asked to think about what has happened in a given story or situation. They have to tell the story of something that happened to them that was similar and give examples from both their experience and the story in order to support the connection.
Writing Personal Memoirs
Students write elaborated narrative stories based upon their own experiences. These stories are edited with comments, and returned to students to revise for publishing.