All the Write Moves


Writing in first grade is so exciting! I love how much growth you see when you view their writing journal entries from the first month of school to the last month. 

I personally don't love scripted programs that tell you what to do with each lesson for writing from the first day of school on. Having taught 4th grade writing for two years I know very well that writing can feel like a chore to many students- especially those who aren't naturally strong writers. I feel like writing should be taught the way reading is. First children are exposed to writing just as they are books and reading. But when we first start "reading" we are pretending. We aren't really reading anything yet. For years we are given freedom to mimic what our parents read and how they read it before we are ever exposed to letter sounds and how to blend them into words. The first half of the school year I allow a lot of freedom in my students writing journals. Monday through Thursday students can free write in their journals. I have journal prompts and sentence starters for those students who want to use them. On Fridays we do a writing assignment together. I show students our writing prompts and we write together. I put each sentence on a sentence strip in a different color. We read and re-read what we have written to make sure it makes sense. Then students go back to their seats and do their own writing to the same prompt. Beginning in January students do much more writing that is assigned. By this time the majority of students are at a reading level that allows them to use good vocabulary and write sentences using many of our sight words. They begin to see how creative they can be and many students take several days to complete one journal piece.


Last year I created an All the Write Moves packet. I posted our writing goals in our center as well as our posters from this pack.

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But I found as the year went on that I really needed students to have mini versions of the posters inside their journals to use as a reference. I began updating my pack and edited and added several pages.  There are example pages what writers can write. I also have mini versions of writing posters in both black and white. Writing activities and examples are listed throughout the pack. I also included our writing goals.

If you have already purchased All the Write Moves be sure to download the latest version. This is the perfect product to add to your Back to School wish list! Click on either picture to view this product on TPT!



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