Writing

This week we are beginning our new unit "Telling Good Stories". We are switching gears from non-fiction writing back to narrative and/or fiction. According to Lucy Calkins, “The urge to tell stories begins when children are very young.  They love to tell you imagined stories and not entirely real Small Moment stories..."  In Kindergarten, students learned to sequence stories across the pages of a book, add feelings and include a beginning and end.  We will expand this work in First grade by developing transitions with temporal words to signal event order.  Students will also learn how strong verbs and adjectives are used to develop plot and character.


This unit offers a great opportunity to learn to use three specific parts of speech (verbs, adjectives, and prepositions) with specific purpose – to help in the creation of a scene – a physical place where action is happening.


Telling Good Stories not only supports a child’s growth as a writer, but also as a storyteller.  Storytelling skills will help students’ reading comprehension, conversational skills, and imagination.  The genre of narrative writing can be used as a crafty approach to sharing a variety of content knowledge. Students will grow in their speaking and listening skills as they share their compositions.

Essential Questions for this unit:
How do people compose a good story?
How do people develop a good story?