Writing Center in First Grade

A favorite center this year in first grade was our writing center.  My students LOVED to write and they always wanted to sit at this table!

The table fit 2 people, but they always tried to squeeze in more :)

During Daily 5 Time (or center time), the children had the option to work on whatever genre of writing they chose.  They might write in their journals (our first unit of study), or they might choose to write a list, or work on scrambled sentences, or write imaginative stories using prompts.

They had a large selection of different types of paper available to them.

Class writing journals available {HERE}

One of our favorite activities was always scrambled sentences.  They loved unscrambling these sentences!

The first few months of school are available in my store now:

   

 

I always make sure I display the children’s writing! They love picking up the books that they have created either during Writers’ Workshop or during independent center time.

If you would like to try out the list books in your classroom, here are some freebie covers!

And here are the I can Statements that I have hanging up in my writing center:

A Little Writing Intervention–Day 1

I want to share with you one of our RTI Interventions today.  Although we LOVE to write in our classroom, and we write every.single.day, there are still some sweet babies that struggle with composing and transcribing their thoughts. 

We’ve started using a writing intervention from Linda Dorn and have had some great results. 

Here is in a nutshell….

My set-up looks like this.  You could use an easel and chart paper too, but I don’t have space around my reading table for an easel, so I just staple paper to my bulletin board.

Step 1:

Shared Reading of a poem or nursery rhyme.  You should choose a poem that contains a target sight word that your group needs to learn.  *Be sure to take data before you start – sight word check and sentence dictation to get a baseline of where your kiddos are at.

After you read the poem (the goal is not for them to read it, but to hear the language and how you read it), do some quick phonemic awareness activities and comprehension questions.

*What happened in the poem? What was it about?

*Then, read part of the poem and tell the children to listen for a word that starts like ___ on our abc chart (you’ll need these for your kiddos too)

*Say ____ and ____ (say the two words)

*What letter sounds that same?

*Where is it at? (on the alphabet chart)

Step 2: 

Ask the children if they can think of any other words that start like those 2 words.  As they name off words, write them on the top of your chart paper. (Ignore the bottom paper for now – that is part of day 2).  Next, read all of the words together, and ask “What part is the same in all of these words?”

Step 3: 

Read through the alphabet chart together.  (Sorry, I forgot to snag a picture of them doing this).  This is very quick – the kids get really good at it after a while.  So you would say, a /a/, apple, b /b/ ball…etc.

Step 4:

You will have prepared bowls of magnetic letters using the letters of your focus sight word.

Have the children line the letters up across the top of a white board. They will pull down each letter quickly practicing the left to right motion and saying the name of the letter.

Then, starting on the left again, they will push up and say the letter names again.

Next, tell the children to take ____ letters (how ever many letters are in the target word) and build a word they know – build ______. When the build the word tell them to take a good look at it, slow check it, and read it again.

Then mix the letters up and do it again.

Next, have them put their letters away, and practice writing the word on their dry erase board.

Then, put away the markers and dry erase boards. (leave the abc chart).

Step 5:

Next, you’ll have the children add the focus word to their dictionaries. 

Ask:

*What page are we adding it on? Why?

*Find the letter on the alphabet chart. Is the “_” page going to be at the beginning, middle, or end of your dictionary?

Write the word in the dictionary with a marker

All of these steps is day 1 of our writing intervention process.  I’ll write another blog post to tell you what we do in day 2.  Once children get the hang of the routine of this, it will only take about 20 minutes each day. 

If you want to read more about it, check out this book:

Linda Dorn sure knows her stuff :)

I know it’s a little late, but I did just finish my March Word Work pack.  I designed this pack with ease of prep in mind – there are color and black and white versions.  I have a January pack, but never finished February (wah wah).  I’ll be working on April’s this week. 

The March pack is on sale right now, so grab it and file it away for next year (or squeeze in some activities this week!)

There are 12 different activities included in the pack (the previews only show a sampling…)

Here is what’s included:

*I Can Cards
*Common Core Correlations
*Color and Black and white pages
*Recording sheets for every activity
1. Pot O'Sight Words - sorting words by the number of letters
2.Shamrock sounds - identifying medial vowels and writing CVC words
3.All Sorts of Gold - E and I vowel sort
4. Silly Sounds - identifying ending sounds and writing CVC words
5. CVC Puzzles -building and writing CVC words
6. Leprechaun ABC's - reading sight words and putting them in ABC order
7. Shamrock Syllables - counting syllables
8. Shamrock Scramble - sentence reconstruction
9. Read, Clip and Write - identifying real and nonsense words
10.Loopy Leprechaun Word Sort - sorting and reading real and nonsense words
11. Star Bellied Sort - s, t, st sort
12. Lucky Digraphs - wh, th sort

Stay tuned for Day 2 of writing intervention!

Have a great weekend!

Daily 5 Update and Choices

We are in the middle of ANOTHER blizzard up north.  This is was the worst yet this winter, and on top of that, we are asked to turn our thermostats down to 60 because of the pipline burst about 100 miles from us. It’s a bit chilly in my house! It’s another week of subzero temps this week, so hopefully they are able to repair the pipeline soon!

We’ve been busy in our house in January…

with birthdays….

and dance….

and winter fun…

 

But, in the classroom, our Daily 5 rotations are going fantastic!  I think that it has really helped that the children had a very solid foundation of what they are supposed to do during our literacy rotations.  The only difference is that they are now working independently rather than in a group.

Here is a reminder of what my rotation chart looks like:

Here’s the details…

It looks a little tricky, but it’s really simple, and the kiddos caught on super quick!

There are 6 activities for each daily choice (we are not doing partner reading yet).  The number next to the child’s name corresponds to the activity that they will do.  I rotate the names across the top after each round (we are doing 3 rounds).

The children take the cards from the chart and find their corresponding activity.  They either velcro the card to a clipboard or leave it right next to them.  So far, they are doing a fantastic job remembering to put the card back when they are done!

At the end of each day, I rotate the name cards.  I know that this was day 2 of rotations because the cards are orange.  The next day the cards were yellow, and then green, and blue, and so on.  On the 7th day, I let the children choose which activity they want to do (either for the 2nd time or if they missed it because they were in reading groups).

(The cards are from A Year of Many Firsts, by the way – they are free on TpT!)

All of the activities are kept here:

Each drawer has the corresponding number and picture card.

Choice 6 for word work and work on writing are kept in these baskets:

I keep clipboards with a velcro dot right by the activity so they can put their choice card there.

Listen to reading is kept in these bags:

There are 2 bags with portable CD players, 2 bags with ipads, the 5th bag has the book in it and they will go to a classroom CD player, and listen to reading #6 is located in our class library.

One of my most favorite finds this round were these:

I have a set of ipads, so these were PERFECT.

I just add the QR code for the book to the bag, and the kiddos scan with the ipad and listen to the book.  They do a super quick response activity afterwards.  They LOVE this new twist on Listen to Reading!

Okay, onto the goodies inside the drawers.  Here are a few things that I have in the drawers:

These 2 are both from my January word work pack – I REALLY hope to get a February pack done too….it will be very similar to this one – super easy to prep, and very predictable activities for the kids.  The goal is independence, so I want them to know how to do it without asking for help!

This is from my Short E intervention pack.  The children are really enjoying the activities from these intervention packs – they are great for small group work as well as independent centers and whole group.  We use our word sliders every day to review blending!

This activity is part of the January Word Work pack.

 

Here is another super amazing activity from Sue Lynch.  We LOVE this!! 

If you want this recording page, you can download it {here}.

These next 2 are “in the works” on my computer.  I am working on a couple of super easy, predictable activities for word work and work on writing.  These will be part of my Frugal Teacher Series of activities.  (I have a lot of these started, but finding the time to finish has been tricky this year!)

This app is called Jumbled Sentences, and it is a free one! The kids put the words in order to make a sentence.  When they finish level 1, I have them write 2-3 more sentences on their own.

Stay warm friends! I’ll be back with an update of what we are working on during our math centers!