Using Daily Writing Journals to Strengthen Sentence Writing

 

Let's give our young writers a way to work daily on their writing.

Learning to Write is Hard Work

Kindergarten and 1st-grade students need to learn to write. They have a difficult time learning to write a sentence. So as teachers, we figure out how to entice them to do this. There is so much they are learning. They are having to take the letter sounds they have learned and figure out how to write a word. On top of this, they are putting their concept of words together to form a sentence. The poster that is on the board says, “Hard Work Beats Talent”, and that’s exactly what the kids are doing. They don’t have the talent yet, but it is going to take hard work on both the part of the student as well as the teacher. 

Most of these young learners come to Kindergarten not even being able to form a letter, much less will they be able to write a complete sentence. Then when they start 1st grade, they seem to have forgotten what they learned that prior school year. But do not let this be a reason to avoid teaching writing to your students.

Benefits of Using Daily Writing Journals

So we say to ourselves, "They can barely write a sentence, much less can I ask them to attempt to do this every day." But writing daily is the way we give them the opportunity to conquer this difficulty! Sure, at first it won't be beautiful or perfect, nor readable. But, given the time and the practice, they will get better.

Using daily writing prompts allows the students

• to tackle a skill that initially scares them
• it allows them to develop their writing skills at their pace
• that initial fear turns into growth in writing
• they see their own progress 
• you see their progress
• their sentence writing strengthens

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Daily Writing Journal with a Teeth Care Theme

I have created a writing resource to hopefully make this work a little bit easier for the teacher and student. This teaching resource is based on the topic-teeth care. It’s intended to be used daily. There are writing prompts to guide students with the writing response. It incorporates the things you are teaching your students such as sight words, nouns, verbs, and describing words. These can be found in the word bank.

The alphabet is at the top of the sheet to help your students as they are attempting to sound out the words. The vowels and consonants have been separated.

Standards-Based

This is based on the Common Core Standards. It should also meet your state standard, which is usually based on the Common Core Standards.

CC Standard W.K.2 Using a combination of drawing, dictation, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts where they are writing about and supply information about the topic.

With this activity, students will be labeling the topic picture. So, they are taking and using the words they are learning and applying them.

Writing Prompts

There are two writing prompts on each page to direct their responses. A sentence starter is provided for the students needing help to get a sentence started. The second prompt gives them the opportunity to form their sentence on their own. If students are needing extra help, I would have the students do the sentence starter but encourage them to do the second sentence on their own.

Make-a-Sentence

This packet also includes a section that differentiates for your students who cannot write a sentence on their own yet. In this section, there is a Sentence Model that the teacher can use to demonstrate how to take the words and form a sentence.

Teacher Sentence Model

• Cut apart the words.
• Mix them up.
• Point to each word and read it aloud, and have students repeat the word.
• Place the word ‘the’ above the words and let them know this sentence begins with the sight word the.
• Ask the students what word should go next. If the wrong word is chosen, let them know which word should come next.
• Keep asking them what word comes next until it is completely done.
• Read the sentence.
• Have the students read the sentence with you as you point to each word.

I would demonstrate this in front of all my students regardless of their ability to write.

Then students can take their Make-a-Sentence sheet, cut the words apart, then they can place them in order, then glue them in place. The first set of lines is so that students can copy the sentence they have just glued together. The second set of lines is to encourage them to write a sentence about the topic on their own.

Make-a-Sentence cut and paste

Fear of Writing

Some students will be afraid to write on their own. But I would tell them they must attempt to write a sentence; it takes hard work. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I would also give them some credit for what they do; if they tried sounding out the word, the number of words they wrote, even for the partial words. All hard work counts. Using these daily writing prompts is one way to encourage them to begin writing.

Flora Maria Shop

If you want to incorporate these writing activities with some teeth care activities that would be fun to do, read Teaching Dental Health in the Classroom. 
Thank you for continuing this journey with me as I reach out to educators by providing support with teaching resources and blog articles with helpful teaching tips!

I also want to thank Flora Maria Shop for sharing with me a set of posters with meaningful phrases. They are available on Amazon.

Debbie – Froggy About Teaching on Amped Up Learning

               Froggy About Teaching on Teachers Pay Teachers

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