how to writing grade 1

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The Brown Bag Teacher

Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World.

March 11, 2015

1st Grade How To Writing

  Hands-On Experiences : Building Paper Planes

 hands-on experiences : making maracas, launching workshop.

Favorite Mini-Lessons

Transition words, favorite mentor texts.

Throughout the week, I’m pulling from three of my favorite mentor texts – How to Babysit a Grandpa , How To Wash a Woolly Mammoth , and How to Teach a Slug to Read . These are perfect for showing students how real-author use how-to techniques (logical order, sequencing, time order words) to share a story or information with a reader.

Read and see more HERE .

How-To Writing within Work on Writing

As we start writing our How-To pieces independently, we’ll self-assess our writing and use the below checklist (personal ones and a class anchor chart) to guide our work.

In retrospect, this is a unit I’ll definitely teach at the beginning of the year. Teaching at this point of the year, is much simpler and requires less groundwork, but still, it’s a nice review of skills we’ve learned throughout the year in reading and writing. Plus, now that we’re officially readers and writers, it’s amazing to see what my students come up with!

• Opinion Writing ( blog post ,  resources ,  mentor texts ,  bundle )
• Narrative Writing ( blog post ,  resources ,  mentor texts ,  bundle )
• Inform/Explain Writing ( blog post ,  resources ,  bundle )
• How-To Writing ( blog post ,  resources ,  bundle )

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How to teach writing to Grade 1 kids: New strategies for teachers and parents

Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Education, Western University

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Writing is a craft that is vital for both communicating and learning . However, many children struggle to learn to write. For most, their difficulties persist throughout elementary school unless they get help. As recently as 2018, there was very little research on how to teach Grade 1s effectively .

However, recent research shows how teachers can help Grade 1s make a strong start on writing. Parents have a vital role to play in laying a foundation for early writing success.

Many parents have likely heard children say, “I don’t know what to write.” Teaching children strategies for writing tackles this problem head-on.

Breaking writing down into steps

In 2019, a team of Spanish and British researchers published one of the first experiments on teaching writing strategies in Grade 1 . They explored how a child can learn to write a story by asking themselves a series of questions: When did it happen? Where did it happen? Who is the story about? What did they do? What happened? How did it end? These questions help the child to generate and organize their ideas.

To help children remember this writing strategy, teachers in the study used a picture of a mountain with a path that led past six houses — one for each question. The teachers discussed the strategy, modelled how to use it and wrote together with the class. After instruction, the children wrote stories that were higher in quality, longer and more coherent.

Strategies work

The value of teaching writing strategies in Grade 1 has been confirmed by additional studies that examine teaching specific kinds of writing: Procedural writing (instructions for someone on how to do something) , and opinion writing (short essays meant to persuade someone of something) . In this writing research, teachers combined strategy instruction with discussions, picture books and dramatization.

And in our own recent research, we found that strategy instruction is effective for Grade 1 students across the range of writing achievement levels: low, medium and high . These Grade 1 studies join over 100 previous studies with students in higher grades in showing that teaching writing strategies works .

Printing, handwriting, spelling

Recent research also provides renewed support for the seemingly old-fashioned skill of printing. Grade 1s who can print accurately and quickly are able to create better and longer stories and reports . Teaching printing helps students to create better stories . Despite over 70 previous studies on the benefits of teaching printing and cursive writing , systematic teaching and assessment of these skills has declined in some curricula.

Read more: Writing and reading starts with children's hands-on play

Spelling is another traditional skill, the importance of which has been confirmed by recent research. Better spellers create better and longer stories, while poor spellers struggle with composing , and Grade 1 spelling affects the development of composition in later years.

Spelling education works best if it is formal, including, for example, lessons and practice activities . Additionally, teaching writing strategies combined with spelling and printing is more effective than teaching each of these skills alone .

Parents can help children practice spelling at home. Teachers and parents can also show children the “invented spelling” strategy of saying a word slowly, stretching out the sounds, and printing a letter (or letter combinations, such as “th”) for each sound. This will lead to some errors, but in kindergarten and Grade 1, invented spelling is an important driver of spelling development .

New understanding of Grade 1

This new understanding of the importance of Grade 1 is beginning to change writing education . In the past, many schools in Canada and the United States waited for struggling readers and writers to reach the middle elementary grades . Then, they were assessed by a school psychologist. If they were diagnosed with a learning disability, they were placed in a special education class.

However, in a new approach, response to intervention, teachers use evidence-based methods (like strategy instruction) to teach the whole class. They assess students regularly based on their daily writing, and if a child is below grade level, they receive help in a small group .

This approach is not yet common. However, it is almost certainly coming to some provinces in reading education . Reading education and writing education are intertwined, so we can expect the same approach to follow in writing.

Laying the foundations

The foundation for writing success is ideally being supported at home before children start kindergarten.

Parents can ask children to tell them stories, print the stories for them, then read them aloud for the child. They can teach children simple skills like forming letters and printing their name.

Parents can also practice printing with children at home; this is especially valuable for struggling writers . They can help children to write things that are important to them, like birthday cards for family members .

Read more: To help children learn how to read in the pandemic, encourage writing messages as part of play

Parents can also encourage children to read and write independently . Once children begin to write, parents can be their best audience, praising their efforts and the good qualities of their writing, and making suggestions to help with ideas, printing, and spelling .

When children begin school, and into Grade 1, parents can watch for red flags in their child’s writing development. During Grade 1, the average student learns to print the letters of the alphabet legibly and fluently, spell one syllable words the way that they sound (cat, game) and spell common short words that are not spelled the way that they sound (you, they). They also learn to write a story a few sentences in length about a personal experience .

If your child is missing these basic skills, don’t wait and see — talk with your child’s teacher and make a plan to help them succeed.

• Handwriting

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1st grade writing

by: Jessica Kelmon | Updated: November 15, 2022

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If you were amazed at how your child’s scribbles transformed into words last year, get ready for pure delight as your first grader learns to write full, meaningful paragraphs this year! First graders learn everything from expressing their thoughts to the rules of grammar.

While the bar may seem high for first graders, remember that this year’s work is a progression, starting with mastery of the alphabet.

A to Z — and all the sounds in between

Teachers often kick off the year with an ABCs review, just like in kindergarten. But this year’s review is also likely to include a couple dozen high-frequency words (e.g. he, and, good, play ).

If your child didn’t master the alphabet last year, it’s okay. First grade is the year to read the ABCs, know their letter sounds, and to print all upper and lowercase letters.

Cn u rd this?

A first grader may start the year writing “cac” for cake or “becs” for because . Dropping a word’s silent e at the end or middle vowel sound to spell it the way it sounds is known as phonetic or “invented” spelling. (See a real example of “invented” spelling .) Children are often more comfortable using consonants and the sounds at the beginning of words because they’re more distinct than vowels or sounds at the ends of words. By using invented spelling, children are demonstrating what they know about letter sounds. Research shows that letting children use invented spelling (and not immediately correcting them) allows them to focus on the purpose of writing: communication.

With time, your first grader should transition to conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns (e.g. bike, like, hike , and sing, ring, king (See our first grade rhyming words worksheets for more examples.) and high-frequency words (See our first grade snap words worksheets for some examples.).

Note: Keep an eye on your first grader’s spelling near the end of the year: if a child’s spelling does not improve or their invented spelling is arbitrary rather than phonetic, it can be a sign of a learning issue.

But don’t expect to banish invented spelling completely this year. First graders should be encouraged to keep using what they know about letter sounds and newly learned spelling patterns to spell irregular, unfamiliar, and new vocabulary words, for example “inportint” for important .

3 types of writing in first grade

First graders should practice and learn three kinds of writing: opinion, informative, and narrative . Opinion and informative writing will likely start with kids reading a book and responding to what they’ve learned. In an opinion piece, your child introduces the book or topic he’s writing about, states his opinion about it, gives a reason or two to support his opinion, and then offers some sort of conclusion to complete his writing.

In an informative piece, your child names what he’s writing about and gives some information, facts, or details about it (e.g. Dinosaurs lived on Earth a long time ago. Some dinosaurs were bigger than people are today… ), and, as in an opinion piece, offers some sense of conclusion.

Writing a narrative is like writing a story. A first grader’s story should describe two or more events, include details about what happened, and give some sense of the story coming to an end — not only by writing “The End,” although that’s a good start.

Check out these two real examples of good first grade informational writing: • “ Water is inportint ” • “ How to savs water ”

See what first grade writing looks like

bttr, better, best!

Teaching your child to write well means helping them understand that writing is a multistep process. Before your child picks up a pencil, prewriting begins with reading, thinking, and discussing. When your child’s first draft is done, the teacher and other students might ask your child questions about the work to elicit details or facts that could be added, or to help organize the order of events in a story.

Then your child may be asked to do a revision . After one or more revisions, the teacher might help your child with the final edit — focusing on spelling, capitalizing proper nouns and the first word of a sentence, and adding a period at the end. These steps — prewriting, doing a first draft, revising their work, and editing the final piece — helps first graders learn all the important parts of writing.

Research in first grade, oh my!

In first grade writing there’s an emphasis on kids learning to respond to questions by looking up answers to their questions.

In their writing, this means that kids will pull information from books, websites, class presentations, and other experiences to form their opinions, arguments, and even stories. When they use this information, they should be able to recall where they learned the facts they’re including and organize them into their own writing. An example you may see your child working on: reading a “how to” book and mimicking the writing structure to write their own instructions for something — in order! (For great practice, check out our pizza recipe worksheet .)

What how first graders research and discuss a topic

“I go’ed there,” no more!

Get ready for your first grader’s grammar — in the form of noun-verb agreement, adjectives, sentence complexity, and punctuation — to leap forward. First graders learn to use singular and plural nouns with matching verbs in simple past, present, and future tenses. They also learn to use commas.

Kids also learn about proper and possessive nouns (e.g. Shawn and Shawn’s ), articles (e.g. a, the ), pronouns (e.g. I, me, my, they, them, their, anyone ), adjectives (e.g. good, happy ), and increasingly difficult prepositions (e.g. during, toward ).

In fact, think of first grade as the year of “because” — because your child’s sentences should move beyond simple statements to compound statements, questions, and exclamations using conjunctions (e.g. but, so, and, or, because ) to connect thoughts.

Finally, building on the capitalization rules your child learned last year ( I and the first letter of the first word in a sentence), your first grader will learn to capitalize the first letter of people’s names.

Check out these related worksheets: • Commas • Verbs • Verb tenses • Above, on, below

What about handwriting?

Handwriting matters. First graders are expected to be able to print all upper and lowercase letters.

Check out these related worksheets: • Practicing letters a and b • Practicing letters c and d

Updated August 2022

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Guided Writing in First Grade

Writing in first grade can be rough, especially at the start of the year. I have tried implementing a variety of teaching strategies over the years to help my students become authors. It is very challenging though!

Each new class has varying skill sets and I hate feeling like I’m reinventing the wheel each and every year.

What I have noticed, year after year, is that the biggest struggles students face when it comes to writing is deciding what they are going to write about, getting started, and interest/confidence in writing.

What I have found has helped my students overcome these struggles is guided writing! 

Writing is not something that comes naturally, it is learned through guidance and mentorship.

Primary students have limited understanding of writing strategies, and it is our job to introduce those strategies and provide opportunities for mastery.

Guided writing allows us to help students learn, implement, and master a variety of writing skills.

Through the use of modeling, shared writing experiences, interactive writing, guided writing and independent writing; students are able to hone important writing skills and strategies.

So what is guided writing?

It is writing instruction that falls between teacher modeled writing and independent writing.

With the use of scaffolding to help support students, teachers are able to help students become independent writers.

The teacher modeling is done in a group setting, where students contribute and practice writing before they move on to do it on their own.

This helps students develop an understanding for how to write, as well as building their confidence in writing.

Guided Writing Groups for First Grade

There are a couple ways you can teach guided writing: whole group or small group.

When I start out the year, we start with simple writing tasks that are easy for the whole class to follow and participate with.

As the year progresses, however, I switch to small group guided writing lessons.

This allows me to differentiate my instruction for the varying levels of students in my classroom. 

I have found it beneficial to hold guided writing groups for every type of writing you do during your year.

Writing groups are a great way to ensure success and help to continue building student confidence in writing. 

How to set up guided writing groups:

First you want to make sure you have writing skill goals for your students. For example: early in the year I want students to use a capital at the beginning of each sentence and punctuation at the end. This may seem simple, but you’d be surprised at how difficult this is for students. 

Starting and Creating Groups:

• Select a writing skills goal to focus on
• Select students that would benefit from focusing on that skill
• Meet with this group while others are working on independent writing tasks

Each group may be working on a different skill, some groups may be working on the same skill.

It doesn’t matter as long as you are meeting with your students and working on what it is each one of them needs.

These groups should be flexible! I am constantly switching my students around based on their individual needs.

Some students need a lot of help mastering a skill, while others just need a few reminders and they are off! 

As the year progresses, you will want to change your writing groups.

Here are some more Writing Group Ideas:

• Teacher demonstrates how to edit
• Model chosen skills or writing types (whatever you may be focusing on at this time)
• Provide resources for students to use: mentor texts, graphic organizers, guided writing pages, etc.
• Continue to meet with students based on skills

Students should continue to work on skills that have been taught and reinforced throughout each writing unit. They should also be working on editing throughout the year.

These are important things that need to be modeled and focused on during your guided writing time. 

First Grade Guided Writing in Action

I don’t know about you, but my days go by SO FAST! Each moment of the day feels like it is scheduled out and I only have a certain allotted time to do each subject.

My writing time is no exception, but it is something we have to prioritize.

My guided writing time is a quick 20 minute time-frame. I know what you’re thinking, no way can you get it all in 20 minutes, but you can as long as you are well prepared.

Now, do I always get everything I want in? NOPE!

The more lessons I do, however, the better my time management gets. 

Like I said earlier, at the start of the year I do whole group guided writing. This allows me to have the amount of time I need to complete my lesson with the entire class, as well as, allows my students to develop an understanding for what our writing time is going to be like. 

Here is how I start: 

• Involve students in conversations about this experience
• Have students explicitly practice how they are going to go about writing this experience. I start by modeling this aloud to the class and as the year progresses, they will do this with a neighbor and then eventually to themselves.
• Some strategies may include: writing content, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, composing
• Have a brief discussion with students on how they are going to implement this strategy into their writing task for the day. 
• While students are writing I am walking around and providing immediate, but brief, assistance. I make it a point to not stop and work with one student for long.
• Monitor students during this time. 
• Much like with independent reading, we want to build student’s independent writing stamina. They should be able to produce a short, but complete piece of writing. 
• I do try to do this each time we do a writing activity, but time never seems to be on my side. We try to squeeze in a quick share time with the whole group, small group or with a partner. Some days are better than others. This section has been a work-in-progress for me. Sharing writing is VERY important and I do make a point to allow students to share weekly. One of my goals this year is to get better with this time management. 

Benefits of Guided Writing in First Grade

In order to help our students become successful writers, we have to provide them with a variety of opportunities for writing.

Not only during our writing time, but throughout the day.

Cross-curricular writing is also very important and something I’m constantly trying to implement in my classroom.

I want to provide students with meaningful writing experiences during our writing and guided writing time that allows for them to be successful writers in other areas of our day.

Whether they are writing about the STEM structure they built, or the famous city we are researching, I want my students to be using and honing their writing skills.

Writing Activities for First Grade

A teacher’s dream is to “set it and forget it”… and with this writing bundle, now you can!

This bundle includes the two writing resources I use in my own classroom  ALL YEAR LONG  that require very little thought and planning but offer countless opportunities for my writers to grow in independence, creativity and author’s craft.

More First Grade Writing Favorites:

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Kristen Sullins

I am a current Elementary Librarian and Enrichment Teacher, mother of two, follower of Christ and Texas native. In my own classroom, I love to save time by finding unique ways to integrate writing, social studies and science into all parts of my day. I also love all things organization!

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Home » 1st Grade Teaching Resources » 23 1st Grade Writing Worksheets To Practice New Skills

23 1st Grade Writing Worksheets To Practice New Skills

Spelling, reading, and writing are three of the most important skills children will learn in their first few years of school—that’s why having access to an assortment of first grade writing worksheets will make your life easier as a parent or a teacher. By the time students reach first grade, many have started learning basic words and are able to write basic ideas out on paper. The writing worksheets below offer a variety of different activities for all skill levels and help students focus on essential writing skills and develop them. Worksheets are great support for learning through practice—the unique offerings and the classic activities alike will create a strong foundation to build on!

Table of Contents

What should a first grader be able to write.

• Best First Grade Writing Worksheets 

Should First Graders Be Able To Spell?

Check out these additional 1st grade resources.

First grade introduces the basics of spelling, grammar, and vocabulary to students. As they practice all of these skills, they’ll inevitably grow as writers. First grade teachers want to see kids who can write simple, complete sentences. They should ideally be using proper capitalization and end punctuation. 

Even if their spelling isn’t perfect, the ability to use their knowledge of letters and letter sounds to take an educated guess is really what teachers are looking for. First graders should also be adept at copying down words and sentences provided to them, and able to produce their own simple sentences from scratch.  

In partnership with Teach Simple , whose marketplace is full of educational materials created by actual teachers (plus 50% of all revenues go to them), I’ve gathered 23 totally-awesome grade 1 writing worksheets to help inspire your students and support their core language arts skills!

Best First Grade Writing Worksheets

• You Write The Story Soccer Picture Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

This writing worksheet offers students the chance to practice writing using a visual prompt. The use of visuals supports learning and aids students in idea generation. This 1st grade worksheet will help you teach brainstorming and the elements of a story. 

• Other Ways To Write Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

This worksheet may seem like it is just focused on writing, but it also engages essential critical thinking skills. Understanding that writing is a process that can happen on paper or on a computer will set your students up for success well beyond first grade!

• Search The Word By Worksheet By Splash Learn

Search the word by Worksheet is aimed at enhancing children’s literacy skills, particularly their familiarity with common sight words. Through an engaging, picture-based activity, it encourages learners to identify and understand the usage of a specific sight word in various contexts. The exercise is designed to improve reading fluency, speed, and comprehension, making it a valuable tool for early literacy development.

• Capitalization Errors Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

There are many elements of grammar that students need to learn throughout elementary school, but capitalization is truly fundamental. Catching errors is a fantastic practice to reinforce learning! This worksheet will certainly engage your reader and support their knowledge of grammar as they fix the errors in seven different sentences.

• Writing About Me Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

Cultivating a strong sense of self and identity is an important element of social-emotional learning for young children. This worksheet blends together writing, spelling, and those SEL elements to create an engaging and fun activity where students can write about someone they know very well!

• In My Own Words Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

Summarizing paragraphs and retelling narratives with a focus on key information are essential skills. They support not only reading and reading comprehension but also critical thinking as a whole. This worksheet asks students to retell four different quotes in their own words and offers particularly effective practice for your first grader! 

• Once Upon A Pancake For Younger Storytellers — Creative, Interactive Activity Book For Kids From A Story Book Day

This workbook is full of writing prompts and unfinished stories to spark kids’ creativity and enhance their writing by finishing up each one. This workbook is a fun way for children to develop their reading, writing, and storytelling abilities, using prompts about superheroes , friendships, magic, and more!

• “I” Handwriting Practice B By Have Fun Teaching

Handwriting is key to academic success and legibility is a key part of writing in the first grade . This simple worksheet let’s students practice uppercase and lowercase “I” handwriting while also constructing sentences starting with I or making silly sentences that only use “i” words.

• Journal Writing Prompts By Minds And Heart

Whether you need beginning of year writing activities, literacy centers, morning work, or early finisher work, these prompts will work for any time! With a checklist to self-edit for capitals, punctuation, and details, students will be reminded to utilize the components of strong writing that they are learning every day. 

• You Write The Story Artist Picture Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

This worksheet offers another delightful visual writing prompt—this time about some artists and a dinosaur. The benefits of the visual prompt paired with the writing practices will lead to fun and learning all at once!

• Draw A Story Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

Kids love to draw, and visuals are wonderful supports for reading and writing. This worksheet blends the two and guides your little author through the process of creating a story and illustration of their very own. 

• My Opinion The Big Orange Splot Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

Opinion writing includes elements of informational texts. This worksheet asks first graders to think critically about the prompt, practice writing, and focus on their opinion of the characters and plot of the story .

• The Big Orange Splot From Art with Mrs. F

• Capitalization And End Punctuation Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

A sentence has distinct features to indicate where it begins and where it ends. Early literacy skills focus on these text features to support students in their grammatical understandings. This practice worksheet is a wonderful resource for emerging readers and writers to practice capitalization and end punctuation on different types of sentences.

• Comprehensive Language Arts Skills Practice Test For Grade 1 By Twin Sisters Digital Media

Knowing where your students are is important to tracking progress. These worksheets are designed to be used as a practice test, focusing on core writing and reading skills. Ranging from punctuation and grammar to story structures and more, this is a great assessment tool to check in on your student’s learning. 

The worksheets in this bundle include topics like:

—Consonant Sounds

—Blends and Digraphs

—Compound Words

—Contractions

—Synonyms and Antonyms

—Adjectives

—Sequencing and Story Mapping

—Capitalization

—Punctuation and Grammar

• Writing Sentences Printable Workbook By Twin Sisters Digital Media

A simple but useful tool, this sentence writing practice looks at the writing basics younger students need to learn and focuses on each one!

• Writing Conventions And Applications Printable Workbook By Twin Sisters Digital Media

Make learning more fun with a variety of activities and games related to all things about writing conventions! This set features various types of practice with nouns, verbs, plurals,  subject-verb agreement, adjectives, statements vs. questions, capitalization, punctuation, complete sentences and beginning/middle/end-story structure. Packed in a set of unique worksheets, this practice is fun and effective.

• Describing Emotions Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

This worksheet is a double whammy! Not only are you getting engaging writing practice, but you will also be supporting students’ emotional learning. A simple but effective way to ask kids to write about their own feelings in descriptive words.

• Make Sentences With The Sentence Maker By Guinea Pig Education

A choose your own adventure of sorts, this worksheet allows students to piece together words and create sentences. A fun and tactile tool, this activity encourages students to be creative while offering a support scaffold and building a solid foundation for writing sentences on their own.

• Silly Stories Story Starters By Have Fun Teaching

Who doesn’t love a silly story? Inspire your students to flex their imagination with this worksheet full of story starters. They’ll have ideas to jump off from and will practice writing while being creative and thinking of stories that are outside of the box.

• Scholastic Success With Writing, Grade 1 By Worksheetbee

This comprehensive writing workbook from Scholastic focuses on several different parts of writing skills in 1st grade including identifying sentence parts, building sentences, sequencing, writing descriptive sentences, and identifying story parts.

• Star Wars Workbook: 1st Grade Writing Skills From Workman Publishing 

Get kids hooked on writing by providing them with writing activities about their favorite characters from Star Wars. This workbook is aligned with Language Arts Common Core Standards and combines editorial quality, fun presentation, and the rigorous educational standards that Workman applied to the Brain Quest Workbooks as well.

• Space Poetry Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

This charming worksheet is a perfect way to practice poetry and tie in science. The creative writing elements and cross-curricular connections make this a wonderful resource for your first grader to think about how to write a poem about space.

• Uppercase And Lowercase Letters Worksheet By Have Fun Teaching

Having two versions of each letter can be a weird concept to wrap your brain around as a child. This set of practice worksheets around the basics offers a quick and easy way to support students in understanding the difference. It also serves as handwriting practice making it a double whammy!

• Capital Letter Examples Worksheets By Have Fun Teaching

Let your students apply what they know with this worksheet. A little more capitalization practice can’t hurt, and with this sheet you can easily check their understanding of the concept before you move on from the topic.

The answer is yes and no. We want our first graders to be able to spell out CVC words they’ve memorized and can identify by sight. They should also have a handle on some decodable words—mostly those that can be broken down into their composite letter sounds. 

Complex, compound, and trickier letter combinations are not going to be words teachers expect first graders to spell correctly, but with practice they will come! Using these first grade writing worksheets will support your students in becoming proficient readers and writers in tandem with developing spelling skills they’ll need for second grade and the rest of elementary school.

About the Author Ali Pierce has been a proud public school teacher for nearly a decade. An English teacher by day, Ali works with educators throughout K-12 in a variety of coaching and support roles. A proud Wildcat, Ali earned both her BA in Creative Writing and M.Ed. in Teaching and Teacher Education from the University of Arizona. When not teaching, Ali can be found hanging out with her two young sons and sneaking in some reading for fun.

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First Grade | Writing Skills

How is my child performing in writing.

Your child’s teacher should be able to provide samples of student work and describe if they are meeting the goals for writing. If you are worried that your child’s writing is not developing, schedule an appointment to meet with the teacher immediately to tell them your concerns.

1st Grade Writing Goals

While all children develop at different rates, these are goals to help you understand how writing should be progressing during the school year.

Beginning-of-year Goals

• Write their first and last names.
• Hold a pencil correctly (Check out “The Pinch & Flip Method” if they need practice.)
• Write from left to right on paper and continue to the next line.
• Use “invented spelling” or write down the sounds they hear in words. For example, journal might be spelled “ drenurl” .
• Create a story using pictures and words.

Middle and End-of-the-year Goals

• Instead of a few words, stories have sentences.
• Children can practice the three kinds of writing: opinion writing, informative writing (stories that are true with facts, recipes or explaining how to do something), and story writing (called “narrative writing”).
• Students can go through the writing process, meaning they think about what they want to write, write down their first ideas, look back over their work to fix mistakes, and then add details and pictures. At the end, they read it to a friend, the teacher, family member or the entire class.
• They are able to write their answers to questions. They can begin to look up facts and write down their observations.

Your Child Can Write an Essay – Just Watch!

Practice writing letters of the alphabet, invented spelling: your child’s first writing, foster a love of writing with your 1st grader, game: abcya.com story maker – have kids type their own stories.

How can I help my child improve their writing?

Frequently asked questions about 1st grade writing.

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25 Fun First Grade Writing & Storytelling Prompts (Free Printable!)

I’m excited to learn about …

First graders have lots of big ideas and opinions, but they are still learning how to put letters and words together in order to communicate in writing. Help spark their imaginations and get them writing with these 25 first grade writing prompts.

The following writing prompts are designed to spark your first grader’s imaginations and get them writing! And they are perfect for in-person or virtual learning.

(Want this entire set in one easy document? Get your free PowerPoint bundle by submitting your email here, so you’ll always have the challenges available!)

1. After school I love to_______.

2. I’m proud of myself when_____.

3. To be a friend you must_____.

4. One of the fun things my family likes to do together is _____. 

5. Would you rather fly like a bird or swim like a shark? Why?

6. If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?

7. What would you put in a treasure chest?

8. This is how you make a sandwich.

9. If I were as tiny as an ant, I would ______.

10. My favorite color is ____ because_____.

11. I’m excited to learn about _____. 

12. Who is the funniest person you know?

13. If I could fly, I would go_____.

14. My favorite thing to do on the playground is_____.

15. I’m really good at_____.

16. Listening is really important because_____.

17. When a friend is sad how can you help them feel better?

18. List five things you know about bugs.

19. What is your favorite sport? Why?

20. I like to read books about_____.

21. My favorite art activity is_____.

22. One thing I find very interesting is_____.

23. I am different because_____.

24. When I am by myself I like to_____.

25. What are three things you do before you go to bed at night?

Get My First Grade Writing Prompts

Love these first grade writing prompts? Make sure to check out our first grade jokes to start the day !

You Might Also Like

25 Inspiring Second Grade Writing Prompts (Free Printable!)

When my friend is sad, I can help by _____. Continue Reading

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Common Core State Standards Initiative

English Language Arts Standards » Writing » Grade 1

Standards in this strand:, text types and purposes:, production and distribution of writing:, research to build and present knowledge:, range of writing:.

• Key Design Consideration
• Students Who are College and Career Ready in Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, & Language
• How to Read the Standards
• College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading
• College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing
• College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening
• College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Language
• Introduction for K-5
• Kindergarten
• Introduction for 6-12
• Grade 11-12
• Introduction
• Language Progressive Skills
• Measuring Text Complexity: Three Factors
• Range of Text Types for K-5
• Texts Illustrating the Complexity, Quality, & Range of Student Reading K-5
• Staying on Topic Within a Grade & Across Grades
• Range of Text Types for 6-12
• Texts Illustrating the Complexity, Quality, & Range of Student Reading 6-12
• English Language Arts Appendix A
• English Language Arts Appendix B
• English Language Arts Appendix C

Grade 1 Unit 1 CKLA Writing Revolution Aligned writing pages

Also included in

Description

Are you using CKLA Knowledge units and looking for a little more? Theses student pages include scaffolded kernel sentence work, sentence type (statement/question) work and handwriting pages. They also include a page for each lesson for students to work on story elements and retelling a story. All writing is based on the story read that day. Combine these pages with the Unit 1 comprehension slide deck, which can be added right onto the end of your read aloud slide deck to enhance narrative reading comprehension by examining narrative writing structure, in turn, will support narrative writing.

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Sixth-grade student arrested for writing bomb threat note at school

A n 11-year-old student at a Vero Beach middle school was arrested Thursday for writing a note stating that there was a bomb on campus, according to the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office.

The incident occurred at Storm Grove Middle School on Wednesday when a student found a note on a locker that read “bomb on campus.” The student informed a teacher, who then contacted law enforcement. The school was briefly placed on “Code Yellow” – a shelter-in-place order – but after a precautionary search of the school turned up nothing, the order was lifted and students resumed their regular class day.

The sheriff's office investigation revealed a "person of interest" who, upon questioning by deputies, admitted to writing the note. The girl has been charged with "written or electronic threats to kill, do bodily injury, or conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism" – a second-degree felony. The juvenile court system is handling the case.

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READ THE FULL STORY: Sixth-grade student arrested for writing bomb threat note at school

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Reading & Math for K-5

• Kindergarten
• Learning numbers
• Comparing numbers
• Place Value
• Roman numerals
• Subtraction
• Multiplication
• Order of operations
• Drills & practice
• Measurement
• Factoring & prime factors
• Proportions
• Shape & geometry
• Data & graphing
• Word problems
• Children's stories
• Leveled Stories
• Context clues
• Cause & effect
• Compare & contrast
• Fact vs. fiction
• Fact vs. opinion
• Main idea & details
• Story elements
• Conclusions & inferences
• Sounds & phonics
• Words & vocabulary
• Reading comprehension
• Early writing
• Numbers & counting
• Simple math
• Social skills
• Other activities
• Dolch sight words
• Fry sight words
• Multiple meaning words
• Prefixes & suffixes
• Vocabulary cards
• Other parts of speech
• Punctuation
• Capitalization
• Narrative writing
• Opinion writing
• Informative writing
• Cursive alphabet
• Cursive letters
• Cursive letter joins
• Cursive words
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• Grammar & Writing

Breadcrumbs

Grade 1 Phonics Practice

Phonics instruction is crucial for first graders for several reasons.

Foundation for reading

Phonics helps children understand the relationship between letters and sounds, which is essential for decoding words. This is a fundamental skill for learning to read.

Improved reading skills

By learning phonics, children can better decode unfamiliar words, leading to improved reading fluency and comprehension.

Spelling and writing

Phonics instruction supports spelling and writing by teaching children how to segment sounds and blend them to form words.

Building confidence

Mastery of phonics skills can boost children's confidence in their reading abilities, making them more likely to engage with texts and enjoy reading.

Early intervention

First grade is a critical period for literacy development. Early phonics instruction can help identify and support children who may be at risk for reading difficulties, providing interventions that can prevent long-term struggles.

Structured learning

Phonics provides a systematic and structured approach to reading instruction, which can be especially beneficial for young learners who need clear and consistent guidance.

Grade 1 phonics worksheets

We have added a series of phonics worksheets for students to practice learning about relating sounds to letters and words.

Consonant blends practice

Students work on identifying consonant blends in these worksheets.

CVC & CVCe words worksheets

Students use a letter bank to complete short words .

Short and long vowel words

Students practice classifying short and long vowel words.

Practice digraphs

Students identify common digraphs in these worksheets.

Digraph sounds worksheets

Students continue working with common digraphs in these more advanced worksheets.

Word families

Next, students tackle words with similar sounds, or word families .

Counting syllables

The final set of worksheets have students counting syllables .

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Susan Jones Teaching

Teaching Resources

Writing Personal Narratives in First Grade

Susan Jones January 21, 2018 14 Comments

This post may contain affiliate ads at no cost to you. See my disclosures for more information.

Writing personal narratives is one of the first writing genres we learn in first grade! My students are usually successful in this writing venture because they get to write all about  themselves. How were they feeling? What happened to them? Who was there? These are all things my students can answer and my job is to help them expand on it and turn it into a complete writing piece.

I have been using the same writing unit for the past 5+ years with my first graders and it has yet to let me down. I wanted to share the steps I have my students take when introducing writing personal narratives through small moments.

Step One: What is a Small Moment?

To kick off our unit, I introduce what a small moment is with this anchor chart:

The first grade teacher above,   purely.primary , just projected the mini anchor chart from my narratives unit and traced it onto chart paper! On the first day, I also like to read my students an example of a personal narrative and we see if it meets all the expectations from the anchor chart. Some of my favorite personal narrative picture books are:

( please note the following are Amazon affiliate links. When an item is purchased through these links, I receive a small amount back)

Step Two: Let’s Brainstorm

Next, we brainstorm! We brainstorm all sorts of small moments and where we can find them.

To help my students think of their small moment, I use a graphic organizer that helps us brainstorm moments we’ve had at school, during holidays or special events, we think about times we felt happy, sad, angry, nervous, and more!

Once my students have picked their small moment, we use a circle map to think of the details surrounding this small moment:

When filling in the details, I have my students try to answer some of the question words:

Who was there?

What were you doing/wearing/thinking?

Where were you?

When was this?

Why were you there?

How were you feeling?

Step Three: Draw & Stretch it out (Rough Drafts)

After we brainstorm the details of our small moment, I like my students to draw out the beginning, middle, and end of their stories. When they draw, I try to have them add details from the day.

Then we streeeeeetch out our drawings. Each drawing (1, 2, & 3) gets its own stretch it out sheet for students to begin putting words onto paper to form their own personal narratives. These are the times where I like to talk about using a clear opening to set our story up and wrapping it all up with nice closing.

Step Four: Adding some FUN!

After we have our rough drafts in order and a base to our story, it’s time to add some FUN!

We use Jonathon London’s FROGGY books as mentor texts for the following writing skills. Each day, I introduce one skill with the anchor chart, we read a FROGGY book and see how Jonathon London uses it, then we go into our rough drafts and try to add it into our story!

Step Five: Let’s Edit & Revise

Before we publish, we know that writers must go back into their stories to revise and edit! We spend a few days editing our own stories and we also try to edit/revise a partner’s story. Editing someone else’s work is a  very difficult thing to do in first grade. especially towards the beginning of the year when my students cannot read their partner’s work yet. I still find it to be very beneficial to the entire writing process and my students’ understanding of what the writing process looks like a feels like. I also like to listen to my students explain their work to a partner as they point out different parts of their stories.

The above checklists are found in my personal narratives writing unit .

Step 6: Publish

Last, but certainly not least, my students go on to publish their final works! They must read through their rough drafts or “sloppy copies” as we call them and re-write them focusing on their neatest handwriting and colorful illustrations. My students also think of a title for their story and create a cover page.

Those are the basic steps we take as we create our narratives. In my narrative unit, I have detailed lesson plans for each day of this unit that are more in-depth. I also have had many teachers ask me if my students only write one personal narrative throughout the unit. My answer is NO! My students actually write, edit, and revise many different narratives throughout a 5-7 week period. I like for my students to have a lot of choice, so every day during writer’s workshop they can add to the narrative they are working on currently, or start a new one taking the steps they already learned how to do. So they may be working on a few different narratives at one time. That being said, usually about half of my class choose to only work on one at a time.

 We do only go through the publishing portion once. My students choose the one narrative they want to publish from beginning to end!

All the lessons seen in this post can be found in my personal narratives writing unit:

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Reader Interactions

14 comments.

October 14, 2018 at 2:12 pm

I love these ideas.

September 9, 2019 at 4:23 am

This is so exciting to get to use this lesson! Thanks for sharing! I just love your blog and Tpt store.

October 31, 2019 at 1:55 am

Great steps

April 13, 2020 at 3:10 pm

I’m new to teaching and your detail explanation on narrative writing was very helpful. Thanks

June 29, 2020 at 1:13 pm

Switching grades to first this year.

September 27, 2020 at 1:10 pm

October 5, 2020 at 10:20 am

I can’t wait to try this today! Such a thorough and well thought out plan!

October 5, 2020 at 10:25 am

I can’t wait to try this today!

September 8, 2021 at 9:01 pm

I love this really really much!

September 8, 2021 at 9:02 pm

I love this very much! Thanks for sharing! Now I have an idea of how to do the writing activities with my first graders!

April 4, 2022 at 5:18 pm

What are your favorite narrative books? They don’t show here.

January 22, 2023 at 2:43 pm

First year k/1 bridge Inclusive . Thank you

January 30, 2023 at 2:52 pm

Where can we find these graphic organizers?

February 7, 2023 at 6:03 am

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Hello friends.

Welcome to Susan Jones Teaching. When it comes to the primary grades, learning *All Things* in the K-2 world has been my passion for many years! I just finished my M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction and love sharing all the latest and greatest strategies I learn with you through this blog and my YouTube channel! I hope you'll enjoy learning along with me :)

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