1-9-12 First Grade “Steps” into Writing

The first graders have been making oral paragraphs, each one with a topic sentence, three transition sentences, six details and a concluding sentence.  We use manipulatives pulled out of our “paragraph drawer”.

The green heart is displayed as the child tells what the “heart” of the paragraph or the topic sentence is. Green means go, state your topic!

The three transition sentences are displayed with glue bottles each with a yellow star on them.  The glue signifies how these are the sentences that bind everything together and the stars are the key or star ideas. Yellow means slow down, give facts or reasons.

The red steaks are the details to each of the star ideas.  They make the paragraph very meaty.  Red means stop, explain and give examples.

Our last and most favorite of these manipulatives is the present wrapped up with a green ribbon.  This signifies to wrap up all the ideas into a sentence.  Green ribbon means to go back and remind the reader of the topic.

This morning we told about our weekends in oral paragraphs.  I learned about birthday parties attended, Incredible Pizza vistis, play dates had and ummm, rated R Risk games bought:)