First Grade Authors

During this first trimester of school, the 1st graders worked to publish their first writing piece.  As the students enter first grade they are still learning how to correctly form a sentence. Going from learning to write a single sentence to a published story can be a big leap. The students were able to accomplish this task by breaking down the process into manageable steps.

One of the curriculum standards for 1st grade writing is for students to write about a real or imagined event through sentences and pictures.  The students do this by creating a personal narrative.  First, we read a mentor text, Fireflies by Julie Brinkloe to understand what a personal narrative entails.  We learned there were four parts for a personal narrative.  First, it should be written from the perspective of the author and include words like, “I”, “my”, and “we.”  The personal narrative should be about a real story the author has experienced.  Additionally, the author should include how he or she felt about the experience.  Lastly, the personal narrative should be told in a sequential order.

The first step in creating a personal narrative was to make a heart map.  The students listed at least 4 topics or ideas they were interested in.  Many of the students listed their favorite sports or hobbies while other students listed family trips or events.  All of the ideas had to be things that the student had actually experienced.

Next the students learned about the pumpkin and seed parts of the story.  The pumpkin of the story is the main big idea of the story while the seed parts of the story are all the details and events that happen in the pumpkin story.  The students selected one pumpkin idea to zoom in on and then listed all the seed parts that went along with the story.

Now that students had a topic and some details to write about their personal experiences, the next step was to plan the sequence of events for the story.  Students used a story planning graphic organizer to sketch out the beginning, middle and end of their story.  

At this stage, students were ready to start drafting their stories.  They used the story planning map to help keep their story parts organized in sequential order.  As they took their ideas from story planning map to rough draft it was time to add in more details to the story.  Additionally, they needed to add in their feelings about the events to incorporate the final aspect of a personal narrative.

Once the rough draft was completed, students started the revision process.  They met with a partner and shared their stories.  The partner was supposed to ask questions to help the author think of additional details to include in the story.  The goal was to add an additional detail to each part of the beginning, middle, and end of the story.  

After the story was fully developed with details, there was one more step before publishing and that is to edit the story for correct capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.  Students again were paired up with a partner.  Each pair carefully reviewed the rough draft to check for those errors and help each other identify spelling mistakes.  While students were encouraged to use phonetic spelling, they have high frequency words posted in the classroom for reference.

Now that the stories have gone through the revision and editing process, it is time to publish.  Students rewrite their stories taking into account the revisions while also using their best effort to write neatly. To complete the story and capture their audience’s interest, they created covers with titles and illustrations.  They were very proud of the stories they created and were eager to share their stories.