K-1 Writing Workshop, Station, and Activities

I’m starting to compile the students’ writing samples and my children’s writing samples on this post. This post will include writing activities and lined writing papers I have created.

Writer’s Workshop Block

K-2 Lined Writing Papers

I differentiated my writers during Writing Workshop when I was teaching kindergarten. I started all students out with just a blank piece of paper at first. As each student progresses at their own pace in the writing developmental stages, they move on to the next lined writing paper template.Click here to view my students’ writing samples.

This is how I differentiated my creative writers using the different lined writing templates:

blank paper – Student is scribbling or drawing and labeling letter-like forms.
page 1 (2 lines) – Student is drawing and labeling the pictures, attempting letter like forms and working on writing a simple sentence.
page 2 (4 lines) – Student focuses on writing a detailed or complex sentence or writing two sentences. Drawing and labeling continues.
page 3 & 4 can be printed front and back: Student’s letter formation is not as big, can write simple sentences using proper capitalization and end punctuation, can write a paragraph with four to five sentences. Little illustration is needed.
pages 5 & 6 can be printed front and back: Student can write a complex three part paragraphs for a story, summary, or report. Little or no illustration is needed.

My students all start out with a blank paper for writing as they first learned how to draw a picture to represent their idea or story. Every student writing progress eventually will be at different pace. As they progress up to the next writing stage, students also progress up to the next writing template I created. This also helps me differentiate which level they are at, whether they are still scribbling and learning to label and draw their picture or story, writing letter-like symbols, writing a simple sentence, detailed sentence, or multiple sentences.

My most successful years of teaching kindergarten and first grade was when there was an actual forty minutes Writer’s Workshop block built into my classroom daily schedule. Writer’s workshop block is a quiet time where all the kids should focus on writing, not doing other literacy centers activities that may distract those that are trying to focused on putting their thoughts down on paper. My 40 minutes of Writing Block always start out with teacher modeling that may last from 5 to 20 minutes. Teacher modeling time is longer at the beginning of the year and as students practice more with their writing, their independent creating writing time increases and teacher modeling time decreases.

Students’ Writing Samples:

Grace’s writing samples (to be uploaded)

Students’ writing samples: I mainly document writing samples of students that do not have behavioral issues, meaning that they pay attention during instructional time and follow directions in class most or all of the time.