Teaching first graders to write is one of my favorite subjects. However, teaching writing to young children can be really difficult! In my past experience, I have never had a writing curriculum or much professional development in terms of teaching writing. Professional development is typically for teaching reading and math, but teaching writing is important too!
First graders are just beginning their writing journey and there are different reasons you may have struggling writers. They may have no interest in writing or are not confident enough to get started. They may lack the fine motor skills to write as long as expected. It can be difficult to adjust our expectations (or expectations of those of higher power than us), but sometimes that is exactly what we have to do for these struggling writers. Here are some different ways to help your struggling writers in first grade or second grade build their writing skills.
Setting A Foundation For Writing
Before we think about writing stories, we have to think about where our first grade students are beginning at the beginning of the year. Our students need to know how to form letters correctly and how to sound out the words they want to spell. If they are not confident in these two things, then we need to slow down and start there. Going back to the beginning, reteaching letters and sounds with some students may be critical before expecting them to write a sentence or story on their own.
Integrating Writing into Phonics Instruction
A great way to bridge the gap between phonics and writing is by incorporating simple writing tasks into phonics practice. For example, when teaching the “short a” sound, have students write words like cat, hat, and bat in sentences. This builds both confidence and familiarity with applying phonics to writing.
If you are thinking to yourself, “But my curriculum demands my 1st graders write this narrative right now in December… I don’t have time to go back to the beginning.” I understand your frustration. This is something you can do in a small skill group with students in both writing and reading.
Use a highlighter to build confidence
To help your students write the story that they must write, sit with them and help them write. Grab a highlighter and transcribe what your students want to write. Then, they can trace over the highlighter with a pencil. This will not only help them with correct letter formation but also with telling their story. Over time, they will begin to gain confidence and require less support.
Focus on Pre-Writing Activities
Pre-writing activities are essential for setting students up for success. Before sending your students off to write, think about what they can do beforehand to get ideas for their writing.
- Share Out Before Writing: With a partner, have students share their stories verbally. Talking it out with a partner can help clarify ideas before they put pencil to paper.
- Record Their Story, Play It Back: If your students have an iPad or Chromebook, have them use a voice recorder app to narrate their ideas. When they are writing, they can listen back to what they said to help them continue to write.
- Use A Word Bank: With your class, create a word bank of words they may use in the story. For example, if they are creating a narrative about their field trip to the zoo, come up with a list of words they all may use. For example: the different animals they saw, the weather, the habitat, the cages, etc. If you would like a concrete word bank for the entire year, check out our Picture Dictionary Word Banks.
- Think-Pair-Share: I love a good think-pair-share activity! Students can think about their ideas alone, then share them with a partner, and then share them with the whole group. This will give your reluctant writers some ideas of what they can write about as well when they hear others’ ideas.
- Use Graphic Organizers: Tools like story maps, T-charts, and web diagrams help students visualize their ideas. For example, in a narrative writing activity, a story map with sections for “beginning,” “middle,” and “end” can help students organize their thoughts.
Write Everyday
Daily writing builds fluency and confidence. It doesn’t have to be formal—any opportunity for students to put pen to paper throughout the school day will benefit their growth. This is a tough one and I know it may not be feasible for everyone. Your students should know that you value writing and that will not come across if it is the first subject that you let go of if you are running out of time. I am guilty of this so I understand! However, here are some different ways you can sneak writing into your schedule every day:
- Writing Center: If you use centers in your reading block, add a writing center to your rotation. This is an easy way to add more writing to your day. Our seasonal writing centers are themed for each month to engage and interest your students in topical themes. They provide a variety of writing opportunities that students can pick from like lists, notes, opinion writing, how-to writing, writing prompts, and how-to writing. These help students practice their writing in low-pressure ways, but that is fun! First grade writing focuses on personal narratives, opinion writing, and informative writing according to standards, but that does not mean that’s where you should stick. Students needs exposure to lots of different writing!
- Quick Writes: A quick write is a great way to add writing, especially if you ever have those awkward five or ten minutes in transitions. It can be very simple like asking your students to write one sentence about what they ate for breakfast that morning or what they played at recess. You can also make your quite writes more meaningful by giving a prompt to write more than one sentence. It just depends how much time you can squeeze in that day!
Provide Scaffolds
Scaffolding helps bridge the gap between what students can do independently and what they can do with guidance. Here are some different ways to scaffold your writing instruction:
- Pre-Written Sentences: I use pre-written sentences the most when teaching informative writing to my first graders. It is difficult to think of your own topic sentences and concluding sentences, especially so we come up with different pre-written sentences to use. However, this strategy can be used across all writing genres. For example, when writing an informative story about different animals, a pre-written topic sentence would be, “____ are interesting animals.” This is also something I use for narrative writing and how-to writing using transition words like first, next, then, last.
- Writing Process: The process of writing is overwhelming for our young writers. Don’t teach the whole writing process at once! Focus on one step at a time, preferably on different days. Start with brainstorming and then move to drafting, editing, and revising. These should all take at least one day, but multiple days are preferable so that your students have time to move through each part.
- Use Sentence Starters: When you provide different types of prompts, it can help reduce writer’s block. Even the most reluctant writers may copy the sentence starter and not continue with their writing, but that is okay! Copying the sentence starter is the first step. Maybe next time they will write one more word beyond the story starter. Remember, we are looking for progress each time! We have sentence starters in our writing center as well.
Model Your Own Writing
As with any other subject, modeling your own thinking is important for student success. Young students benefit from seeing adults model the writing process.
- Think Alouds: Write a sentence or paragraph (or even the whole story) on a large anchor chart paper or on the doc cam in front of the class. Model aloud your thinking. Say things like, “Hmm… does that sentence need a period? I think it does!” Modeling how to self-check reinforces habits students can replicate with their own thinking and writing.
- Shared Writing: Write a story with your class. Have your students contribute ideas and write the words or sentences. This makes the writing process more concrete, tactile, and collaborative.
Offer Regular Feedback
Giving regular feedback to students will build confidence, recognize their strengths, and will help them improve their skills.
- Highlight Strengths: We all have heard the sandwich approach to begin with the positive, give feedback, and end with a positive. When giving students feedback, begin with the strength like their creative ideas, new vocabulary they used, complete sentences, etc. Make sure to be as specific as possible when giving feedback.
- Focus on one area at a time: You may notice more than one thing that needs to be improved. However, to avoid overwhelming our students, we need to think of one thing we want them to focus on the most. Want to make sure your students add punctuation or capitals? Then you focus on one of those and that’s it!
- Be Timely: Offer your students feedback as soon as you can, during writing or right after. That way, your students can work on what you said immediately while it is fresh. One thing I used to do a lot was walk around with Post-its. I would visit 3-5 students during a writing block and sit with them for just a few minutes and we would confer about their writing. Then, I would write what they need to work on on a post-it and place it on their desk. This was a good visual reminder for them as they wrote. They kept the Post-it on the page they were working on for the next time they worked on their writing.
- Have your students give their own feedback: Teach your students to check their own work for things like punctuation, capital letters, inventive spelling, and spacing. If you use our writing journals or writing centers, the pages include this self-check at the bottom of each page. It is important to teach our young students to check their work for these things.
Differentiate Instruction
It can be really difficult to differentiate your instruction with your entire class, especially when you have 20-30 students to meet the needs. This is where writing skills groups can really come in handy. By organizing writing skills groups, you can address the specific needs of all your students and help them grow as writers. There are a few different ways you can group your students to make writing skills groups.
- Group by Writing Skill Needs: Identify the specific areas where students need support, like sentence structure, punctuation, thinking of ideas of what to write about, revising, editing, etc. Then group the students will similar needs together to provide focused instruction.
- Provide Targeted Mini Writing Lessons: Explicit modeling and practice will help your students build confidence and mastery. For example, with a small group struggling on sentence structure, teach them to use a graphic organizer like a story map.
- Adjust Writing Tasks: You can adjust writing assignments for each group based on current skill level. For example, beginning writers focus on writing one complete sentence or labeling pictures. Intermediate writers write a full paragraph and advanced writers work on a full paragraph with a topic sentence and concluding sentence. Do not expect these groups to all write the same amount. Meet your students where they are.
- Use Technology: Use voice-to-text for students who struggle with fine motor skills. This can help them generate ideas without the frustration of physically writing pencil to paper.
Use Mentor Texts
Mentor texts help all writers, not just struggling writers. These are high-quality examples of writing that illustrate specific skills and provide your students with a model of what effective writing looks like. Here is how mentor texts help your young writers:
- Provides a clear model of writing: Mentor texts provide a concrete example, showing students how to organize ideas and use descriptive language.
- They introduce writing techniques: They give a clear example of an effective lead, sensory language, etc.
- Builds Vocabulary: Mentor texts often introduce students to new words, which they may want to use in their own stories! Struggling writers often have a limited vocabulary so hearing these new words in a text can help them expand their horizons.
- Spark inspiration: Many writers have a hard time thinking of ideas. Mentor texts can help students with creativity and help them think of new things to write about.
Celebrate Writing Progress Among Students
Recognize and celebrate small wins to motivate your students to keep improving and working on their writing. Many students thrive on this extrinsic feedback. Here are some ways to celebrate wins, big and small:
- Publish Class Books: Compile student stories into a class book. This is motivating and gives your students a sense of accomplishment at the end of a writing assignment. Pair this with a publishing party where they can have a special snack or invite another class or family into your classroom to listen to your students read their stories aloud.
- Writer of the Week: Highlight a student each week for their effort in writing. This could be for creativity, work ethic, improvement, etc.
- Display Student Work: Create a writing bulletin board to showcase student stories.
Address Common Writing Challenges
Every classroom will have students with different, unique writing struggles. Here are some strategies for common issues you may have in your classroom:
- Reluctant Writers: Use drawing as a pre-writing activity. Students draw the picture first and then write about it.
- Fine Motor Skills: Provide different tools like pencil grips or allow your students to dictate their stories for you to transcribe.
- Spelling Concerns: Teach your students to use inventive spelling. Encourage them to write words as they sound and focus on their ideas and not on perfect spelling.
By setting a solid foundation, encouraging daily practice, scaffolding appropriately, and celebrating successes, you can help even the most reluctant writers find joy and confidence in writing. Keep in mind that writing is a journey, and progress may look different for each student. With patience and consistent effort, you’ll see your first graders grow into proud and capable writers!
Resources mentioned in this blog post:
Other Blog Posts To Check Out:
