[Sequence words and phrases]

This week for writing, we're working on First Grade writing standard 3 (not sure if that's the right way to say that or not?!) in the new COMMON CORE. 

Standard 3 states:

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.

Whew!  That's pretty intense for my little monkeys at this point of first grade!

The expectation in our district is that we use the "I do, we do, we do, we do, we do, we do, we do, YOU do" model.  Lots of shared writing. 

On Monday we read Eric Carle's Tiny Seed
and listened for sequence words (temporal words). 

Yesterday we read Eric Litwin's Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes,
making note of any temporal words. 

Today we read David McKee's Elmer's Special Day and added to our SEQUENCE anchor chart.  I have to say that Elmer's Special Day is by far my favorite!  The kids LOVED this story (we read it TWICE!!) and it has the best sequencing words and phrases!!  Seriously - phrases like A little later on  and Gradually and But ten minutes later! Awesome!

Our next step was to share the pen and write a story about our day. 
So far our story is pretty lame.
  First the bell rings.

Now it’s time for the pledge.

Then we do our math timings.

5 minutes later we have reading groups.

Awesome!  It’s snack time!

At last we have math.

Next we do phonics.

A little later on, it’s time for lunch.

Okay, it's incredibly lame, lol. 
But. . .now comes the exciting part! 
Tomorrow we're going to read this story as is. 
I know that some of my monkeys will groan in frustration
because this story really is that bad. 
You know what that means, though, right?!

The next step in the writing standard - INCLUDE SOME DETAILS REGARDING WHAT HAPPENED.  Yep.  Details time.  I'm actually pretty excited about this whole adventure in writing.  I love writing with my firsties.  I'm starting to love the rigor that is built into the new common core writing standards.  Hopefully our new and improved story will actually be NEW and IMPROVED!  :)

On a side note, WOW!  What a start to this year!  Sigh.  One little guy with an emergency appendectomy.  One little guy with a broken nose.  And lots and lots of clip downs, but even more smiles, clip ups, and learning.  We've laughed.  We've learned. 

We've survived.