1. hobbies and interests
2. reading

Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Content Area:
Language Arts Writing
Unit Plan Title:
Unit #1 - Launching Small Moments
Grade
First
Anchor Standard (ELA) or Domain (Math)
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5, CCSS: Grade 1, Writing
3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and
well-structured event sequences.

W.1.3. Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details
regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.
5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

W.1.5. With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from
peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
L.1.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
L.1.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when
writing.
L.1.5 With guidance and support from adults, demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and
nuances in word meanings.
RF.1.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
SL 1.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts.
SL.1.2 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other
media.
SL.1.3 Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or clarify something
that is not understood.
SL.1.4 Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
SL.1.5 Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions.
SL.1.6 Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation.
W.1.8 With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided
sources to answer a question.
W1.5 With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from peers, and
add details to strengthen writing as needed.
Overview/Rationale
Rationale:
One big purpose of this unit is to build on the essential writing skills that children learned in kindergarten, as well as the
routines and habits they have begun as writers. In kindergarten students received instruction in personal narrative
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
writing; this unit draws on that knowledge and aims to add new levels of sophistication to the stories children tell and
record on paper.
According to the Common Core State Standards, all students must develop proficiency in writing three kinds of texts:
opinion writing, informational writing, and narrative writing. The end of the year expectation for first graders is that they
can produce narrative writing that demonstrates a sequence of events including detail, temporal words to show order,
and some sense of closure. This unit, in which students write and revise their own stories across multiple pages, provides
the perfect opportunity for them to begin to work toward this goal.
Another goal of this unit is to teach kids to be resourceful word-solvers. This aligns with the standards in language, which
call for students to use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns, to spell untaught words
phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions, and to not only recognize and read highfrequency words, but to also write high-frequency words with automaticity.
This unit is also meant to support community building. Students will learn about each other from the moments they
share, and therefore will begin to build relationships, while becoming a community of writers. Through partnerships,
students will learn how to work together effectively to improve their writing, problem-solving, and communication skills,
and to give effective feedback. Finally, the unit celebrates students first month together as a class of authors—of
storytellers.
Overview:
In order for young writers to learn how to write cohesive, sequenced narratives that include detail and a sense of closure,
they'll need to begin the unit in a strong way—writing as many small moments as possible so that they develop stamina
that will allow them to practice and become independent with all they will be learning. This means they need to be
reminded of all that they already know about qualities of writing (e.g. including the setting, writing events in sequence)
and the writing process (e.g. planning, revising) in the first bend of the unit, and lift the level of the work from the
previous year as they do this. They will draw on strategies to plan stories, and to revise. They will use all that they know
about letters and sounds to spell words the best they can and use the tools in the room such as the word wall. They will
draw on their experiences working with partners to lift the level of talk—asking questions and making suggestions that
encourage revision before, during, and after writing. By the end of the first bend of the unit, first graders may have as
many as three or four stories in their folders with three or four sentences on a page, revision strips taped on the pages,
and words crossed out and re-written as they work to make their writing easier to read.
In the second bend, students will learn to write more elaborate narratives, stretching their stories across pages telling
smaller steps than they have before, using three, four, or sometimes even five pages to sketch and write about one thing
that happened in their lives. They will include details that tell what people did, said, felt, and thought, using storytelling,
sketching, and acting out with partners as ways to help them relive their experiences and bring them to the page.
While they will spend a whole unit studying mentor texts in the months that follow this unit, bend three of this small
moment unit is a good time to begin that work so that students begin to see how authors study and try out craft
techniques they see other authors using. There will likely be a class mentor text or two that will be studied together and
with partners, and this will continue to support them as they write more detailed stories.
Throughout the unit, students learn to become brave and resourceful word solvers. As they secure their initial and final
sounds in words and begin to study spelling patterns that reinforce and develop their knowledge of medial sounds, they
will learn to use this knowledge and their bank of known words to efficiently spell new ones. They will continue to build
their sight word knowledge, recording known words with automaticity and using the word wall to write and check words
they are learning during word study.
Finally, in bend four, writers will have a chance to publish a piece of writing using all that they learned from this unit (as
well as the year before) and set up what publishing work looks like in first grade. They will incorporate strategies they
learn and already know about to make their stories easier to read. They will use charts created throughout the unit,
checklists, mentor texts, and any other tools that remind them of what they are learning to do as first grade small
moment writers and use these to help them make decisions about revising and editing the pieces they've chosen to
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
publish and celebrate. Students will practice reading their stories and talking about their process to prepare for a
celebration to share their work.
Standard(s)
Speaking and Listening Standards
SL.1.1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and
adults in small and larger groups.
a. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics
and texts under discussion).
b. Build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the comments of others through multiple exchanges.
c. Ask questions to clear up any confusion about the topics and texts under discussion.
SL.1.4. Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
SL.1.6. Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation.
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5 CCSS: Grade 1 Reading:
Foundational Skills
Phonological Awareness
RF.1.2. Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
c. Isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in spoken single-syllable words.
d. Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds (phonemes).
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5 CCSS: Grade 1 Language
2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
L.1.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when
writing.
L.1.2b. Use end punctuation for sentences.
L.1.2d. Use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns and for frequently occurring irregular words.
L.1.2e. Spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions.

Technology Standard(s)
See above standards.

Interdisciplinary Standard(s)
See above standards.
Essential Question(s)

Can I write a story that is focused on one thing that happened in my life and includes details such as actions,
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS

dialogue, feelings and thoughts?
Can I use what I know about letters, sounds, and words to write words the best I can and use tools in the room
to help me check my writing?
Enduring Understandings
1. Writers can progress through the writing process with independence and stamina from the very start, drawing on all
that they know about coming up with ideas, writing and revising, editing.
2. In order to write more cohesive, sequenced narratives with greater elaboration, it is important that writers include
more details about the people and events in their stories. Students can learn from mentor authors, studying a text or two
and trying out techniques they notice to make their stories come to life (e.g. telling what people do, say, feel, and think).
3. Writers can draw on what they know about letters, sounds, and sight words to problem-solve unfamiliar words and to
write with language conventions such as spacing, capital letters, and end marks. As they learn additional strategies for
spelling words, they will start monitoring not only for meaning but also for visual aspects of the text, rereading and fixing
up problems as they write.
In this unit plan, the following 21st Century themes and skills are addressed.
Check all that apply.
21 s t Ce n t ury Th e m es
Global Awareness
21 s t Ce n t ury S ki ll s
Creativity and Innovation
Environmental Literacy
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Health Literacy
Communication
Civic Literacy
Financial, Economic, Business, and
Entrepreneurial Literacy
Student Learning Targets/Objectives
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Indicate whether these skills are E-Encouraged, T-Taught,
or A-Assessed in this unit by marking E, T, A on the line
before the appropriate skill.
Collaboration
How can I tap into what my students already know about writing to help them become more independent,
moving through the writing process with stamina, volume, and engagement?
How can I teach my students about elements of narrative writing, such as writing with sequence, focus, and
detail, in such a way that they can use that knowledge to lift the level of their own writing?
How can I begin to support my students in studying other authors' craft techniques so that they may incorporate
these into their own stories?
How can I rally my students to work more carefully on one chosen piece of writing, using all that they have
learned about lifting the level of their writing to revise and edit in preparation for celebrating their work
as authors?
Fundations Objectives:
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Students will be able to:
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Identify letter, keyword, and sound for consonants.
Identify letter, keyword, and sound for short vowels.
Complete letter formation for lower-case letters a-z.
Identify sound recognition for consonants and short vowels.
Arrange words in alphabetical order.
Blend and read three-sound short vowel words.
Segment and spell three-sound short vowel words.
Use sentence dictation procedures: capitalization and punctuation (period).
Use sentence proofreading procedures.
Apply phonemic awareness skills (initial, final, medial).
Schoolwide Grammar and Conventions Objectives:
Students will be able to:
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Recognize that there are certain kinds of words that begin with capital letters.
Review the rules for capitalization and practice using capital letters correctly.
Recognize how writers and illustrators use question marks at the end of sentences in order to ask questions and
get information.
Be introduced to exclamation points and how to use them in their writing.
Discover the many uses of end-mark punctuation and will recognize the effects it has the way a sentence or
piece of writing is read.
Assessments
Spelling Inventories
You will want to familiarize yourself with your students as spellers by studying student writing and administering an
assessment such as Donald Bear's Spelling Inventory to learn:
1. Levels of phonemic awareness
2. The words that students know how to spell with automaticity (high frequency words)
3. Features of words students have under control
4. What students know about problem-solving words
Recording Letters for Each Sound
You will want to include in your whole group, small-group and individual instruction the following:
1. Isolation of sounds in words
2. Segmentation of single syllable words
Writing Using High Frequency Words
1. Students will spell known sight words efficiently
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
2. Introduce 3-5 high frequency words a week so that students may read them with automaticity and write them
independently with support of a word wall
Writing Using Patterns
As students are becoming stronger with hearing and recording sounds, you will want to:
1. Teach students about rimes- short vowel patterns (at, am, ap)
Editing
Students will be rereading their writing and checking that they:
1. Include all of the sounds that they hear when spelling a word
2. Include spaces in between words
3. Capitalize the pronoun “I” and the first word in a sentence
4. Using ending punctuation to make writing easy to read
Initial Assessment
Formative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: On-Demand Narrative Writing
1. This unit will begin with an on-demand writing assessment. Student will be given a chance to show off all that they
know about narrative writing. The prompt might begin, "I'm really eager to understand what you can do as writers, so
before you do anything else, please spend today writing the very best personal narrative, the best small moment story,
of one particular time in your life. You'll have 45 minutes to write this true story of one small moment. Write in a way
that shows me all that you know about how to do this kind of writing."
2. Children will not be coached during this assessment and will not be reminded of strategies or techniques. The
assessment will be completely hands-off, so as to see what children are able to do independently.
3. After children have completed their work, the pieces will be collected and assessed against the Narrative Writing
Continuum. The specific teaching of the unit will be adapted to align to the needs of the class as a whole. Individual and
small group teaching will also be informed by this data-in-hand.
Formative Assessment
Formative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: Writing Conference
In a writing conference, the teacher observes and/or interviews, researching especially to understand what the writer can
do, can almost do and cannot yet do, and to understand the new work that a writer is attempting to do, and the
challenges the writer is confronting.
1. The teacher approaches a conference, already recalling what he or she knows about the student as a writer. The
teacher may look back on notes from previous conferences, small group work and assessments, and/or may watch for a
bit to notice patterns in what the writer is already engaged in doing.
2. The teacher may begin by saying to the writer what he or she has already noticed, asking the writer to say more
about that or the teacher may begin by recalling the last conversation held with the writer. Or, the teacher may begin
simply by asking the writer about his or her work as a writer.
3. The writer talks, the teacher uses gestures, follow up questions, and active-listening to coax the writer to say more, to
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
elaborate, to provide examples.
4. The teacher develops a tentative theory about the student as a writer and about the new work the student is doing
and could be doing. Based on this, the teacher decides what he or she could compliment and could teach the writer.
5. The teacher compliments the writer, making sure to name what the writer is doing well in such a way that the writer
transfers that to other days, other writing pieces.
6. The teacher then sets the writer up to work towards a new goal. The teachers makes the goal as concrete and specific
and alluring as possible, showing the writer the specific strategies he or she could use in order to make progress towards
this new goal. The writer may get started working towards the new goal, with the teacher coaching into this work. The
teacher assures the writer of future follow up work.
Letter/Sound Identification
The Letter ID Assessment will provide valuable information about which kids know their letters and sounds, and which
do not.
Please see the attached Letter ID documents.
Letter
Letter
Letter
Letter
Sound
Sound
Sound
Sound
Identification
Identification
Identification
Identification
Directions
Implications
Recording Form
Student Copy
Teaching and Learning Actions
D
Instructional Strategies
Guiding Questions/Bend One:
How can I tap into what my students already know about writing to help them become
more independent in moving through the writing process and write with stamina,
volume, and engagement?
Guiding Questions/Bend Two:
How can I teach my students about elements of narrative writing, such as writing with
sequence, focus, and detail, in such a way that they can use that knowledge to lift the
level of their own writing?
Guiding Questions/Bend Three:
How can I begin to support my students in studying other authors' craft techniques so
that they may incorporate these into their own stories?
Guiding Questions/Bend Four:
How can I rally my students to work more carefully on one chosen piece of writing,
using all that they have learned about lifting the level of their writing to revise and edit
in preparation for celebrating their work authors?
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
D
Activities
Guiding Questions/Bend One:
How can I tap into what my students already know about writing to help them become
more independent in moving through the writing process and write with stamina,
volume, and engagement?
Students will begin by writing as many small moments as possible so that they develop
stamina that will allow them to practice and become independent, lifting the level of the
work from the previous year as they do this. They will draw on strategies to plan stories
to plan and revise. They will use all that they know about letters and sounds to spell
words the best they can and use the tools in the room such as the word wall. They will
draw on their experiences working with partners to lift the level of talk, asking questions
and making suggestions that encourage revision before, during, and after writing.


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Today I want to teach you that when authors write a small moment story, they
think about things they do, or things that happen to them, and once they have
a story idea, they write the story across pages of a book.
Today I want to teach you that writers have a saying, ‘When you’re done,
you’ve just begun.’ Writers finish a piece, and then go back and revise by
adding more. To do this, writers often look at the pictures (and make pictures in
the mind, too, by remembering the event) and think, ‘Who? Where? When?'
Today I want to teach you that instead of writing about great big watermelon
topics, writers usually about teeny tiny seed stories. And the cool thing is that
inside a watermelon topic there are a zillion teeny tiny seed stories!
Guiding Questions/Bend Two:
How can I teach my students about elements of narrative writing, such as writing with
sequence, focus, and detail, in such a way that they can use that knowledge to lift the
level of their own writing?
Students will learn to write more elaborate narratives, stretching their stories across
pages telling smaller steps than they have before, using three, four, or sometimes even
five pages to sketch and write about one thing that happened in their lives. They will
include details that tell what people did, said, felt, and thought, using storytelling,
sketching, and acting out with partners as ways to help them relive their experiences
and bring them to the page.



Today I want to teach you that just like published writers, we can make our
stories come to life. We can “unfreeze” the people in our stories by making
them move and talk.
Writers, today I will teach you that when you want to write a word you don’t
know how to spell, find a word that sound like it. Once you find a word you
know with a part that sounds the same, you can write that part then you only
have to figure out the new part of your hard word.
Today I want to teach you that one way to bring a story to life is to act out
what really happened, either with a partner or in your mind, noticing what you
need to add.
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Guiding Questions/Bend Three:
How can I begin to support my students in studying other authors' craft techniques so
that they may incorporate these into their own stories?
Students will study mentor texts and try out craft techniques they see other authors
using to write more detailed stories. They will use their knowledge of initial and final
sounds in words and begin to study spelling patterns that reinforce and develop their
knowledge of medial sounds to help them spell new words. They will continue to build
their sight word knowledge, recording known words with automaticity and using the
word wall to write and check words they are learning during word study.
 Writers read books written by great authors and say, ‘Oh my goodness! He just
did something special in his book that I want to try in my own writing!’ And
then they do try it.
 Today, I am going to teach you that writers sometimes write words bigger, bold
and different sizes to show that these words are important to the story and
should be read in a strong voice. We call these big, bold words “pop out words”
because it is almost as if they are popping off the page!
Guiding Questions/Bend Four:
How can I rally my students to work more carefully on one chosen piece of writing,
using all that they have learned about lifting the level of their writing to revise and edit
in preparation for celebrating their work authors?
Students will use charts created throughout the unit, checklists, mentor texts, and any
other tools that remind them of what they are learning to do as first grade small
moment writers and use these to help them make decisions about revising and editing
the pieces they've chosen to publish and celebrate.
 Today, I want to teach you that writers get ready to publish a story by first
choosing one that they want to share with the world. Then they revise it using
all they know about making their stories come to life, and adding in anything
they’ve left out.
 Today I am going to teach you that when writers are ready to publish, they
make sure their writing is easy to read. One way they do this is to use an
editing checklist that reminds them of all that they know about helping readers
to read their stories.
D
Instructional Support for
Differentiation
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ELL
Special Education
Guided Reading
Read Aloud
Interactive Writing
RTI Tier 1/Tier 2
ELL
Beginning ELLs can begin the unit writing in their native language, depending on their
level proficiency.
Language acquisition
Students can dictate their stories for the teacher to write and draw. Dictation should
gradually decrease, releasing responsibility of writing to the student.
Special Education
Modifications should always be based on IEPs.
For students that have occupational issues that interfere with holding a pencil, one
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
suggestion is to add a grip to support hand position and grip. Another suggestion is to
have students use a computer system to write their stories.
Interactive Writing
Sharing the pen with students will provide a model and guided practice to learn how to
write across a page, in sentences, editing etc.
RTI Tier 1: Small group instruction and conferring should occur in the classroom for all
students.
Resources
Materials Used
• 3 page booklets (differentiated for level)
• Writing Center: writing pens, revision pens, stapler, date stamp, differentiated paper baskets
• Writing folders (pictures – send home lists of things they can send pictures of)
• Word walls
• Possible charts (anchor chart, things to write about, planning chart, checklist, star writers, spelling toolbox, when I’m
done..I can)
• Possible read alouds
- Wemberly Worried, A Chair for My Mother, Shelia Rae’s Peppermint Stick, Wemberly’s Ice Cream Star, Kitchen
Dance, The Veggie Monster
Texts Used(fiction, non-fiction, on-line, media, etc...)
• TC Units of Study, Unit 1 (Heinemann 2011)
• TC Primary Writing Series: Launching the Writing Workshop, Small Moments, Craft of Revision
• Narrative Writing Continuum
Professional texts
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Please see the forthcoming book aligned to this unit from Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grade by Grade: A
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Calkins, Lucy and Mermelstein, Leah. 2003. Units of Study for Teaching Writing: Launching the Writing
Workshop. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Donald Bear's, Words Their Way
Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe: Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers
David M. Matteson and Deborah K. Freeman: Assessing and Teaching Beginning Writers: Every Picture Tells a
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McCarrier, Andrea, Pinnell, Gay Su and Fountas, Irene C. 2000. Interactive Writing: How Language and Literacy
Yearlong Workshop Curriculum, Grade 1
Story
Come Together, K-2.
Suggested Poems
Kuskin, Karla. Toots the Cat. Henry Holt and Co., 2005.
Livingston, Myra Cohn. A Circle of Seasons. Holiday House, 1982.
Livingston, Myra Cohn. Celebrations. Holiday House, 1985.
Mak, Kam. My Chinatown: One Year in Poems. HarperCollins, 2001.
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Martin, Bill Jr. Big Book of Poetry. Simon & Shuster Books for Young Readers, 2008.
Morrison, Lillian. Way to Go! Sports Poems. Boyds Mills Press, 2001.
Academic Vocabulary
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personal narrative
small moment
turn & talk
stop & jot
sketch
zooming/zoom in
Domain Specific Vocabulary
 focus
 snap words
 word wall
 dialogue
 stretch the word
 revise
 edit
 independence
 stretch idea across pages
Fundations Trick Words:
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the
of
and
The Writing Process and Narrative Writing Continua are attached. The Narrative Writing Continuum tracks students'
writing progression in narrative writing from grades K-8. The continuum describes five strands: Structure (and Focus),
Elaboration, Craft, Cohesion and Meaning.
A student-facing rubric should be designed in conjunction with students. This will help them to understand their goals
and self-assess their writing work.
Narrative Writing Continuum
Writing Process Continuum
4 weeks
D- Indicates differentiation at the Lesson Level.
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Content Area:
Language Arts Writing
Unit Plan Title:
Unit #2 - Authors As Mentors
Grade
First
Anchor Standard (ELA) or Domain (Math)
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5, CCSS: Grade 1, Reading: Literature
Craft and Structure
4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative
meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
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RL.1.4 Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
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RL.1.6. Identify who is telling the story at various points in a text.
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5, CCSS: Grade 1, Writing
3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and
well-structured event sequences.

W.1.3. Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details
regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.
L.1.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
L.1.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when
writing.
L.1.5 With guidance and support from adults, demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and
nuances in word meanings.
RF.1.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
SL 1.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts.
SL.1.2 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other
media.
SL.1.3 Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or clarify something
that is not understood.
SL.1.4 Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
SL.1.5 Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions.
SL.1.6 Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation.
W.1.8 With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided
sources to answer a question.
Overview/Rationale
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Rationale
This unit’s main purpose is to teach students to apprentice themselves to mentor authors. This unit is to designed build
upon the kindergarten narrative writing; students adopt authors’ craft techniques, invest in the craft of their own writing,
and make deliberate choices about what and how they will write. Second, this unit encourages practicing reading-writing
connections, lifting expectations for all aspects of students’ work. Another purpose of the unit is to encourage students to
write new texts and then to revise—a major skill emphasized by the Common Core—based on critical reading and
imagination.
By the end of first grade, the Common Core State Standards expect students to move between reading and writing and
to write narratives using some details, temporal words, and a sense of closure. This unit provides a volume expectation
in alignment with the Common Core State Standards (three to five booklets each week). The analysis and application in
this unit supports the higher-level thinking outlined by Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK) regarding students' ability to
evaluate a text and apply new skills to their own work. Finally, this unit emphasizes working in partnerships and groups to
build upon first grade standards outlined by the Common Core to follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and to build on
others’ talk.
Overview
The first bend encourages children to join together in an inquiry study of a mentor author. Students will collect ideas for
their own stories and begin writing immediately. They will borrow craft moves (not content) from a mentor author. This
portion of the unit also provides students repeated opportunities to write and revise many books. Keeping a Tiny Topics
notepad will help young writers record small moments of their day and jot notes for their stories
Bend Two encourages children to write stronger and longer drafts. A primary goal of this unit is for children to learn to
study and notice craft on their own; that is, they will come to understand the process of mining lessons from texts.
Students will be encouraged to ask questions such as, "Are there places in one of my stories in which I'm trying to do the
same sort of thing, where I might try that same technique?" This bend especially encourages students to use partner talk
to strengthen their writing, revising boldly.
The third bend emphasizes engaging in deeper, more thoughtful revision. Students will be encouraged to become
increasingly independent, generating their own ideas and making their own decisions about their writing. The goal is that
children try techniques that resonate for them—ones they admire—and use a mentor author's craft moves to influence
their own. As students write new texts, they will incorporate all they have learned into their first drafts and revise based
on what they notice from studying mentor texts.
During the final bend, students select a story they especially like to further revise and publish. This portion of the unit
emphasizes fixing and fancying up writing with varied sentence structure, proper spelling, and proper punctuation.
Standard(s)
5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
W.1.5. With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from peers, and
add details to strengthen writing as needed.

Technology Standard(s)
See above standards.

Interdisciplinary Standard(s)
See above standards.
Essential Question(s)
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
When I want to write a true story from my life, how do I use what I have learned from other authors to help me?
When I want to tell my story to other people, what steps can I take to revise my first draft and make it better?
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Enduring Understandings
1. Writers can make reading-writing connections, studying mentor authors whose work they admire, and trying out craft
moves to lift the level of their own work.
2. Writers aim to write stronger and longer books when they consider how words and phrases suggest feelings or appeal
to the senses. They can learn to "re-see" their writing and make effective changes to its meaning and quality.
3. Writers revise in partnerships, asking each other critical questions. Partners encourage each other to elaborate during
the exciting parts of a story.
4. Writers can identify punctuation and spelling errors in their writing, and then make independent decisions to correct
the inaccuracies.
In this unit plan, the following 21st Century themes and skills are addressed.
Check all that apply.
21 s t Ce n t ury Th e m es
Global Awareness
21 s t Ce n t ury S ki ll s
Creativity and Innovation
Environmental Literacy
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Health Literacy
Communication
Civic Literacy
Financial, Economic, Business, and
Entrepreneurial Literacy
Student Learning Targets/Objectives
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Indicate whether these skills are E-Encouraged, T-Taught,
or A-Assessed in this unit by marking E, T, A on the line
before the appropriate skill.
Collaboration
How can I teach students to adopt the craft techniques of an author mentor? How can I teach them to zoom in
on important parts of a mentor text?
How can I create a writing workshop environment that encourages young writers to offer ideas for each other's
stories and build on each other's thoughts?
How do I teach students to revise books in their folders and to make their new books even more ambitious?
How do I teach young writers to use all the resources at their disposal to revise and publish a final story?
Fundations Objectives:
Students will be able to:
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Read and spell consonant digraphs, keywords, and sounds of /sh/, /ch/, /th/, /wh/, and /ck/.
Spell words with /c/k at end of word.
Use sentence dictation procedures (question mark).
Identify and read narrative vs. expository texts.
Use prosody with echo reading.
Apply “bonus” letter spelling rule (/ff/, /ll/, /ss/ and sometimes /z/.
Read and spell glued sounds /all/.
Complete story retelling.
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Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS

Read and spell glued sounds /am/, /an/.
Schoolwide Grammar and Conventions Objectives:
Students will be able to:
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Recognize that there are certain kinds of words that begin with capital letters.
Review the rules for capitalization and practice using capital letters correctly.
Recognize how writers and illustrators use question marks at the end of sentences in order to ask questions and
get information.
Be introduced to exclamation points and how to use them in their writing.
Discover the many uses of end-mark punctuation and will recognize the effects it has the way a sentence or
piece of writing is read.
Assessments
Formative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: On-Demand Narrative Writing
Let students know the day before this assessment that the next day you will want to see what they already know how to
do in the genre you’re studying, and they will have an hour to write the best piece in this genre that they can write.
They’ll have as much time as they want within the 45-minute period, but just those 45 minutes, to do their best writing.
Tell students: “I’m really eager to understand what you can do as writers, so before you do anything else, please spend
today writing the best personal narrative, the best small moment story, of a time in your life. This could be a small
moment story or it could tell the story of a scene or two. You’ll have 45 minutes to write this true story. You will only
have this one period, so you’ll need to plan, draft, revise and edit in one sitting. Write in a way that shows off all that you
know about narrative writing.”
Refrain from reminding writers of everything you hope they remember about this genre, or from otherwise coaching
them towards success. This is a formative assessment and you want it to be an accurate window into what students can
do independently.
After writers have completed their work, collect the writing. Then hold each piece alongside the continuum for this
particular kind of writing (narrative/informational/opinion). Notice especially the examples of student work and where one
student's writing fits on this continuum of student examples. No piece will precisely fit a particular level, and it is fine if
there are some gaps.
Once you have identified one student’s level, continue to do this with all your students, moving quickly. Then look at
what the continuum suggests most students need to learn soon, and consider combing that instruction into the upcoming
narrative writing unit. Consider using a text that is a level or two beyond the students’ average level as a mentor text.
Formative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: Writing Conference
Studying the children’s writing will help prepare for this unit. Notice when looking at a child’s current writing to see what
behaviors they is doing. Watch to see if a child is writing strings of letters or if the child is starting to put spaces in
between ‘words.’ Check to see if students are using inventive spelling and see how advanced their spelling is.
Furthermore, notice if the child is using any high frequency words in their text or words that are in your classroom
environment.
In a writing conference, the teacher observes and/or interviews, researching
especially to understand what the writer can do, can almost do, and cannot yet do, and to understand the new work that
a writer is attempting to do, the challenges the writer is confronting.
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1. The teacher approaches a conference, already recalling what he or she knows about the student as a writer. The
teacher may look back on notes from previous conferences, small group work and assessments, and/or may watch for a
bit to notice patterns in what the writer is already engaged in doing.
2. The teacher may begin by saying to the writer what he or she has already noticed, asking the writer to say more about
that ("I notice you have a list of possible story ideas. What were you planning for your next step?”) or the teacher may
begin by recalling the last conversation held with the reader ("Last time we talked, you were going to work on....How's
that been going?") or the teacher may begin simply by asking the reader about his or her work as a writer ("What have
you been working on as a writer? How have you been pushing yourself to do new work as a writer? Have you been doing
any of the things on our chart?")
On demand
Summative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: Final Assessment
Let students know the day before this assessment that the next day you will want to see what they already know how to
do in the genre you’re studying, and they will have an hour to write the best piece in this genre that they can write.
They’ll have as much time as they want within the hour, but just the hour, to do their best writing. Please click the link
for specific prompts for narrative, informational, and opinion writing.
Refrain from reminding writers of everything you hope they remember about this genre, or from otherwise coaching
them towards success. This is a formative assessment and you want it to be an accurate window into what students can
do independently.
After writers have completed their work, collect the writing. Then hold each piece alongside the continuum for this
particular kind of writing (narrative/informational/opinion). Please click the link for access to these tools. Notice especially
the examples of student work and where one student's writing fits on this continuum of student examples. No piece will
precisely fit a particular level, and it is fine if there are some gaps.
Once you have identified one student’s level, continue to do this with all your students, moving quickly. Then look at
what the continuum suggests most students need to learn soon, and consider combing that instruction into the upcoming
narrative writing unit. Consider using a text that is a level or two beyond the students’ average level as a mentor text.
Teaching and Learning Actions
D
Instructional Strategies
Guiding Questions / Bend One:
How can I teach students to adopt the craft techniques of a mentor author? How can I
teach them to zoom in on how the mentor author uses punctuation and timing to create
a meaningful story?
Guiding Questions / Bend Two:
How can I create a writing workshop environment that supports young writers to offer
ideas for each others' stories and build on each others' thoughts?
Guiding Questions / Bend Three:
How do I teach students to revise books in their folders and to make their new books be
even more ambitious?
Guiding Questions/ Bend Four:
How do I teach young writers to use all the resources at their disposal to revise and
publish a final story?
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
D
Activities
Guiding Questions / Bend One:
How can I teach students to adopt the craft techniques of a mentor author? How can I
teach them to zoom in on how the mentor author uses punctuation and timing to create
a meaningful story?
The class will to join together in an inquiry study of a mentor author. Students will
collect ideas for their own stories and borrow craft moves from a mentor author to start
writing from the beginning of the unit. Students will write and revise many books and
record small moments of their day in a Tiny Topics notepad.

Today I want to teach you one way we can learn from a mentor author. We can
start by thinking, "How did this writer probably get the idea to write this story?"
Then we can live like our mentor author and always be on the look-out for
stories. We can use our Tiny Topics Notepad to hold onto our stories.

Today I want to teach you another way we can learn from our mentor author.
We can study our mentor author and notice the way he or she wrote the
story after they had their idea. We can notice how they zoomed in on one
moment and told that story across pages.

Today I want to teach you another thing we can learn from our mentor author.
We can notice how he or she included true details that help make a movie in
the reader's mind. Then we can ask ourselves, "What are some things our
mentor author did to help make a movie in our mind?"
Guiding Questions / Bend Two:
How can I create a writing workshop environment that supports young writers to offer
ideas for each others' stories and build on each others' thoughts?
Students will write stronger and longer drafts by studying and noticing craft on their
own. Students will be encouraged to ask important questions of the text, such as, "Are
there places in one of my stories in which I'm trying to do the same sort of thing, where
I might try that same technique?" They will also use of partner talk to revise and
strengthen their writing.
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Today I want to teach you a way to talk about your writing with others. Writers
can share their stories with a partner, listen closely, and ask questions to clear
up any confusion in order to write a better story.
Today I want to teach you how you can act out your stories with your partners
to find places to add more actions, dialogue, feeling, or thinking. Writers should
be able to find the important parts of their story and elaborate on it.
Guiding Questions / Bend Three:
How do I teach students to revise books in their folders and to make their new books be
even more ambitious?
Students will engage in deeper, more thoughtful revision and become more
independent, generating their own ideas and making their own decisions about their
writing. They will try techniques that resonate for them and use a mentor author's craft
moves to influence their own. As students write new texts, they will incorporate all they
have learned into their first drafts and revise based on what they notice from studying
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mentor texts.
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Today I want to teach you that an author from any genre can be a mentor.
Writers can make their own decisions about what they read and use it in their
new writing.
Today I want to teach you how to make your new books more exciting. Writers
can revise so much as they learn how to write from mentor authors and can use
revision tools like strips of paper, pens, and staplers to add pages to their
books.
Guiding Questions/ Bend Four:
How do I teach young writers to use all the resources at their disposal to revise and
publish a final story?
Students will select a story they especially like to further revise and publish. They will fix
and fancy up their writing with varied sentence structure, proper spelling, and proper
punctuation.
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D
Instructional Support for
Differentiation
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Today I want to teach you how to fancy up your writing. Writers keep working
until the end to fix punctuation and change sentence structure to make their
stories easy and fun to read.
Today I want to teach you how to choose a title for your books. Writers can
help their readers see a picture in their brain by creating a book that is easy to
read. Choosing an appropriate title helps the reader to understand your story.
ELL
Special Education
Guided Reading
Interactive Writing
Word Work
RTI Tier 1/Tier 2
Upcoming Tests
ELLS
Beginning ELLs can begin the unit writing in their native language, depending on their
level proficiency.
Language acquisition
Students can dictate their stories for the teacher to write and draw the pictures.
Dictation should gradually decrease, releasing responsibility of writing to the student.
Special Education
For students that have occupational issues that interfere with holding a pencil, one
suggestion is to add a grip to support students with hand position and grip. Another
suggestion is to have students use a computer system to write their stories.
Interactive Writing
Sharing the pen with students will provide a model and guided practice to learn how to
write across a page, in sentences, editing etc.
RTI Tier 1: Small group instruction and conferring should occur in the classroom for all
students.
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Resources
Texts Used(fiction, non-fiction, on-line, media, etc...)
Suggested text are on the TC Website
Websites and Web-tools used
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/
http://www.cbcbooks.org/about/
http://www.cbcbooks.org/readinglists/
Complex Text Levels
Grade band level K and 1
Suggested Poems
Heard, Georgia, Creatures of Earth, Sea and Sky. Boyds Mills Press,
1997.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, Editor. Hamsters, Shells, and Spelling Bees: School Poems . HarperCollins, 2008.
Hughes, Langston. The Block. Viking Children’s Books, 1995.
Hughes, Langston. The Sweet and Sour Animal Book. Oxford University
Press, 1994.
Professional texts
Please see the forthcoming book aligned to this unit from Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grade by Grade: A
Yearlong Workshop Curriculum, Grade 1
Domain Specific
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personal
narrative sequence
elaboration
revision
Spelling
You will want to familiarize yourself with your students as spellers by studying student writing and administering an
assessment such as Donald Bear's Spelling Inventory to learn:
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Levels of phonemic awareness
The words that students know how to spell with automaticity (high frequency words)
Features of words students have under control
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What students know about problem-solving words
Fundations Trick Words
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to
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a
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was
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is
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he
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for
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as
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his
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has
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I
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you
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we
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they
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one
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said
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from
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or
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have
Recording Letters for Each Sound
You will want to include in your whole group, small-group and individual instruction the following:
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Isolation of sounds in words
Segmentation of single syllable words
Writing Using High Frequency Words
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Students will spell known sight words efficiently
Introduce 3-5 high frequency words a week so that students may read them with automaticity and write them
independently with support of a word wall
Writing Using Patterns
As students are becoming stronger with hearing and recording sounds, you will want to:
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Teach students about rimes- short vowel patterns (at, am, ap)
Editing
Students will be rereading their writing and checking that they:
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Include all of the sounds that they hear when spelling a word
Include spaces in between words
Capitalize the pronoun “I” and the first word in a sentence
Using ending punctuation to make writing easy to read
The Writing Process and Narrative Writing Continua are attached. The Narrative Writing Continuum tracks students'
writing progression in narrative writing from grades K-8. The continuum describes five strands: Structure (and Focus),
Elaboration, Craft, Cohesion and Meaning.
A student-facing rubric should be designed in conjunction with students. This will help them to understand their goals
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and self-assess their writing work.
Narrative Writing Continuum
Writing Process Continuum
Assessment is important:
Teacher paying close attention to evidence of student understanding
Teacher posing specifically-created questions to elicit evidence of student understanding
Teacher circulating to monitor student learning and to offer feedback
Students assessing their own work against established criteria
Teacher adjusting instruction in response to evidence of student understanding (or lack of it)
Students using a rubric created collectively or not
¡Teachers using rubrics both in the unit and across several units and content
Suggested Time Frame:
7 Weeks
D- Indicates differentiation at the Lesson Level.
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Content Area:
Language Arts Writing
Unit Plan Title:
Unit #3 - Persuasive Writing; Opinions, Reviews, and Stories
Grade
First
Anchor Standard (ELA) or Domain (Math)
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(W1.1) Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and
relevant and sufficient evidence.
(W1.3) Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen
details, and well-structured event sequences.
(W1.5) Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach.
(W1.6) Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate
with others.
(SL1.1) Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse
partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
(L1.2) Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
when writing.
Overview/Rationale
Overview
The Common Core State Standards call for a new focus on opinion writing. In creating the ten College and Career
Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing, which outlines what students are expected to be able to do upon graduation
from high school, the Common Core places the ability to write argument pieces first. The Common Core authors have
devoted time and space to explaining “The Special Place of Argument in the Standards,” citing research showing that the
ability to write arguments is essential to success in college and the workforce (CCSS, Appendix A, p. 24). Strange as it
may seem to consider all of this when you are working with six- and seven year-olds, opinion writing lays the foundation
for learning to write arguments, so this unit (and other opportunities that you provide children to write about their
opinions) puts your students on a pathway toward academic and professional success.
The Common Core State Standards expect that in kindergarten students “use[d] a combination of drawing, dictating, and
writing to compose opinion pieces in which they [told] a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about
and state[d] an opinion or preference about the topic or book” (W K.1). Now, in first grade, the Common Core places
new demands on your writers. No longer is there mention of dictating or drawing. Though illustrations will continue to be
important to your young writers, by the time they leave you, they will be moving toward composing the bulk of their
pieces through writing. In addition, your students are now expected to “introduce the topic they are writing about (or
name the book), supply a reason for their opinion, and provide some sense of closure” (W 1.1).Your writers must provide
a bit of information about the topic before they name their opinion. In addition, students now need to supply a reason,
recognizing that a reason supports an opinion. In addition, your writers need to offer a sense to readers that their piece
has a purposeful ending The Common Core calls this “some sense of closure,” leaving what counts as an ending open to
the interpretation of the reader. Interestingly, the Common Core Appendix C of sample student writing does not include
an opinion piece at first grade level. However, in the informative/explanatory writing sample, an all-about book on Spain,
the Common Core notes that the student offers “some sense of closure” by ending the piece with the words “One day
when I am a researcher I am going to go to Spain and write about it” (p. 11). Thus, the Common Core seems to view a
final comment as one possibility for ending a piece with a sense of closure. In poring over student work from across the
country, we have also noted that many first graders seem to end pieces with a final exclamatory remark as well, leaving
the reader with a last burst of excitement as closure.
The standards for the production and distribution of writing, as noted in previous units, expect that students will “with
guidance and support from peers, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from peers, and add details to
strengthen writing as needed” (CCSS W 1.5). Students will also be expected to “use a variety of digital tools to produce
and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. (CCSS W 1.6). This means you will want to continue to have
your students working with peers to revise and edit pieces even as they continue to use various media to create and
publish their work. The two standards for the production and distribution of writing remain the same as they were in
kindergarten, with one key difference. In kindergarten, students were expected to “explore” a variety of digital tools. But
now in first grade, students need to “use” a variety of digital tools (“with guidance and support from adults”). Rather than
simply playing and trying out different possibilities with digital tools, they must start to be aware of how to utilize digital
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tools and why.
You will also want to keep the language standards in mind for first grade. As outlined in previous units, there are five new
expectations required of first graders in demonstrating command of conventions of standard written English in addition to
other language standards which address grammar, usage, and spelling. Students are expected to “capitalize dates and
names of people” (L 1.2a), “use end punctuation for sentences” (L 1.2b), “use commas in dates and to separate single
words in a series” (L 1.2c), “use conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns and for frequently
occurring irregular words” (L 1.2d), and “spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling
conventions” (L 1.2e). Also, students are expected to do all of the work they learned in kindergarten around
demonstrating command of conventions of language. It is worth talking to your colleagues who teach kindergarten about
editing checklists, charts, and so on, that they have used in order to create tools to remind students of what they already
should know how to do (e.g., capitalize the first word in a sentence, capitalize the pronoun I). See the Spelling section
after Bend Four for more specific information about the spelling instruction you might plan over the next couple of
months. You may feel that your students can do more than what the standards expect, and you will of course, teach to
your own high standards for your students. You will see that this unit pushes students to exceed the standards. However,
you will want to first make sure that your students understand what the standards expect of them and can do this work
well before you move them to outgrow this. The important work that they do this year will directly prepare them for what
they will encounter in the future. Next year in second grade opinion writing, they’ll be expected to supply multiple
reasons, use linking words, and provide a more formal concluding statement or section. This unit of study is closely
aligned with the forthcoming book on Opinion Writing (2013) from the new units of study series by Calkins and the
TCRWP staff. The book and this write-up, reflect the Project’s latest thinking about first grade writing, and you will see
that this persuasive unit has been revised to make it exactly aligned to grade level expectations. These revisions have
been made not only with the CCSS in mind, but also with new attentiveness to performance assessments and to the
lessons many of you (and TCRWP staff developers) learned from those assessments during the 2011-12 school year. The
unit has always supported high levels of Depth of Knowledge (DOK), with a tremendous emphasis on teaching for
transference and on applying skills, but in the revised unit that emphasis is more clearly articulated.
This unit is envisioned as having three parts, with each part intended to support students in creating a different genre of
persuasive writing. Each aspect of the unit has been developed to support a high volume of writing, and to strengthen
fluency and rate of writing simultaneously. Students create a new piece or two new pieces each day, revising all of the
pieces in their folder when they learn a new strategy for improving work.
The first bend of the unit begins with students thinking about making judgments and considering reasons for their
judgments. The Common Core requires that students need to state opinions and give at least one reason for that opinion,
so this part of the unit provides repeated practice in that work and provides beginning steps to students’ offering a detail
or two to elaborate on a given reason. To rally students into this work of making and supporting judgments in a way that
feels authentic, you might involve them in bringing in collections they have gathered, such as rocks, toy cars, and
stickers, and helping them to judge these collections.
After judging collections—ranking, sorting, comparing and declaring best and worst—students might then move to doing
reviews. They can transfer and apply their newfound knowledge of how to judge to rating places, events, and objects.
Rather than judging between items, they can now begin to look at how to judge one item closely, giving an opinion and
reason(s) for why that object, event, place is good/bad, and so on. You might involve your students in reviews on
restaurants, books, or kid-friendly places to play. As this part of the unit moves on, students can gather their reviews and
begin to create anthologies, such as a mini kid-version Zagat guide to restaurants, or a collection of book reviews or a
collection of another type of similar reviews. You can have students writing and revising reviews, then creating a little
book to share with others, which, you can tell them, will prepare them for the final bend of the unit. In the final bend, we
imagine students might be supported in transferring and applying all of the work they have done with persuasion to other
forms of persuasive writing which exist in the world. You might show your students mentor text books which have a
strong persuasive voice—books like Earrings by Judith Viorst, the Pigeon books by Mo Willems or A Pet for Petunia by
Paul Schmid. Students can begin to construct their own persuasive texts, which will involve them in transferring and
applying not only skills gained in persuasive writing, but also skills gained in earlier units in narrative writing.
Standard(s)
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Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
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(W 1.3) Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an
opinion, supply a reason for the opinion and provide some sense of closure.
(WK.1) Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a
reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the
topic or book.
(W 1.3) Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details
regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.
(W1.5) With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from
peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
(w 1.6) With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing,
including in collaboration with peers.
(SL1a-c)). Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with
peers and adults in small and larger groups. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others
with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion). Build on others’ talk in
conversations by responding to the comments of others through multiple exchanges. Ask questions to clear up
any confusion about the topics and texts under discussion.
(SL 1.3) Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or clarify
something that is not understood.
(SL 1.6) Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation. (See grade 1 Language standards 1
and 3 on page 26 for specific expectations.)
(L 1.2a-e) Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or
speaking. Print all upper- and lowercase letters. Use common, proper, and possessive nouns. Use singular and
plural nouns with matching verbs in basic sentences (e.g., He hops; We hop). Use personal, possessive, and
indefinite pronouns (e.g., I, me, my; they, them, their; anyone, everything). Use verbs to convey a sense of past,
present, and future (e.g., Yesterday I walked home; Today I walk home; Tomorrow I will walk home.

Technology Standard(s)
See above standards.

Interdisciplinary Standard(s)
See above standards.
Essential Question(s)

How can writers begin thinking about making judgments and consider reasons for their judgments?
Enduring Understandings


Writers become involved in gathering collections of items and begin to rank, sort, compare and contrast these
collections to think about making judgments.
Writers can then transfer and apply this knowledge of how to judge to places and events.
In this unit plan, the following 21st Century themes and skills are addressed.
Check all that apply.
21 s t Ce n t ury Th e m es
Indicate whether these skills are E-Encouraged, T-Taught,
or A-Assessed in this unit by marking E, T, A on the line
before the appropriate skill.
21 s t Ce n t ury S ki ll s
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Global Awareness
Creativity and Innovation
Environmental Literacy
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Health Literacy
Communication
Civic Literacy
Financial, Economic, Business, and
Entrepreneurial Literacy
Student Learning Targets/Objectives

Collaboration
How can I help my students examine and judge collections in order to rank, compare, and justify their
opinions?
How can I help my students lift their level of persuasive writing by zooming in, and adding details and more
specific language?
How can I help my students discover the issues in their lives and write lots and lots of persuasive picture
books?


Fundations Objectives:
Students will be able to:



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




Spell words with baseword and suffix with suffix of /s/.
Identify and spell plural nouns.
Complete story retelling.
Use prosody with echo reading.
Identify narrative story structure.
Complete beginning composition skills.
Read and spell glued sounds - /ang/, /ing/, /ong/, /ung/, /ank/, /ink/, /onk/, /unk/.
Blend and read words with /ng/, /nk/.
Segment and spell words with /ng/, /nk/.
Schoolwide Grammar & Conventions Objectives:
Students will be able to:



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
Learn how to identify subjects and verbs in sentences.
Discover how a list structure allows writers to explore and share a theme in depth.
Notice how the power of conventional sentence structure can be seen in simple sentences that reflect a subject
and the action (verb) of the subject. Students will notice this structure as well as the writers’ use of varied
sentences lengths.
Work with a partner to tell a story with a focused sequence and order. Then they will work independently to try
out this structure in their own writing.
Notice how modifiers that are connected to the senses help readers “see” and “experience” a description.
Continue to examine the use of modifiers when listening or reading and then try them out in their own writing in
order to make their sentences snappy.
Assessments
Assessment
You will always want to engage in formative assessments, using these to inform your teaching. In this section, we will
summarize several assessment tools and continua (more thorough rubrics) that can support your teaching of this unit,
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but we also encourage you to design your own methods for tracking students’ progress and ensuring that your teaching
is having traction.
TCRWP On-Demand Opinion Writing Assessment
The TCRWP has developed an assessment tool, an on-demand opinion writing assessment, that is patterned after the
narrative writing assessments that the TCRWP community has done for years. You may read the prompt with raised
eyebrow, thinking, ‘Really? I should say this to my six-year-olds?’ We initially wrote very different versions of the prompt
for kindergartners through second graders than the prompt used for the third through eighth graders. But there were
many resulting problems because, in fact, there will be sixth graders who produce texts that are Level 1 (a level that is
intended as at-standard for end-of-year first graders). And there will be first graders who produce writing at Level 3 (that
is, at a level intended for end-of-year third graders). In order to assess your students’ pieces along a true continuum, one
in which the levels reflect abilities and not grade levels, we have come to believe it is necessary that the work produced
by different grade levels could fall anywhere on the spectrum, and that all the pieces at a given level be comparable
because they result from essentially the same prompt. Hence, we have written one prompt that works, in a way, for
grades K-8. Granted, we know that not all first graders will take advantage of the planning time to collect facts and
quotes to help make their argument, but the fact that students are invited to do this and do not do it is significant.
The prompt is more detailed and more explanatory than the assignments children will encounter on high-stakes tests. We
won’t learn much if students read the question, ask, “Huh?’ and simply sit there—as a first grader would be apt to do
with a prompt designed for a middle-school high-stakes test. Still, the prompt does require children to know some writing
lingo. If they do not understand the terms that are in this prompt, it is true that this means they will not perform
particularly well. Please don’t solve this challenge by talking on and on about the assignment. Just give the prompt as it
is written, and if the kids do not know how to proceed, let that be revealing. After you teach opinion writing, they’ll have
access to academic language related to this kind of writing and will demonstrate their knowledge and skills on the “post”
assessment.
To begin this assessment, you will want to offer your students the option to bring in outside research. On the day before
you give the on-demand assessment, you can say to your students, “Think of a topic or issue that you know a lot about
or that you have strong feelings about. Tomorrow, you will have an hour to write an opinion or argument text in which
you will write your opinion and tell reasons why you feel that way. Use everything you know about essay writing, letter
writing, speeches, and reviews. If you want to find and use information from a book or another outside source, you may
bring that with you tomorrow. Please keep in mind that you’ll have an hour to complete this.”
On the next day, the day of the assessment, you can tell your writers “Writers, in fifteen minutes you will have a chance
to do some opinion writing. Yesterday, you thought of an idea or an opinion that you have—one you have strong feelings
about—and now is your chance to write to convince your readers of your opinion. You can’t start the actual writing yet,
but you do have fifteen minutes to think about that writing, and get ready to do it. If you want to make notes, to take
information from books or from people in the room or from anything else, you can do so—you just want to be sure that
in fifteen minutes, you will be able to write about your opinion in ways that convince others.”
Then, after fifteen minutes: “So writers, now is the time to do a piece of opinion writing. Remember, you’ll tell readers
about an idea or an opinion of yours—one you have strong feelings about. In your writing, write your opinion and
convince your readers by telling them why you feel this way. Use everything you know about persuasive writing—
including persuasive letter writing, persuasive review writing, persuasive essay writing (teachers, you can alter or add
onto this list)—to make this your best opinion writing. You have the choice to write in one of several kinds of booklets
(hold up) or on single pages of writing paper (hold up).”
Give them just one hour to do this work. When you tell your students about the task, don't review the characteristics of
opinion writing or otherwise scaffold them to be successful. This is just a pretest. You will hope that between this
assessment and the end of the unit your students will make giant strides. The fact that they may not start by doing
stellar work should not be a problem.
Teaching and Learning Actions
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Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
D
Instructional Strategies



D
Activities
How can I help my students examine and judge collections in order to rank,
compare, and justify their opinions?
How can I help my students lift their level of persuasive writing by zooming
in, and adding details and more specific language?
How can I help my students discover the issues in their lives and write lots
and lots of persuasive picture books?
Bend One – Writers Examine and Judge Collections in Order to Rank,
Compare, and Justify Their Opinions
To launch the unit, you will want to let students in on the idea that the type of writing
they will do in this unit is unlike other kinds of writing they have done so far. This kind
of writing is not like telling stories or teaching people about topics, you might tell them.
Instead this is a kind of writing where we think about stuff and get others to think about
stuff. After telling your students how this unit will be different from what has come
before, you can immerse them right away in trying the work out before they write. You
might have them begin by judging. You can bring in your own collection of rocks or
shells and ask the students to help you “judge” your collection. “Which is the best
shell?” you might ask them before following up with the all-important, “And why?” As
you hear students discuss your collection, you can coach into their comments to say a
little more and can help students compare the same aspects of two items rather than
comparing totally different qualities (e.g., comparing the color of one shell to another or
comparing the feel of one shell to another, rather than comparing the color of one to
the feel of another).
After you involve students in helping you judge your collection out loud, you can let
them go off to judge their own collections which you might have asked them to bring to
school that day. You can ask your students to write about which one of their collection
of items is the best and why. Imagine the great buzzing in the room and the
conversations about which is longer, shorter, shinier, cuter, more yellow, less green.
You can circulate, admiring collections, providing language and helping writers go about
this work, and also do a little implicit teaching into what can later become formal
lessons on “frequently occurring adjectives” (which will help your writers to meet
Common Core State Standards for Language). Certainly, over the next few days you will
probably need to do more teaching into coming up with reasons, and so you might
arrange children in groups and let them say more to the group about why they choose
one item over the other. You will want to move your students from giving a reason to
perhaps adding a detail about that reason, helping them choose details that relate to
the reason. Teach children to ask questions to each other if they want to hear a detail
to support a reason—“What makes you think that?” Your writers will gain more practice
in speaking to prove an idea, which they can transfer to their writing. Meanwhile, they
will be meeting several important CCSS for Speaking and Listening including “follow
agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others with care, speaking one at a
time about the topics and texts under discussion)” (1.1a); “build on others’ talk in
conversations by responding to the comments of others through multiple exchanges”
(1.1b); “ask questions to clear up any confusion about the topics and texts under
discussion” (1.1c); “ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to
gather additional information or clarify something that is not understood” (1.3); and
“produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation (See grade 1
Language Standards 1 and 3 on page 26 for specific expectations” (1.6).
These conversations will provide the impetus for stronger writing, as well as the impetus
to revise for clarity and volume. You can have your writers go back and write new
pieces about one of their items or another and also revise the piece(s) they wrote the
session before. Your goal should be to support high volume and a willingness to revise.
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Thus, you will want to commend the child in front of the class who is brave enough to
want to do a new draft rather than add on a few details.
On another day, you might want to raise the level of the students’ writing by showing
them a piece of writing about an item in a collection and asking them to notice what the
writer did well before trying that out in a new piece of writing. Writers can construct
(with your support) a chart about what makes for great opinion writing and selfevaluate their own work so far. Of course, this will also provide another opportunity to
revise and rewrite all of the previous pieces in their folders. You will also want to help
writers see that they should not just transfer and apply what they are learning to new
work within this unit, but across the curriculum. You might help them to see, for
example, how to take their new found skills of judging and assessing qualities of items
in their collections to content area work on the study of animal diversity. You can show
your students how they can now closely and assess qualities of animals and give
reasons for why a cheetah is so fast or why an alligator is such a good hunter, and so
on. When teachers plan to support transference across the curriculum it supports high
levels of DOK and students become more powerful learners in all areas.
If your writers have finished judging their own collections, they can always go on to
judging a friend’s collection, and the two writers can then compare their decisions and
their writing, revising based on what they notice the other did well. Students can help
guide one another in the revision process, giving suggestions to strengthen each other’s
writing (CCSS W 1.5). You will also want to remind your writers that they need to edit
their pieces so that their readers can read them. Charge them with editing their pieces
in all the ways they learned to do in kindergarten—capitalizing the first word of a
sentence and the pronoun I, and so on. Then you can also add other ways that writers
should edit their pieces to help them meet the first grade Common Core State Standards
for Conventions (1.2 a, b)—check to make sure they have capitalized the first letter of
people’s names and have used ending punctuation. You can end this part of the unit
with writers laying out the best of their work and setting their own goals for what they
will do as they head into the next bend. The class can do a walk through of their peers’
opinion pieces and ready themselves for the next part of the unit, when they will not
only make decisions for themselves but will play a role in how others make decisions.
Bend Two – Review, Review, Review: Writers Lift the Level of Persuasive
Writing by Zooming In, and Adding Details and More Specific Language
Now, that your writers have learned to judge, compare and contrast and rank separate
items, they can move the work of studying multiple aspects of one place, event, object
to judging them. You can start this part of the unit by bringing in examples of reviews
from the world and inviting your writers to do the same. “Some people judge for a
living,” you might tell your writers. “They look carefully at an event or a place or an
object and they judge it. Then they write about that judgment in a review.” You might
provide some real-world examples of people who have relied on reviews to make
decisions—your sister who wouldn’t buy a stroller until she had read many reviews of
different kinds, your friend who always waits till the reviews come out before she goes
to the movies, your dad who has the Zagat guide to restaurants and takes it with him
when he goes on trips. You can show writers that reviews matter.
And then the fun begins. Some teachers like to begin with a new read-aloud and having
the whole class review it, or by bringing in a treat for everyone to eat and review. Your
students will be more than eager to dive into writing reviews for their toys, books,
favorite restaurant, favorite movie, and so on. Encourage those pens to keep flying
down the page as your writers state opinions, supply reasons and a say a little bit about
those reasons (CCSS W 1.1). You can teach them to pay attention to certain qualities
that people care about—for a restaurant, for example, people might care about how the
food tastes and whether the place looks nice. Then you might involve your writers in an
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
inquiry into what qualities will matter most for what they are reviewing. All the while,
you are helping your writers to keep whipping out a review or two a session, as well as
encouraging them to go back and revise as they learn new strategies—giving examples,
say, or creating rating systems.
After a few sessions of fast and furious review writing, you can show writers that many
reviews come in collections—like your dad’s Zagat restaurant guide, for example—or
your sister’s Baby Bargains, which reviews all kinds of baby gear. You can involve your
writers in deciding upon a type of collection to create and then help them to revise
previous reviews as well as write new ones, using the chart on strong opinion writing,
their own goals and everything they have learned so far. Your goal will be to push
writers to transfer and apply all they know and to evaluate their own pieces, asking
themselves, “How can I make this better?” Show them a review, charging them with
noticing what is strong about it and what they can try in their own writing. Meanwhile,
you will want to be modeling this work yourself, demonstrating that you too are
compiling a little collection of book reviews or reviews of kid-friendly places in the area.
When editing, continue to make individualized checklists or help children to create their
own. Help them to consider what they have learned about spelling to make a best guess
about words they are unsure how to spell. Show them how to use spelling strategies
they’ve already learned as well as any new ones you’ve taught, such as problem-solving
words one syllable at a time, and taking a go at writing a word a few times. See the
Spelling section after Bend Four for more information about the type of spelling work
you might do over the next couple of months. For this part of the unit, you can do
another mini-celebration and publish collections that you can put out for others in the
school to enjoy, perhaps making a special section of your classroom or even the school
library for reviews! You can guide your students in using a “variety of digital tools to
produce and publish writing,” including online on kid-friendly websites (CCSS W 1.6).
Bend Three – Writers Discover the Issues in Their Lives And Write Lots and
Lots of Persuasive Picture Books
Now that your writers’ persuasive muscles are well-honed and they have a sense for
how persuasive voice sounds, you can involve them in a longer writing project that
extends across a little more time than the work they have been doing up to this point.
Your writers have spent a fast four or five sessions judging, and perhaps a few more
sessions than that creating reviews and collections of reviews. That leaves you with a
week and a half to two weeks to create persuasive picture books. To start, you can read
aloud a persuasive book such as I Wanna Iguana or I Wanna New Room by Karen
Orloff, Earrings by Judith Viorst, A Pet for Petunia by Paul Schmid, or the Pigeon books
by Mo Willems, rereading parts and letting students act out parts with a partner to help
all recognize and internalize the strong persuasive voice. Don't stop there—if you find
other texts that embrace this genre, then by all means use them! After you immerse
your students in hearing the persuasive voices of stories, you can teach them to gather
their own persuasive story ideas. You don’t have to worry about students coming up
with ideas for what they want—likely you’ll hear their desire for dogs, lizards, trips to
Disney World, later bedtimes, new baby brothers, and so on. Any of these can of
course, be turned into a persuasive text. If there are those students who might need
more support in coming up with a topic, you can teach them to remember times they
really wanted something, or encourage them to think of something they really want
right now and plead for it.
You can support your students in transferring and applying what they have learned
about stating an opinion, supplying reasons, and adding details as they rehearse their
stories with a partner. Remind them to use little booklets, talking across pages and
pointing to each one as they rehearse their stories. In addition, your students have
Rumson School District
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already learned strategies for planning and drafting narrative writing and you’ll want to
help them transfer and apply these strategies as they go about this work. Thus, this
part of the unit promotes students’ drawing on the strategies they have accumulated in
multiple genres and analyzing how best to use these.
After a few sessions of writing persuasive booklets, your students can choose one they
want to take to publication, and you can help writers work with a partner to figure how
to make a piece stronger and use editing checklists to correct errors. You will want to
involve your writers in self-evaluating individual pieces and their growth across the
entire unit, revising goals and making action plans as they wrap up this unit and enter
the next.
Your publishing celebration can be a full workshop, a thrilling event with all pieces out
for outside audiences to admire. You might invite parents, community members, or
anyone who was intended as an outside audience member. You might take photos of
the library’s new “Reviews!” shelf, putting a basket of these reviews nearby. You might
have out areas of the room where “winning” objects—books, shells, dolls—are displayed
with the pieces of writing your students did at the very start of the unit. You might also
consider inviting buddy kindergarten classes to enter the room and letting your first
grade students “read” their picture books aloud to teach their little friends about the art
of persuasion. Let writers share their work in small groups or in front of the whole
audience to celebrate their hard-work over the course of this ambitious unit!
D
Experiences
Resources
Fundation Trick Words:

were

her

put

there

what
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she

been

by

who
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out
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so
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are
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two
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about
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into
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only

other

new
Suggested Time Frame:
6 weeks
D- Indicates differentiation at the Lesson Level.
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Content Area:
Language Arts Writing
Unit Plan Title:
Unit #4 - Information Books
Grade
First
Anchor Standard (ELA) or Domain (Math)
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5, CCSS: Grade 1, Writing
2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately
through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

W.1.2. Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and
provide some sense of closure.
5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

W.1.5. With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from
peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5, CCSS: Grade 1, Language
2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

L.1.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
when writing.
L.1.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
L.1.5 With guidance and support from adults, demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships and
nuances in word meanings.
RF.1.1 Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
SL 1.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts.
SL.1.2 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other
media.
SL.1.3 Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or clarify something
that is not understood.
SL.1.4 Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
SL.1.5 Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions.
SL.1.6 Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation.
W.1.8 With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided
sources to answer a question.
Overview/Rationale
Rationale:
The Common Core State Standards call for a focus on information writing, and this unit is part of a spiraling curriculum
that will help students develop their abilities to do this kind of writing. The purpose of this unit is to support first graders
in writing lots of informational books about lots of different topics, building on all they learned about informational writing
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
in kindergarten and drawing on their personal knowledge. During this unit, students will have the opportunity to write
multiple informational books to teach readers about topics they know a lot about. This unit is designed to help
students become analytic readers of grade-level complex information texts, noticing what authors of those books do and
emulating what they notice to revise and strengthen their writing. Students will be given the direct instruction and
repeated opportunities they need in order to become proficient at writing informative/explanatory texts in which they
name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure, as described by the Common Core
State Standards.
Overview:
The unit launches with a focus on volume—on writing many pages, with many sentences, and many books one after the
other. In bend one, students will start by writing their own all-about books about topics on which they have expertise.
Students will be encouraged to write quick drafts of numerous books, on a range of topics that are of high interest to
them, allowing them to draw from their own personal knowledge to teach others.
The second bend shifts to teaching students how to revise their books to lift the level of detail, and to be more strategic
about organizing and categorizing their information in a structured way. Students will categorize information into
"chapters" and create headings and subheadings to organize their writing. Students might go back and revise the book or
two from earlier in the unit. In this bend, students will begin trying out domain-specific vocabulary and use their wordsolving strategies to write new words. Students will hold themselves accountable to checking ending punctuation and
capital letters that make their writing easier to read.
In the third bend, students will learn to elaborate and write longer books, drawing upon their repertoire of strategies for
including facts and details from the beginning, rather than waiting to revise later. Students will consider readers’
questions to help them elaborate in their writing. They will read their writing to a partner, hear questions that the partner
has, and try to write in ways that answer those questions. Students will also reread their work, asking themselves the
questions that they anticipate readers will want to ask, which will help them to do revision work with more independence.
The fourth bend focuses on using text features to organize information and write more developed informational texts.
Students will work more independently through the revision and editing process and use mentor texts to glean craft
moves to use in their writing. They will incorporate more domain specific vocabulary into their writing and use a variety of
text features to organize information. Students will also learn to elaborate by including evidence from outside sources,
using specific details from books, photos and other sources to help their readers understand even more about their
topics.
At the end of the unit, students will complete one last round of revision and editing before publishing their information
books. In Bend Five, students will check their writing to ensure it makes sense and is easy to read. For example, they will
use end punctuation to make their informational writing even more interesting, noticing how authors use question marks,
exclamation points, and periods to teach and interest their readers. Students will reread and sometimes rewrite parts of
their text that are too squished together using revision flaps. They will celebrate the unit with an "expert fair," giving the
students an opportunity to share their writing and teach others about their topics.
Standard(s)
CCSS: ELA & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, & Technical Subjects K-5, CCSS: Grade 1, Speaking
and Listening Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on
others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.


SL.1.1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with
peers and adults in small and larger groups.
SL.1.1a. Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others with care, speaking one at a time
about the topics and texts under discussion).
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS


SL.1.1b. Build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the comments of others through multiple
exchanges.
SL.1.1c. Ask questions to clear up any confusion about the topics and texts under discussion.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and
orally.

SL.1.2. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or
through other media.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the
organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

SL.1.4. Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of
presentations.

SL.1.5. Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and
feelings.
6. Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when
indicated or appropriate.

SL.1.6. Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding
of the subject under investigation.
 W.1.7. Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of “how-to” books on a given
topic and use them to write a sequence of instructions).
8. Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source,
and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
 W.1.8. With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from
provided sources to answer a question

Technology Standard(s)
See above standards.

Interdisciplinary Standard(s)
See above standards.
Essential Question(s)
How can I write many information books to teach and excite readers about a topic that is important to me?
Enduring Understandings
1. Students will be able to name a topic, supply facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.
2. The students will be able to write a focused and organized piece of writing that, using details, to teach their readers
about topics of interest.
In this unit plan, the following 21st Century themes and skills are addressed.
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Check all that apply.
21 s t Ce n t ury Th e m es
Indicate whether these skills are E-Encouraged, T-Taught,
or A-Assessed in this unit by marking E, T, A on the line
before the appropriate skill.
Global Awareness
21 s t Ce n t ury S ki ll s
Creativity and Innovation
Environmental Literacy
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Health Literacy
Communication
Civic Literacy
Financial, Economic, Business, and
Entrepreneurial Literacy
Collaboration
Student Learning Targets/Objectives
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

How can I support my students to choose, develop, and write many strong topics that they know a lot about to
teach and excite a chosen audience?
How can I help my students categorize their topics into logical subtopic chapters through revision and multiple
books?
How can I teach my students to elaborate an idea into several organized and related sentences as they write and
revised their subtopics?
How can I teach students to write and revise more developed books by using text features?
How can I teach my students to revise and edit to prepare for publishing?
Fundations Objectives:
Students will be able to:
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Blend and read words with 4 sounds(+ suffix, s)
Segment and spell words with 4 sounds (+suffix, s)
Story retell
Prosidy with echo reading
Read narrative story structure
Read paragraph structure
Understand the concept of closed syllable
Schoolwide Grammar and Conventions Objectives:
Students will be able to:
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Students will notice how writers use the placement of pictures and words on a page to affect readers’
experiences with the story.
Learn how text formats such as writing words in shapes and text features such as boldface, capitalization, and
italics convey particular meanings and emotions in a story.
Select an idea and then consider how to use pictures, text features, and words to best express their thinking.
Discover that adjectives describe nouns and make sentences come alive by creating images and evoking
emotions for readers.
Learn how to recognize verbs, how writers use them to show action, and the important role they play in
sentences.
Continue to learn some basic rules and get some tips about how to construct an exciting and interesting
sentence.
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
Practice using adjectives, nouns, and verbs correctly and effectively in their own writing.
Assessments
Formative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: On-Demand Writing
Let students know the day before this assessment that the next day you will want to see what they already know how to
do in informational writing, and they will have forty-five minutes to write the best piece in this genre that they can write.
Prompt: “Think of a topic that you’ve studied or know. Tomorrow, you will have forty-five minutes to write an
informational (or all-about) text that teaches others interesting and important information and ideas about that topic. If
you want to find and use information from a book or another outside source, you may bring that with you tomorrow.
Please keep in mind that you’ll have forty-five minutes to complete this. You will only have this one period, so you’ll need
to plan, draft, revise and edit in one sitting. Write in a way that shows me all that you know about informational writing.”
Refrain from reminding writers of everything you hope they remember about this genre, or from otherwise coaching
them towards success. This is a formative assessment and you want it to be an accurate window into what students can
do independently.
After writers have completed their work, collect the writing. Then hold each piece alongside the informational writing
continuum. Please click the link in the Rubrics/Continua section above for access to this tool. Notice especially the
examples of student work and where one student's writing fits on this continuum of student examples. No piece will
precisely fit a particular level, and it is fine if there are some gaps.
Once you have identified one student’s level, continue to do this with all your students, moving quickly. Then look at
what the continuum suggests most students need to learn soon, and consider combing that instruction into the upcoming
opinion writing unit. Consider using a text that is a level or two beyond the students’ average level as a mentor text.
Formative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: Writing Conference
Studying the children’s writing will help prepare for this unit. Notice when looking at a child’s current writing to see what
behaviors they is doing. Watch to see if a child is writing strings of letters or if the child is starting to put spaces in
between ‘words.’ Check to see if students are using inventive spelling and see how advanced their spelling is.
Furthermore, notice if the child is using any high frequency words in their text or words that are in your classroom
environment.
In a writing conference, the teacher observes and/or interviews, researching
especially to understand what the writer can do, can almost do, and cannot yet do, and to understand the new work that
a writer is attempting to do, the challenges the writer is confronting.
1. The teacher approaches a conference, already recalling what he or she knows about the student as a writer. The
teacher may look back on notes from previous conferences, small group work and assessments, and/or may watch for a
bit to notice patterns in what the writer is already engaged in doing.
2. The teacher may begin by saying to the writer what he or she has already noticed, asking the writer to say more about
that ("I notice you have a list of possible story ideas. What were you planning for your next step?”) or the teacher may
begin by recalling the last conversation held with the reader ("Last time we talked, you were going to work on....How's
that been going?") or the teacher may begin simply by asking the reader about his or her work as a writer ("What have
you been working on as a writer? How have you been pushing yourself to do new work as a writer? Have you been doing
any of the things on our chart?")
Summative: DOK 3 Strategic Thinking: Final Assessment
Let students know the day before this assessment that the next day you will want to see what they already know how to
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do in the genre you’re studying, and they will have forty-five minutes to write the best piece in this genre that they can
write.
Refrain from reminding writers of everything you hope they remember about this genre, or from otherwise coaching
them towards success. This is a formative assessment and you want it to be an accurate window into what students can
do independently.
After writers have completed their work, collect the writing. Then hold each piece alongside the continuum for this
particular kind of writing (narrative/informational/opinion). Please click the link for access to these tools. Notice especially
the examples of student work and where one student's writing fits on this continuum of student examples. No piece will
precisely fit a particular level, and it is fine if there are some gaps.
Once you have identified one student’s level, continue to do this with all your students. Then look at what the continuum
suggests most students need to learn soon, and consider combing that instruction into the upcoming narrative writing
unit. Consider using a text that is a level or two beyond the students’ average level as a mentor text.
Teaching and Learning Actions
D
Instructional Strategies
Guiding Questions / Bend One:
How can I support my students to choose, develop, and write many strong topics that
they know a lot about to teach and excite a chosen audience?
Guiding Questions / Bend Two:
How can I help my students categorize their topics into logical subtopic chapters
through revision and multiple books?
Guiding Questions / Bend Three:
How can I teach my students to elaborate an idea into several organized and related
sentences as they write and revised their subtopics?
Guiding Questions / Bend Four:
How can I teach students to write and revise more developed books by using text
features?
Guiding Questions / Bend Five:
D
Activities
How can I teach students to revise and edit to prepare for publishing?
Guiding Questions / Bend One:
How can I support my students to choose, develop, and write many strong topics that
they know a lot about to teach and excite a chosen audience?
Students write informational texts about topics on which they have expertise, writing
many pages with many sentences. Students will be encourage to write quick drafts of
numerous books, on a range of topics that are of high interest to the students, allowing
them to draw from their own personal knowledge to teach others.

Today I want to teach you that when information book writers get started,
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
we think about topics that we are experts at—things we know all about, so that
we can teach others. We choose a topic, say everything we know across our
fingers, grab a booklet and write, write, write.
Today I want to remind you that writers sometimes decide that instead of
writing one more book, we will go back and revise ALL our books. One way to
revise our books is to figure out if we've made our pictures into teaching
pictures. Teaching pictures have labels and other stuff in them to help readers
learn not just from the words of the book but also from the pictures.
Guiding Questions / Bend Two:
How can I help my students categorize their topics into logical subtopic chapters
through revision and multiple books?
Students will revise their books to lift the level of detail and to be more strategic about
organizing and categorizing their information in a structured way. Students will
categorize information into "chapters" and create headings and subheadings to organize
their writing. Students might go back and revise the book or two from earlier in the unit,
trying out domain-specific vocabulary and using their word-solving strategies to write
new words.
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
Today I want to teach you that writers of information books study how
information books work and how they are organized. When we study how the
books work, we can plan how we want our books to go.
Today I want to give you a big tip. When we want to teach people about
something and we have a huge armload of things to teach, we don't just throw
it all down on the table in front of the reader like this—blech. Instead, we first
sort it into piles or bins of stuff—and we say to the reader, “I want to teach you
about turtles. Here's the stuff I know about turtle babies (then we tell that
stuff); here is stuff I know about turtle food (and we tell that stuff). So....to get
ready to teach readers, it helps to sort our information.
Guiding Questions / Bend Three:
How can I teach my students to elaborate an idea into several organized and related
sentences as they write and revised their subtopics?
Students will elaborate, writing longer books by drawing upon their repertoire of
strategies for including facts and details from the beginning, rather than waiting to
revise to add in details. Students will read their writing to a partner, hear questions that
the partner has, and try to write in ways that answer those questions. Students will also
reread their work, asking themselves the questions that they anticipate readers will
want to ask, which will help them to do revision work with more independence.

Today I want to teach you that we can go back to all about books that we
made early in the unit and revise them to make sure that all of the information
is grouped together in an organized way. As we reread to revise our writing, we
can ask ourselves, "Which information goes together?"
Guiding Questions / Bend Four:
How can I teach students to write and revise more developed books by using text
features?
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
Students will work more independently through the revision and editing process and
use mentor texts to glean craft moves to use in their writing. They will incorporate
more domain specific vocabulary into their writing and use a variety of text features to
organize information. Students will also include evidence from outside sources,
using specific details from books, photos and other sources to help their readers
understand even more about their topics.

Today I want to teach you that writers can study mentor texts to get ideas
about which text features to include in our information books. As we are
studying mentor texts, we can ask ourselves, "What features is this writer using
that I might use?", “How does this author say more about the information in her
book?” Then, we can reread and revise our books.
Today I want to teach you that writers carefully choose the text features we
want to include in our information books when we are writing new books and
revising older ones. We don't want to include a feature just because we can.
We think about which feature would be best to clarify and teach more about our
topic.

Guiding Questions / Bend Five:
How can I teach students to revise and edit to prepare for publishing?
Students will check their writing to ensure it makes sense and is easy to read, using end
punctuation to make their informational writing even more interesting and rereading,
and sometimes rewriting, parts of their text that are too squished together using
revision flaps. They will celebrate the unit with an "expert fair," giving the students an
opportunity to share their writing and teach others about their topics.

Today I want to teach you that it is important to reread and look our writing
in different ways. We can reread our writing and edit it. We can ask ourselves,"
Are all my word wall words spelled correctly?", "Did I put spaces between
words?", "Did I try to use periods at the end of sentences?" Then, we make any
changes that we need to make our piece easier to read.
Today I want to teach you that writers reread our writing with our partners
to revise and make sure what we wrote makes sense. We point under each
word as we read. We ask, “Does it make sense and sound right?” If not, we add
words with a caret, cross out words that don't belong, or use a revision strip to
rewrite the sentence.

D
Instructional Support for
Differentiation
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ELL
Special Education
Interactive Writing
RtI Tier 1/Tier 2
ELLS
Beginning ELLs can begin the unit writing in their native language, depending on their
level proficiency.
Language acquisition
Students can dictate their stories for the teacher to write and draw the pictures.
Dictation should gradually decrease, releasing responsibility of writing to the student.
Special Education
Modifications should always be based on IEPs.
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS
For students that have occupational issues that interfere with holding a pencil, one
suggestion is to add a grip to support hand position and grip. Another suggestion is to
have students use a computer system to write their stories.
Interactive Writing
Sharing the pen with students will provide a model and guided practice to learn how to
write across a page, in sentences, editing, etc.
RtI Tier 1
Small group instruction and conferring should occur in the classroom for all students.
Resources
Professional texts
Please see the forthcoming book aligned to this unit from Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grade by Grade: A
Yearlong Workshop Curriculum, Grade 1
Materials Used
Paper choices (including table of contents pages and booklets with various lines for writing and boxes for drawing
diagrams)
Large Post-its or flaps of paper that can be taped on to make space for adding more writing
Texts Used(fiction, non-fiction, on-line, media, etc...)
Rigby PM Pets series, such as Goldfish, Mice, or Cats
My Baseball Book or My Soccer Book by Gail Gibbons
National Geographic Readers Series, such as Trucks, Planes, or Trains
Domain-Specific Vocabulary
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headings
tables of contents
glossaries
electronic menus
icons
diagrams
Technical Vocabulary
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illustrations
descriptions
procedures
Fundations Trick Words:

some
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could

want
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Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS

say
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do
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first
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any
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my
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now

our
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over
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come
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would
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after
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also
A student-facing rubric should be designed in conjunction with students. This will help them to understand their goals
and self-assess their writing work.
The Writing Process and Informational Writing Continua are attached.
Writing Process Continuum
Informational Writing Continuum
Effective Feedback:
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What
What
What
What
What
were the positive parts of the lesson?
evidence did the students show of lessons taught in the past and present?
are you wondering about the lesson?
standard or standards are you reaching towards mastery with in this lesson?
suggestions would you make for next steps?
Suggested Time Frame:
5 Weeks
D- Indicates differentiation at the Lesson Level.
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Content Area:
Language Arts Writing
Grade
Unit Plan Title:
Unit #6 - Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages
First
Anchor Standard (ELA) or Domain (Math)
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(W1.5) Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach.
(W1.4) Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to
task, purpose, and audience.
(SL1.2d) Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually,
quantitatively, and orally.
(SL1.4) Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning
and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
(RF1.2a) Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
when writing.
Overview/Rationale
Overview
Any time of year, poetry allows writers to let their hearts and minds soar. In this unit, young poets will find
significance in the ordinary details of their lives, employ strategies of revision, and learn from mentor authors. Poetry
will not be an esoteric unit of study; rather, it will be a culmination of learning, and an opportunity to use language in
extraordinary ways. The Common Core Standards call for first graders to identify words and phrases from stories or
poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses. Across the unit, you will teach children strategies for doing this
work, and also give them the chance to practice all that they’ve learned thus far in the year. You’ll help children
generate ideas for writing many, many poems. You will teach them to experiment with powerful language, and use
line breaks, metaphor, and comparison to convey feeling. By the end of this study, your young poets will be able to
create clear images with precise and extravagant language. Of course, you’ll want to assess your students and tailor
your unit accordingly. There are many ways this unit could go. Here is one suggestion based on the assumption that
poetry and singing songs have been an ongoing part of your school day.
Standard(s)
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(W1.2) Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and
provide some sense of closure.
(W1.5) With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from
peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
(LS 1.5) Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
Explain the meaning of simple similes and metaphors (e.g., as pretty as a picture) in context. Recognize and
explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs. Demonstrate understanding of words by relating
them to their opposites (antonyms) and to words with similar but not identical meanings (synonyms).
(SL1.3) Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or clarify
something that is not understood.
(SL1.4) Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.

Technology Standard(s)
See above standards.
Essential Question(s)

Interdisciplinary Standard(s)
See above standards.
Rumson School District
Aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards / 2010 CCSS

How can writers use language in an extraordinary way to create mental images?
Enduring Understandings
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
Writers experiment with language, metaphor, line break and comparision to convey feeling.
Writers begin to find significance in the ordinary details of their lives, employ strategies of revision and learn
from mentor poets.
In this unit plan, the following 21st Century themes and skills are addressed.
Indicate whether these skills are E-Encouraged, T-Taught,
or A-Assessed in this unit by marking E, T, A on the line
before the appropriate skill.
Check all that apply.
21 s t Ce n t ury Th e m es
Global Awareness
21 s t Ce n t ury S ki ll s
Creativity and Innovation
Environmental Literacy
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Health Literacy
Communication
Civic Literacy
Financial, Economic, Business, and
Entrepreneurial Literacy
Student Learning Targets/Objectives
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How can I help my students
How can I help my students
and music in our poems?
How can I help my students
How can I help my students
How can I help my students
Collaboration
live and write as poets?
draft and revise with precise words, phrases, and line breaks to create images
use poetic language to develop meaning?
use this knowledge to write songs?
edit, publish, and celebrate their best poems and anthologies?
Fundations Objectives:
Students will be able to:
 Add /-s/ and /-es/ suffix to unchanging basewords with closed syllables
 Story retell
 Posidy with echo reading
 Add /-ed/ and /-ing/ suffixes to unchanging basewords with closed syllables
 Read and write long vowel sounds for vowel-consonant-e
 Read and write vowel-consonant-e syllable type (one-syllable words)
 Read expository text
Assessments
Assessment
The TCRWP does not have a continuum for studying the writing of poetry—nonetheless, it will be important for you as a
Rumson School District
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teacher to know, “Just what is it that my kids know about writing poetry?” You may decide to take part of one day to
give kids an open-ended prompt to have them write a poem about something that matters to them. As you see that your
students are “finishing” their poems—you may ask all your students at once to take their revision pens and revise to
show you what they know about revising poetry. You may decide to give them the whole thirty minutes of the workshop
time, or just fifteen to twenty minutes on the first day. You will want to gauge—what do kids think poetry is? What do
kids remember about studying poetry from last year? What are kids using that you have studied and already looked at in
your various units? Are kids selecting meaningful topics? Do students write with detail? How are they using line breaks,
white space, and punctuation?
This initial assessment will help guide you as to what kinds of whole class minilessons your students will need. You will
also be able to identify some small groups of students whom you will want to pull aside either to address misconceptions
or to help develop stronger writing muscles in any of the qualities of good writing that we use throughout every genre
study.
Be sure to give your students an opportunity at the end of the unit to do another “on-demand” poem as a summative
assessment. Hopefully, you will be able to compare the two pieces of writing and see students using what they have
learned in this unit. Use the qualities of good writing as well as some of your main goals in this unit to track how kids
grew as poets as a result of your studying poetry together.
Teaching and Learning Actions
D
Instructional Strategies

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
D
Activities
How can I help my students live and write as poets?
How can I help my students draft and revise with precise words, phrases,
and line breaks to create images and music in our poems?
How can I help my students use poetic language to develop meaning?
How can I help my students use this knowledge to write songs?
How can I help my students edit, publish, and celebrate their best poems
and anthologies?
Bend One – Living and Writing Like Poets
In years past, we’ve suggested that the first few days of poetry be launched with
centers, where you begin studying and thinking about poetry by teaching children to
read poetry like a writer. One way of doing this is through poetry centers that provide
kids with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the sights and sounds of poetry.
You could invite children to join you in bringing in objects to use in a “Five Senses
Center,” where they could practice using descriptive sensory language. In another
center, children could learn to compare objects by using phrases including “like a . . .”
or “reminds me of . . .” or “as a ...”. At a “Singing Voices Center,” children might sing
songs and write new ones. In other centers, children could make shape poems, cut up
poems to play with the line breaks, or read familiar poems with strong feeling, drama,
and rhythm. At any center, when a poet feels inspired to write, he or she may start a
poem!
You will most likely find yourself conducting table conferences as well as individual
conferences supporting your writers or teaching them how to use a variety of sources at
each center to inspire questions and ideas that could become poems, including recalling
information from their experiences. Additionally, you’ll confer with students and pull
small groups to guide students to focus on topics and respond to questions from peers
(CCSS W.1.5) To do this, you will want to be sure to have poetry paper and pens on
hand at the centers so that whenever the mood strikes your students, they can write
their poems on the spot. You’ll also take time during this week of immersion to do midworkshop interruptions, celebrating those students who interrupt their center activity to
be inspired and write, as well as encourage them to add details to strengthen writing as
needed (CCSS W.1.5). You may want to encourage this by letting those early on poets
read their poems (remember they will be short, in the moment pieces) then showing the
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children how to give a “Beatnik” response by snapping rather than the old standard
round of applause. Offering these moments of poetry reading will model for children
that poetry lives all around us, as well as inside of us, and we can take any feeling, any
moment, any thought, and turn it into poetry by putting it on the page.
You may decide to pull out charts from past units, so that kids can transfer and apply all
that they know from across the year about generating writing. This kind of extended
thinking is high on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge levels. For example, a chart from the
Small Moments unit that said, “Writers think about special people, places, big feelings,
and things they love,” could also be applied to poetry. Another way you could teach
children to generate ideas is to revive their “Tiny Topics” notepads from the Authors as
Mentors unit and use these to find poems hiding in the details of their lives. Teach
writers to take observations and notes from inside their Tiny Topics notebook, chose a
few, and then turn them into poems. Teach, too, that poems can convey strong
feelings. Writing poetry means choosing precise words to create imagery and invoke
shades of meaning (CCSS LS 1.5). When returning to notepads, kids could reread their
old ideas for stories and work toward rewriting them as poems. You may decide to
teach your children how to scavenge their Tiny Topics notebooks to find the
“ingredients” for a poem, those notes or observations that held strong feelings and that
deserve to be turned into poems! Children might write poems about events in their lives
and the people that matter most to them. For example, one child rewrote her Small
Moment story about the time her tooth fell out when she bit an apple at lunchtime and
turned it into a poem called, “An Apple Tooth.” Children could also write story poems
like “Seventy-Fourth Street” by Myra Cohn Livingston.
As you move through this part of the unit, you will want to remind student of all that
they know about conventions as well. Poetry is the perfect place, after all, to notice how
writers can use bold words, capitals and lowercase letters, spaces, and punctuation in
meaningful, creative ways. Using a familiar shared reading poem, such as “School Bus”
by Kate Winters, you might conduct an inquiry with your students, asking them, “What
do you notice about the way Kate Winters uses capitals and lowercase letters, spaces,
and punctuation?” Then, invite your children to talk about the author’s choices and
consider trying out some of those same craft moves in their own poems.
During this first bend, you will want to remind students of the importance of volume
and generating pieces with relative ease. To do this, consider offering poetry notepads,
those same Tiny Topics notepads they’ve used earlier in the year to collect small
moments and during Authors as Mentors. While walking down the hall or sitting to start
a read-aloud, model how something catches your attention, and you flip open your
notebook to capture the moment or topic. You will want to encourage students during
these first days of poetry that although poems can be short as short as a few syllables,
or as long as an epic like the Illiad, the most important thing about poems is that they
arise from a feeling inside us. You might say, “Writers, the world around us, inside our
classroom, down the hallway, tucked away behind corners, is teeming with topics that
can be turned into poetry. Your job is to rove the world—whether it is your school
world, your home world, your recess world, your soccer field world, and to keep a keen
eye out, on the lookout, collecting ideas and topics to turn into poems.” Expect that in a
day’s workshop, children can create four or more poems, and that they have strategies
to do this work.
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Bend Two – Drafting and Revising with Precise Words, Phrases, and Line
Breaks to Create Images and Music in Our Poems
In this bend, your children will no longer move from center to center, but instead will
use all of the inspiration they have gathered from the first week of the unit to generate
as many poems as possible. Some teachers decide to keep a small tray of objects for
inspiration at each table. You might decide to begin by teaching kids that they can look
closely at objects to make observations, and make lists of words to describe what they
see, thinking carefully about using as many precise words as they can. You might also
teach children to see these objects “with poet’s eyes,” that is, you might teach them
that poet’s use their imaginations to write about what they observe. “A poet doesn’t
look at a rock and write, ‘This is a rock.’ A poet looks at a rock and sees it with poet’s
eyes—she pretends, using her imagination, and instead of a rock she sees a planet far
away, waiting to be discovered; or a tiny little person, dancing on her desk. Then she
writes what she sees. “A tiny person dances on my desk. Gray and round. He rolls from
side to side.” Children are natural-born poets, they do this easily.
You might also teach them to dig deep for topics that matter, to think about times or
people or places that give them a big strong feeling. Teach them that poets don’t
always just write about objects that they see, they write about things that give them
strong feelings, and often we have to say it once, then say it a different way, perhaps a
few times, before we find just the right, most precise words for what we are trying to
say. Of course, we can also change the words by rereading and then crossing parts out
to make them even better.
Once children are writing poems, you will want to teach them to revise. You might teach
them to experiment with line breaks to convey meaning or create tension. To illustrate
the power of line breaks, you could put each word from a class poem created during
shared writing on index cards, and then use a pocket chart to show the class that
changing the placement of the words changes the feeling of the poem. You might also
push them to think about language and word choice as a way to create clear images.
They might explore the difference between fry and sizzle, shine and sparkle, cry and
bawl—all in alignment with the Common Core State Standards around language (SL
1.4).
To guide your young poets through this work, you may find it helpful to choose a few
mentor poems or specific poets. These mentor poems provide your children with real
and inspiring examples of how poets play with language and text placement to convey
meaning. You could model your lessons on the lessons you taught during the Authors as
Mentors unit. You could teach students how to create rhythm like Eloise Greenfield, line
breaks like Bobbi Katz, or imagery like Valerie Worth. Take time to make copies of these
poems for children to keep nearby, in their writing folders, at their desks, around the
room. You will want to use large copies of the poems as exemplar charts, tagging the
craft moves the poets used in creating the poem with Post-its and drawing children’s
attention to it. In the poem, “Sandpaper Kisses” by Bobbi Katz, you might, for example,
use oversize Post-its and mark up how she uses a metaphor to compare a cat’s tongue
to sandpaper, writing the word “compares” and an arrow showing where it happens. On
another Post-it, you might note how she uses repetition to illicit an image or convey an
important idea, such as how each stanza starts with the same, “sand paper kisses”.
Study a poem along with your class, so that the observations belong to the students.
Don’t feel that you need to tell and show students the craft, but rather let partners
study and discuss what they notice and what a poet’s language does.
Writing partnerships will lend support to children as they craft their poetry. As they’ve
done in other units, partners will read together, offering each other suggestions about
line breaks and white space. They might ask each other, “Why did you choose to add a
line break here?” Partners could ask each other questions such as “Where is the big
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feeling in this poem?” or “What are you trying to show us?” (CCSS SL 1.3). They will
help each other think about their topics, the craft of their poems, and the feelings they
convey. You could teach them to ask each other questions such as “What small moment
are you trying to rewrite?” or “Which writer do you want to be like?” Partners might also
make suggestions such as “Have you thought of using this word instead?” Together,
poetry partners might play with language or line breaks to explore other ways a poem
could sound or look to match the poet’s meaning.
Bend Three – Using Poetic Language to Develop Meaning
As the unit continues, you’ll turn attention to the work of teaching writers to use poetic
language and purpose as well as to study and analyze poetry. You might say, “Lately,
you’ve been looking at the world with a poet’s eye. Yesterday, on our way to lunch,
Alejandro pointed to a little pink pencil eraser he saw on the hallway floor and he said,
‘Ms. Mason, look, a tiny pink head that lost its body.’ By now, your poet’s eye is eaglesharp! From this minute on, you’re ready not only to use your poet’s eye, but also to dig
deep and find your poet’s voice, like Alejandro did! You’re going to look at the poems
you’ve created, as well as find ideas for poems that are still hiding in your Tiny Topics
notebooks and your hearts, and as you write and revise these poems, I’ll teach you
even more poetry moves. Let’s get started!” Then, you’ll teach writers how to revise
poems from their folders or draft new poems using comparisons. You will model how to
take an object or a topic and write poetry by thinking about what it is like. Try using a
mentor text, like “Inside My Heart” by Zoe Ryder White from the Primary Units of Study
for Writing—and your own examples, of course. Allow lots of time for partner sharing
and talk. Common Core Standards expect that first grade students have the opportunity
to ask and answer questions about each other’s writing. Partnership work is the perfect
time to hone these skills. Expect to get a range of comparisons, from literal (“My mom is
as pretty as a girl”) to more sophisticated, such as Ethan’s marble poem:
cracked marble
shiny and smooth from far way
but look close and
it is a broken old man
You will teach writers to develop poems further by showing how to contrast ordinary
language with poetic language. You may decide to create a chart that shows and helps
your class to practice this sophisticated strategy of changing ordinary language into
poetic verse. Imagine creating a t-chart with your writers, one side labeled, “Everyday
Language” and the other, “Poetic Language”, then working across the day and across
the week to collect everyday language and transform it into poetic language. If, for
instance, your students notice the everyday words in shared reading such as “pretty
little flower”, you could then work together, as a class or in partnerships, to grow poetic
language and add to the chart, “rainbow dotted hillside” and “sparkling jewels winking
in the grass”. Additionally, if your children need more time with this work, think about
finding times for your children to look through picture books and poems to find
comparisons that poets have used (try Robert McClosky’s “Time of Wonder” because it
is chock-full of metaphor) or perhaps, with their Tiny Topics notepads, steal moments
across the day to try the work together. Perhaps as you stop for an afternoon water
fountain drink, take out your notebook and let the class think about the comparisons.
“The water bubbles a brook into my mouth,” or “It cools me down, a mountain breeze
through my body.” These don’t need to be the best of metaphors by any means. Just
remember, you are teaching writers to try this brave and tricky work, so you need to be
brave yourself.
You’ll want to take this work further by teaching writers to construct poems that sustain
metaphor, as Keiko, a first grader from P.S. 7 in Queens tried with her poem, “Butterfly
Sister”:
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My butterfly sister
is gentle
and colorful
Especially her lips
like purple butterfly wings
and her fingernails
purple too
Sustaining metaphor will, of course, feel a little clumsy to your writers, but look sharp
that you are noticing and celebrating your writers’ approximations and that you are
offering examples of your own work. Let your writers see you playing with and
reinventing the poetry in your own folder. The poetry your students write needs to be
shared often and publicly. You may decide to have spontaneous “poetry break out
sessions” where children can gather into groups of three or four and read and talk
about their poems together. You’ll allow for talking and revising time together so that
students can apply concepts of writing process to their poetry writing. The work you
lead your writers to do in sharing with and questioning each other supports Common
Core Speaking and Listening Standard 1.3, which states that students can ask and
answer questions about what a speaker says in order to gather additional information or
clarify something that is not understood. This work also supports CCSS 1.4, which
expects that students are able to describe people, places, things, and events with
relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.
What’s more, during this bend, you’ll teach students to revisit and revise poetry they’ve
created during the first two bends. You might teach them to ask themselves, “What am
I really trying to say to others about my feelings or thoughts in this poem?” Then, you
will encourage as well as expect that your poets will revise their poems further, playing
with line breaks and white space, repetitive language, and comeback lines, to lift their
levels of understanding of metaphor and figurative language. Support them so that the
clumsy sort of writing they did during Bend Two can be refined, even if in tiny ways—
perhaps they can sustain a metaphor or simile throughout an entire poem.
During this bend, you might also decide to revisit the idea of purposeful topic choice,
teaching children to choose a topic and encouraging them to write many poems about
that topic, one after the other. The children can try on different rhythms, line breaks,
and points of view as they write and revise poem after poem. You could decide to share
the book, “Creepy, Crawly, and A Little Bit Scary,” a poetry book about not so cuddly
creatures, that shows how you might look at an alligator in a new, gentle way, or see
the soft side of an electric eel. Consider showing your writers how an author wrote
many poems about a topic (in this case, creatures that others find a bit off-putting) and
how to generate many poems around a topic. Or, you might decide to teach your
writers how to write poetry from different points of view, teaching writers to construct
poetry as though they are the object, or write as though they are speaking directly to
the object. We are not suggesting that these be assignments or conditions of poetry,
only strategies to further help writers develop both their poetic voice and write using
careful word choice (CCSS W1.5). Rely on mentor texts to help to teach this work to
your writers. Books such as Hip Hop Speaks to Children by Nikki Giovanni or the book,
Go!: Poetry in Motion by Dee Lillegard. Books like these and (literally hundreds of)
others are fantastic texts to support your writers in studying and discussing poets and
poetic language.
Bend Four – Optional Additional Week of Writing Songs
If you have time, you might want to include some time on songs and songwriting.
Remember that your students might have done this in kindergarten. Remind children
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that songs are literature, just like the stories and poems they write in the writing
workshop. The tune, language, and rhythm in songs draw our children toward the world
of literary language. How important it is to teach kids that they, too, can create
beautiful and powerful lyrics, and that these lyrics reflect the truths of their own lives.
Music creates an energy in your classroom that will have children clapping, humming,
and singing the literary language from one another’s songs. By now you’ve surely sung
many songs with your children. To get started, you can remind students of a few songs
they already know, maybe “Old MacDonald” or “Twinkle Twinkle.” Sing the song
together, and then invite them to help you make a new song by changing the words.
First, think of a topic, then come up with the new song, out loud. For example, if the
children suggest the topic of school, then you begin singing out loud to the tune of “Old
MacDonald”, “PS 134 is our school... and it’s really great!” Pretend to be stuck for ideas,
and invite the kids to help you figure out what should come next. Then sing it again,
and perhaps write it out on chart paper as a shared writing text.
The oral rehearsal and shared writing work you do will set your students up to have no
trouble coming up with their own songs. As they write down the words to the songs
they invent, encourage them again to use all that they know about conventions. You
might say, “Writers, remember that you can use capitals and lowercase letters to show
people where to sing loud or soft, and you can use punctuation too to show them how
to make their voices sound!” Encourage them to reread (that is, read and sing) their
songs again and again, matching their voices to the conventions they’ve chosen, and
making changes to their writing as needed.
Of course, not all their songs need to be modeled from existing songs that your children
already know. They can also write songs from scratch. You might teach children that
sometimes songwriters turn poems into song simply by singing them as they read
instead of just reading them. They experiment with different ways to read/sing their
poem, making some parts stretched out, some parts loud, some parts soft. Another way
some songwriters create new songs is by humming a made-up tune first, then putting it
to words. Of course, your children can decide to make songs using whatever strategy
works best for them. Invite them to be brave, creative problem solvers, and to enjoy
this work.
Don’t shy away from revisiting strategies you’ve taught your writers during small
moment writing, as well as information writing, and apply those strategies as poets.
Gather the charts you generated earlier in the year and model for students how to take
a strategy like ‘show not tell’, and use it to show the big feelings in their poem with
poetic words. You could teach writers how to go back, find the most important part of
their piece, the part where their big feeling is biggest, and crack the poem open—
writing with precision, stretching out details, adding in senses, elaborating comparisons
(metaphor), and showing not telling. This works, too with the revision strategies you
taught your writers to do as information writers. You might decide to show your
students how they can write poems that teach. You could use a text like “Song of the
Water Boatman” to model for students how poetic language can paint a picture, as well
as inform and teach. The way your writers revised their information pieces, adding
exact words and teaching language, often serves poets well, too. “Writers” you might
say, “poets know that when they write poems, they can write with poetic words and
ears, but they also write to teach others about a topic they may not know about. Today
I want to teach you how poets write poems to teach others and make them feel
differently about things they didn’t know they cared about.”
While we suggest that you use the charts and strategies from previous units, know that
this is not because we think poetry is a stand in for narrative or information writing. We
suggest this instead because this is a time for students to transfer and apply all they’ve
learned about narrative, as well as informative writing to their work in this unit. Webb’s
Depth of Knowledge aims for students to work in creating and connecting known
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information to new learning and content. Remember, the work that your writers do in
this unit is as much about speaking and listening, hearing and playing with language
construction as it is about writing poetry. Continue to take time for students to talk in
partnerships about their poetry plans. Consider teaching partners to listen to each other
read poems with their eyes closed, and to build vivid mind movies as they read their
poems to each other. Encourage children to question and offer advice on where
partners could strengthen their word choice to make their visions more vivid.
Bend Five – Editing, Publishing, and Celebrating Our Best Poems and
Anthologies
When it comes time to publish, children may choose two to five of their own poems to
make public—or more. You might want to give your children a few options for
publishing. For example, some of your students could sort all their poems by topic or
theme and put those poems in an anthology, while others may prefer to pick just a few
of their favorite poems. You might even decide to put together a class anthology.
Perhaps you will think about teaching children how punctuation, even inside of poetry,
can affect readers and meaning. Show children how, just like repetition of words,
punctuation can make poetry sound a certain way and bring out meaning. Show
children how to take poems that they’ve written and revised and try out various end
punctuation, each time rereading using the punctuation and asking themselves, “Does it
sound better?” and “How else could I try it?” Demonstrate for children how you can play
with poetry and punctuation by writing short, staccato sentences, so that when you
read your work, it sounds like rain hitting a tin roof. Or perhaps you’ll show your writers
how you purposefully write long sentences that give readers that almost-out-of-breath
feeling as they race to the end.
We are not suggesting that the punctuation your young poets use during this time will
follow convention, but importantly, you will be able to study punctuation with your
writers and how it affects the rhythm and sound of sentence structure. Don’t worry
about your children perfecting punctuation, worry more about how they develop a sense
of punctuation as a craft of writing—how those tiny symbols draw out meaning and
affect readers as much as a just right word can do.
In the days leading up to your celebration for this unit, you will want to talk it up with
your class, so that they have the sense that publishing is special. Perhaps you’ll mark it
on your class calendar and begin counting down the days until the celebration. Perhaps
kids will make invitations or posters to announce the celebration to guests. Making the
celebration known teaches children what it means to have an audience for their work,
and gives them a sense of clear purpose as they go about selecting pieces to publish,
“fancying” them up for all to see.
You’ll want to teach your children a strategy or two for editing. You might be tempted
to tell your children to proofread for all of the conventions they now know, from
lowercase and upper case, to spacing, to punctuation, and word wall words—but you
will probably have more success if you teach your children that good editors usually
read for just one item at a time. You could create a class editing checklist (both on chart
paper, and smaller personal copies for kids) that includes a few of the most relevant
conventions that your class has been studying, and then teach your children to reread
their poems many times, once for each item on the checklist. This will help your children
transfer all that they know from the Foundational Skills section of the Common Core to
their writing, so that it is more readable and ready for a publishing celebration!
Since poetry is meant to be heard, as well as read, the class could present a poetry cafe
where the children perform poetry readings of the poems they have written. The
classroom can be transformed into a “cafe” with tablecloths on the desks, and a
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microphone (real or pretend) for children to step up to. You may want to take some
time during one writing workshop to teach children some strategies for presenting, for
speaking clearly, using gestures, expression, and everything they can to make their
poetry come to life for their audience. The audience might include parents or another
class. Hot chocolate or milk in place of coffee, and toasts all around for the poets’
performances will celebrate all that the children have accomplished during this unit.
D
Experiences
Resources
Fundations Trick Words:
 See
 Work
 Between
 Both
 Being
 Under
 Never
 Another
 Day
 Words
 Look
 Through
 Friend
 Around
 Circle
 Does
 Nothing
 Write
 None
 Color
 Month
Suggested Time Frame:
7 weeks
D- Indicates differentiation at the Lesson Level.
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Content Area:
Language Arts Writing
Unit Plan Title:
Unit #5 - Realistic Fiction
Grade
First
Anchor Standard (ELA) or Domain (Math)





(W1.3) Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen
details, and well-structured event sequences.
(W1.5) Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach.
(SL1.2) Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually,
quantitatively, and orally.
(SL1.4) Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning
and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
(RF1.2) Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
when writing.
Overview/Rationale
The urge to tell stories begins when children are very young. They love to tell you imagined stories and the real small
moments of their lives—and it’s amazing to hear the tension and drama they create as storytellers, as they tell the mostly
but not entirely real story of their first try on a bike, or the mostly imagined story of why they left the bike out in the rain.
Children are dying to “make things up” and have their stories still sound believable. Allowing children to satisfy this urge
taps an energy source, and the result is something to behold.
In this unit, you’ll lead your first graders into series writing. Yes, series! In the first two bends of the unit, you will lead
your children, somewhat step-by-step, through the creating a pretend character, giving that character adventures in
more than one booklet, elaborating and revising across books, and finally, creating a “boxed set” of their stories. Along
the way, of course, you’ll be reminding students to use what they know from their small moment writing, and you’ll
extend those skills. Then, you’ll invite students to use all they know to do it again with more independence and agency,
as they create a second “famous series”. On their second go, you’ll really be working at that DOK level 4, which is the
level of transference and application.
The focus of the unit is on realistic fiction rather than any kind of fiction. We know that some of your students would
prefer to write stories about aliens, and will even create more pages when they write about aliens. The thing is, while
they write more, they rarely write better. When kids truly study what makes a story exciting and still realistic, they end
up writing stories that have more heart. Also, kids write best about what they know, and when they realize that their
true knowledge of the terrors of riding a bike, or lying to a parent after a mishap can find their way into their stories,
they find they actually have a lot to write about.
Standard(s)



(W1.3) Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details
regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.
(W1.5) With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from
peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
(SL1.2d) Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or
through other media.
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
(SL1.4) Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly.

Technology Standard(s)
See above standards.

Interdisciplinary Standard(s)
See above standards.
Essential Question(s)

How can writers take imagined ideas and the real small moments of their lives to create fictitious stories that
still sound believable?
Enduring Understandings



Writers begin to develop characters in a story with a problem and solution.
Writers explore ways to build tension in a story and make a solution hard to solve while remaining realistic.
Writers continue to transfer their skills in their toolkits, including how to plan and rehearse a story, telling a
story across their fingers, touching pages of a booklet, and sketching, into writing stories with more volume.
In this unit plan, the following 21st Century themes and skills are addressed.
Check all that apply.
21 s t Ce n t ury Th e m es
Global Awareness
21 s t Ce n t ury S ki ll s
Creativity and Innovation
Environmental Literacy
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Health Literacy
Communication
Civic Literacy
Financial, Economic, Business, and
Entrepreneurial Literacy
Student Learning Targets/Objectives




Indicate whether these skills are E-Encouraged, T-Taught,
or A-Assessed in this unit by marking E, T, A on the line
before the appropriate skill.
How
How
How
How
can
can
can
can
I
I
I
I
help
help
help
help
my
my
my
my
students
students
students
students
Collaboration
become series writers?
become eager about revision?
continue to stretch their stories?
bring their stories to publication?
Fundations Objectives:
Students will be able to:
 Blend and read words with 5 sounds (+suffix, s)
 Segment and spell words with 5 sounds (+suffix, s)
 Read and write words with suffix/s/ used as action words vs. plurals
 Story retelling
 Prosidy with echo reading
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





Read and identify narrative text
Begin composition skills
Understand concept of syllable
Read and write compound words
Understand syllable division rules for closed syllables: compound words between 2 vowels
Read and identify expository text
Assessments

It’s been awhile since your students focused on narrative writing, so you’ll probably want to have students
write a quick on-demand to help you plan. As you look ahead to your unit, your on-demand writing will help
you to see the path most of your writers are on and to pinpoint where your students are on that path. This
will help you know what you can remind them of quickly, and which skills will need a sequence of instruction.
The assessments will help you tweak your plans (and to think about this write-up) so that your minilessons
bring the whole class along a journey of work that you think will be essential. Meanwhile, your assessments
will allow you to think also about meeting the needs of students who are more proficient or less proficient by
providing them with some additional small-group and one-to-one instruction. You can find the Narrative
Writing Continuum at www.readingandwritingproject.com.

Teaching and Learning Actions
D
D
Instructional Strategies
Activities



How can I help my students become series writers?
How can I help my students become eager about revision?
How can I help my students continue to stretch their stories?

How can I help my students bring their stories to publication?
Bend One – Becoming Series Writers
The main work of the first part of the unit is to get your students writing a lot, and
using the strategies and skills they have developed. You’ll start the unit by calling on all
students have learned, their whole lives (without us) about pretending, and you’ll get
your whole class stirred up to create pretend characters. They’ll act out what these
characters look like and sound like, they’ll imagine the adventures they’ll have, and
they’ll generally get revved up to create realistic fiction. We have kept a light touch on
the “realistic” aspect of fiction here, basically letting kids know that they are combining
their pretending skills with their judgment about stories and characters that could really
exist.
Many teachers have their students write in the third person, the voice of the narrator.
Encourage your students to choose topics that will present a problem for the character,
and then teach ways to build tension, making the problem hard to solve. Students can
work with writing partners to ensure that these problems and solutions remain realistic.
As you do this, children will naturally start writing narratives with connecting events and
endings that pull the story to a close (CCSS W1.3), but they will also go far beyond this
standard, as they create tension that is resolved and characters who have real reasons
for their actions.
Right away, you’ll call on kids’ skills that should be in their toolkit, including how to plan
and rehearse a story, using what they know about telling a story across their fingers,
about touching pages of a booklet, and sketching. Don’t tell them what to do! Even
though it is so, so much more efficient! We really want to help kids transfer and apply
what they’ve learned, and we have to visibly demonstrate high expectations that they
can and will do this. You might resurrect the charts you had up for Small Moments, so
that kids can use those as tools, as they make decisions about how to get started with
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their first story.
You may want mini-booklets around for students to use to plan their stories. The point
of this mini-booklet is that they take all of three minutes to sketch a story, from start to
finish, so this means a child can sketch a couple of versions for how the story might go,
storytelling each (touching the page and saying aloud the exact words she might write).
Imagine this work as the first five to ten minutes of your writing workshop. The
important thing is that writers benefit from trying a story one way and then another
way, deciding how the story should go. In essence children are revising before they are
even writing a single word. While kids are planning, they can also imagine the problems
or trouble that their character gets into—and those problems may be very familiar to
the writer! Starting with familiar problems and fictionalizing possible solutions, makes
for terrific writing. It lets young writers use what they know effectively and imagine how
to solve the everyday troubles that they face. Students will also recognize from their
experience reading realistic fiction stories that the character always faces a problem.
Once the writer has a plan for the story, he or she can shift to sketching pictures across
the pages of a full-sized booklet, or if writers want to do so, into immediately writing his
or her story. Writers who have chosen this mini-booklet option, may choose to elaborate
their sketches further in their full-sized booklets by including speech bubbles, thought
bubbles, labels, and setting details in their booklets to help them have more to say
when they sit down to write. Some students may feel that the sketches they have done
were substantial enough, and they are ready to start writing their story right away.
At the end of your first day, we encourage you to introduce the idea that writers create
series for favorite characters. Give children some time to imagine other adventures for
their character, and send them home to think about if they love their character, or need
to make any changes before they go on with their series. Then over the next couple of
days, you’ll teach students to study your mentor series for how the same character gets
into trouble across different stories. You’ll also do some early setting work, showing
students how to use the familiar places they know as settings in their stories.
Think ahead to small group work. One big—no, enormous—challenge, is that some
children will come up with a storyline and they’ll want to summarize rather than storytell
the story. The writer will decide, “This is a story about a girl who is afraid to swim in the
deep end of the pool but then she jumps into the pool and isn’t afraid anymore.” End of
story. To teach children to storytell rather than summarize, it is crucial for you to teach
them that they need to think, “What, exactly, will be happening at the start of my story?
If the girl wants to swim in the deep end of the pool, what exactly is she doing to show
this? If this was a play, what would she be doing on stage?” Perhaps the child decides
that the main character is standing in the shallow end of the pool talking to her friend.
One of the best ways to help children really imagine their story is to encourage the
writer to act out the story and then record what he or she does. You may, then, want to
use partnership time as a time for children to reenact key scenes in the stories they are
writing. In this way, a writer chooses a scene to reenact, bit by bit, to bring her story to
life and give words to action and dialogue, aligning to the Common Core Speaking and
Listening Standard (1.4) that asks first graders to incorporate ideas and feelings into
their description of people, places, things, or events. While one partner acts out such
ideas, her partner can help put words to paper as the movement grows into a story.
This acting will also encourage your students to think about the order of actions and
thus support the use of temporal words and sequence in their writing (CCSS W1.3) The
partnership can revisit this same scene to elaborate, or they can share different scenes
to get to know characters and their motivations (CCSS W1.5). This partnership can be
an ongoing structure throughout the unit through drafting and revision.
You’ll probably want to teach your students about the difference between “the end” and
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“endings”, and we recommend focusing on happy endings, which really are a problemsolution structure without getting into a lot of fancy jargon yet with our six-year-olds.
Look at the endings in your mentor text, and you’ll probably discover that things
generally work out in the ending of the story. By now, most of your students will already
have two or three stories going, and they can rethink and stretch out their endings.
Because they are writing realistic fiction stories, this unit also helps them imagine how
to solve the problems they actually experience, which makes for lively partner talk. Set
them up to confer with their writing partners to be sure their writing sounds realistic
and that their solutions could really happen. Sometimes their endings will be abrupt or
will seem as if the solution flies in from outer space, separated from the rest of the
story. You will want children to ask themselves and each other, “Would that really
happen? What would a character have to think or do to make that happen?” Teaching
students to write fiction stories with solutions at the end will also help the students
meet the Common Core State Standard of writing a story with a sense of closure (W
1.3).
Bend Two – Welcome to the Revision Party!
A lot of teachers voice their unhappiness that kids don’t like revision. Don’t
underestimate the joys of adding flaps, and spider legs, and extra pieces of paper,
which children actually love to do. Show kids how your own story becomes longer, with
extra pages and pieces of paper taped in, as you add important details and new parts.
Here’s where you want to keep your attention on revision, which is really, at this age,
about adding and elaboration. We suggest that you return to your mentor text(s) at this
point, and conduct an inquiry session, where students read the text closely, mining it for
things that they want to do in their writing. They may further their inquiry, and look to
the books in their independent reading baggies as well. They’ll come up with lots of
possibilities for ways to add to their writing, from adding dialogue, to describing the
setting, to giving details in the pictures, and other things we haven’t really thought of
but they find delightful. Help your students chart their ideas, and coach into them and
add on so they notice some of the things you really want to emphasize, like setting, and
perhaps time-transitional words such as “the next day”.
You may find that this inquiry work feeds your writers so they have enough to do for a
few days. They have more than one story to work on, after all. You may find, then, that
you want to return to some of the teaching you did during Small Moments, and remind
children that writers carry forward all they know, as they work on each new piece of
writing. Get those charts out, let students study those, look at the Narrative Writing
Continuum, look at your students’ current writing, and based on your data-in-hand,
decide what “old” teaching you want to teach again and extend.
You can predict some of your small group work. As some children do this work, for
example, you can do just a little bit to help them create a shapely story. That is, if the
story is about a boy who in the end makes the basketball team, you will need to teach
children that generally something happens to make this goal hard to achieve. In reading
workshop children have been studying characters and using this structure to help them
retell their books. For example, a child reading Biscuit might retell, saying “In this story,
the little girl wants Biscuit to go to bed, but instead of going to bed, Biscuit keeps asking
for all sorts of things. He wants to play and then he wants water and then food and a
special toy. Finally he goes to sleep.” You could remind children that they can tell their
own stories in the same way they retell their just-right books about characters. They
can start with saying what the character wants and then say what might get in the
character’s way. The boy wants to play on the basketball team, but—what? Is the boy
scared of the older kids on the team? Does the boy think he’s too short to play? Is his
family unable to buy him basketball shoes?
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You could remind children that they have been noticing how characters act in the stories
they’ve been reading. For example, when one child was reading Mushrooms for Dinner,
from the Rigby PM series, he noticed how Father Bear and Mother Bear got very upset
when there was no fish for dinner, but Baby Bear reacted differently. Instead of getting
upset, he went out to try to solve the problem by going to find some mushrooms for
dinner. They can do the same thing in their own writing. They can write how their
character reacts to a problem and then add in how other characters in their story react
differently. For example, a first grader may be writing a fiction story where a vase
breaks in a living room. This student might decide to try this strategy and show different
characters’ actions and dialogue. One character might see the broken vase and say,
“Let’s hide it under the couch,” and another might say, “Let’s tell Dad,” and another
might quip, “Let’s say Bonnie broke it!”
Then you’ll be ready to help students edit and get their first series ready to publish.
You’ll probably want to do some work with spelling. At this point in the year, your
students have learned about common spelling patterns and high frequency words (CCSS
L 1.2d) and are applying this knowledge to their writing. You’ve taught them a few
important strategies for problem-solving words—moving across the word in parts,
hearing and problem-solving each syllable in an efficient way—as well as monitoring and
correcting misspellings as they write and in their final editing work. They also have a
repertoire of tools to use including a word wall, word study notebooks, and individual
strategy cards or checklists. This is the time of year you probably want to bring
students’ attention back to their spelling as they have been working so hard on other
aspects of their writing—writing with greater detail, thinking about how they are
organizing their pieces, and revising.
As you move your attention toward long vowels in word study, you’ll want to increase
your students’ awareness of the different vowel sounds and patterns so that when they
write they are distinguishing between these sounds, and beginning to use the CVCe
(consonant-vowel-consonant-e) patterns they are practicing in word study and are
coming across so frequently in the books they are reading. According to the CCSS, “first
graders need to distinguish long from short vowels in spoken single-syllable words” (RF
1.2a). They’ve learned how vowels make different sounds when reading, so now they
need to make sure that they communicate the correct vowel sound to the reader, first
using the silent e as the long vowel marker and later, probably in second grade,
learning about long vowel pairs. Your whole-group spelling lessons will build on past
strategies such as listening for small parts in words and word-solving syllable by
syllable. You might demonstrate isolating the middle sounds of syllables to determine
the sound it makes, then move to writing the letters or parts. This is also a great time to
teach children additional lessons on using words they know to write unfamiliar words, as
they have many known words with common long-vowel spelling patterns in their sight
vocabulary, such as “make” and “like.”
Bringing your first graders’ attention back to their spelling at this point in the year is
especially important so they develop the habit of self-correcting at the point of error, as
they have been learning to do in reading. You will probably find many children saving all
their work around language conventions for the editing stage of the writing process,
and while there is usually a good amount of editing to do at the end, it is important that
they incorporate all that they know about spelling as they write words, checking their
spelling after writing a word and getting in the habit of rereading entire sentences as
they write.
Now your students are ready to create their first boxed set! Let them use cereal boxes,
cardboard, whatever you have to hand, and show them how series often look when
they are boxed up for the reader, and you’ll find them wildly excited to launch their first
series. Play up their new role as famous authors, and have a publishing party!
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Bend Three – Do It Again!
You’ll find that your kids are dying to launch the “second series by famous author soand-so.” This time, you can let the kids direct their own work as they get started. They
now know something about starting a series, and you’ll want to give them an
opportunity, using all the learning tools available in the room, to transfer and apply their
skills—again, this is that level 4 of DOK work, when kids really have to put their skills to
work in a fresh situation. Call to mind other times in their lives when they’ve admired
kids who develop a “can-do” attitude. Kids who know how to get their helmet on and
get on a bike, for instance. Kids who know how to get to school, or how to solve tricky
words.
You’ll want to demonstrate how you start a new series too, and you’ll probably switch to
a new class shared story. Everybody gets the chance to pretend again. At this point, we
suggest that you study what makes realistic fiction...realistic. Go back to your mentor
text, and find some parts that really include realistic details. Study those with your
children, investigating the tiny, realistic details that make a story seem so real. You’ll
accomplish two tasks with this lesson. One is, you’ll zoom in on the realistic aspect of
realistic fiction, which will help your students steer clear of aliens and tsunamis. The
other is, you’ll show your students an important elaboration strategy, which is to stretch
out parts with realistic details.
As your kids are writing their second series, you’ll be looking for ways to help them
stretch out their stories and develop some clearer story structure. One way to work
towards these goals is to teach students about the role of “chapters.” Young readers
and writers love chapters because they make them feel as if they are reading big books.
Look back to your mentor text, and show how the story was divided into chapters,
which usually have snappy titles, and often divide a story into a series of small moments
that mark a beginning, middle, and ending. Then demonstrate how you might divide up
your own teacher story in the same way, and let kids practice with your shared class
story. Then you might send kids off to elaborate each chapter, using everything they
know about planning and stretching out their stories.
You might invite students to study your mentor text again for new ways to add to their
stories. Invite your favorite writer to your revision party! Children could look at their
just-right books and ask themselves, “What are ways this writer stretched out the
problem? What are ways this writer developed the character?” and then think about
which of those things they could try in their own writing. For example, the child reading
Mushrooms for Dinner could notice how the problem doesn’t get solved right away.
Baby Bear doesn’t find the mushrooms right away. At first he looks and can’t find any.
But then he climbs up a tree and he notices the mushrooms from up above. Then the
writer could look at his own writing and ask himself, “Did I stretch out my problem?
Could I get my character to try something to solve the problem but make the first
attempt at solving the problem not work, just like with Baby Bear?”
Because so many of your writers are reading stories with pictures, we suggest that you
might investigate the role pictures play in stories, and invite students to take their
illustrations more seriously. This means thinking beyond the kind of sketching they do to
plan, to the one or two pictures that may give a lot of details to the reader. For some
writers, pictures will be a way to start working on setting details, for instance.
Bend Four – Bringing Our Series to Publication
You can be pretty campy about how serious, experienced authors get revved up as their
publishing date approaches. Suggest that writers help each other get ready by
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reviewing writing plans, helping listen to stories, working on tricky words and tricky
parts together.
You will want to take this time to pull out the charts from this unit, and prior units,
posting them around the room for children to reference. Your writers can study the
charts and think, “What will I work on today? How will I make my piece the very, very
best it can be?” Then, with their plan in mind, they can go to the writing center in the
room and gather the necessary materials before diving into their work. Of course, to
facilitate this work, you will need to ensure that children have access to the necessary
materials. You will likely want to provide them with a revision folder and a colored pen,
swatches of paper on which they can add paragraphs into their drafts, and flaps of
paper that can be taped over parts of the story they decide to revise. Teach them to
use staple removers, if they don’t already use these regularly, so they can make their
books longer or shorter.
You’ll probably want to teach another spelling lesson, focusing on strategies for tricky
words, and praising your writers for using words they can’t spell yet. You may want to
create a word chart of “sparkle words” that will help your kids see the literary
vocabulary that is making its way into their stories. You’ll definitely want to teach a
lesson on ending punctuation, and you may also want to revisit capitalization, as many
young writers in the face of beginning sentences, writing I, people’s names, and even
places, get a little lost with their capitalization again.
Your kids know a lot now about how to get ready to publish. Mostly, they’ll need some
work time, which means you can get to more small groups and conferences, really
meeting the individual needs of your students. Take a look at the Narrative Continuum
again, to see if there are places where some students need support. This may be your
last narrative unit for the year, so keep your eye on those end-of-year expectations.
As your students are working, you may want to invite second grade teachers down for a
visit, so they have high expectations for what their incoming students know how to do
in terms of skills and process. Have your kids really show off their independence.
Finally, work on those boxed sets. You might introduce some engaging parts, such as
dedications, and “meet the author” pages. And then it’s time to celebrate! You can
celebrate by having your students read their books to their upper-grade book buddies,
to parents, or to members of the local senior center. You’ll probably want to place these
sets in your classroom library for everyone to read and share.
Please don’t lose sight of how important it is that these units belong to you, and make
sure you are studying your students’ work and thinking about new, exciting minilessons
and conferences to best meet the needs of your writers. It is important to encourage
students to continue to draw from their growing repertoire of skills and strategies as
they draft new pieces.
D
Experiences
Resources
Choosing a Mentor Text
You’ll want to choose a favorite realistic fiction series as a mentor text, one the that suits your kids’ reading levels. We
love the Cynthia Rylant series - Mr. Putter and Tabby, Henry and Mudge. We also love Little Bill, and Iris and Walter
You’ll be studying your favorite texts again and again, for how the author uses details, for punctuation, for chapters and
beginnings, middle, and ends—so make sure you love it, and make sure it has parts that can mentor kids in this craft.
We also recommend that you develop your own “teacher story”, which will be a series of small moment stories about a
character you create. Often in your lesson, you’ll demonstrate by working on this story. As well, you can create a class
story about a shared character. Then kids can work on this story during your active engagements, in conferences and
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small groups, and so on. Using a class story not only gives children a place to practice their newly learned strategies, but
it also support CCSS W1.7 in which children are expected to participate in shared writing projects. Kids will need to see
this work again and again, so having a mentor text, a teacher story, and a class story will give you lots of opportunity for
demonstration, shared writing, and interactive writing.
Paper Choice and Planning
Providing paper choices and teaching children how to choose their paper wisely will be important in this unit. Up to now,
children have tended to write in three-page booklets with four or five lines on a page; you’ll probably want to be sure
that at least some of their pages contain even more lines, perhaps six or seven—they’ll be learning to elaborate parts of
their stories. This elaboration work will be critical to making their stories more engaging and will help children to focus
their narratives while still adding volume and detail, as is addressed in CCSS W1.5. Because this unit gives you
opportunities to lift the level of volume expectations in your classroom, children may not always need a picture box for
every part of their story once they start drafting. That is, if they elaborate the problem, they may sometimes be able to
keep writing, without planning new pictures for support. You’ll want to help your students match their paper choices to
their expectations of writing more.
As you head into the unit, be clear that children will write lots of stories during this month, and they will progress through
those stories, working at their own unique paces. Your launching day will make all the difference in the world. On this
day, you will want to demonstrate that writers select a planning strategy from a repertoire of possible ways to plan, and
then plan for five or ten minutes by thinking of a character who has a problem and a small moment, and then writers
write the start of a story onto paper. We strongly suggest that at the start of this unit, after writers think of one possible
story, that they think of a few more, so they have plenty of stories in their series to work on over the first two weeks.
The advantage of this is that it means that all children will be primed to work on one story, another, and another,
progressing at their own paces. Your classroom will not be a writing workshop if you essentially say in one day’s
minilesson, “Today we will develop our characters,” and then everyone does that, and if then, on the next day, you say,
“Today we will write page one,” and everyone does that! We’ve sometimes seen some well-intended teachers
misunderstand this unit and teach in such a fashion—please don’t! Remember that if you teach children ways to generate
ideas for stories and ways to write the leads to their stories and so forth, then children will be able to draw not only on
their pile of story ideas but also on their experiences planning and starting stories, so that whenever the time comes for
them to start a new story, to write a first page, they’ll have no hesitation doing so. This type of repertoire teaching
pushes your children to take what you have taught them to do and turn it into a process that requires them to make
decisions about what to include and then to try the process again and again with growing depth and independence - that
is DOK level 3 and 4 work.
As you prepare for the unit, plan not only for children to cycle through lots of story writing, working with independence,
but also plan on reminding them of skills they already know how to use and teaching them how new skills extend prior
ones. You can concretely represent your skill instruction by thinking about the role that charts will play in your unit. You
will absolutely want to bring anchor charts from previous units into this one, and you will also create a new chart to keep
track of important writing skills. With some compelling visual charts and demonstration writing that your young writers
can turn to, you’ll support their recall of the lessons you’ve been teaching during the unit. It will be useful for you to
develop at least one class character and a class story during storytelling time, aligning with what the Common Core State
Standards suggest in the speaking and listening section, through the use of shared writing. This shared work can serve
as a model, helping kids understand how to create fictional characters and stories. This character can also provide a
vehicle for the active engagement sections of your minilessons. Students can practice on the shared story you create in
class—and you may want to draft several stories, as your students will, so they can see how in your second one, you use
some of what the class was learning as you wrote the first one.
In addition to emphasizing repertoire and independence, you will also want to use this unit as an occasion for building
volume. You can support children to write longer stories in part by shrinking the size of the planning pictures children
make or by encouraging some children to jot a quick phrase in each of those planning boxes rather than relying on
drawing, which is a more time-consuming vehicle for planning. Don’t underestimate the expectations that can be
conveyed just through your materials! Of course, every table will need extra pages so that students can expand their
booklets, and also every table requires flaps and tape so that writers are encouraged to revise without waiting for
encouragement to do so. In the first few weeks, kids should be drafting two to four stories a week. Help them keep their
volume high, both within a piece of writing as well as across the pieces in their folders. Don’t feel the need to teach
multiple strategies for generating ideas or planning, devoting days to a process students know well. Students should
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cycle through this process fairly quickly, jumping right into the work of drafting and revising. The unit ends with an
invitation for writers to look back on all the work they have generated—which for some students will be an armload of
stories—selecting one or two of those stories to revise deeply and extensively.
Fundation Trick Words:
 Many
 Before
 Called
 How
 Yours truly, down
 Should
 Because
 Each
 People
 Mr.
 Mrs.
 Years
 Says
 Little
 Good
 Very
 Own
Suggested Time Frame:
6 weeks