Product Description

What readers will love about this book is that it offers big-picture understandings of teaching, then it zooms in and offers the details of that teaching.
- Katie Wood Ray, author of About the Authors

First graders have no shortage of ideas. The hard part for them is putting thoughts together into a cohesive draft. Organizing and planning for writing defy simple description and aren't easily modeled for students, making them challenging topics to convey to young children. Where do you find the language and tactics to teach these subtle processes?

With First Grade Writers, Stephanie Parsons will change how you think about teaching the thinking behind writing. Parsons outlines five specific units of study for your writing workshop that help students prepare thoughtfully to write. Beginning with a September unit specially designed to introduce the writing workshop to first graders and build a classroom community that supports risk taking and learning, each successive unit builds upon the previous one and fosters independence. By June your students will know how to plan for writing out loud and on paper, leading to elegant, well-structured pieces. The units also help children to differentiate the planning and organization needed to write:

• fiction
• personal narrative
• nonfiction Q & A books
• pattern books.

Best of all, First Grade Writers is corner-of-the-desk practical with concise, logically laid-out descriptions of how each unit of study operates, a variety of helpful tables, charts, and assessment diagnostics, as well as elaborations, teaching points for minilessons and conferences, troubleshooting tips, and month-by-month planning assistance.

If you're new to first grade, Stephanie Parsons will give you ideas for top-notch teaching that will be invaluable as you establish your first writing workshop. If you're a veteran, the units in First Grade Writers will augment your existing workshop and help your students clearly conceptualize what high-quality writing looks like. Either way, you'll help them write better by thinking about the thinking behind good writing.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176149 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Stephanie Parsons is the author of the Heinemann titles Second Grade Writers (2007) and First Grade Writers (2005) as well as a coauthor with Lucy Calkins of Units of Study for Primary Writing, classroom materials from Firsthand. After attending Yale University and Teachers College at Columbia University, she became a first grade teacher at P.S. 321 in Brooklyn. She is now a reading and writing staff developer working with elementary schools in New York City and across the country.

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Customer Reviews

If You Teach 1st Grade, You Have to Read This Book
This is an excellent resource book. In our school, we use Lucy Caulkins Units of Study. First Grade Writers is a great companion book for Caulkins' work. It starts with building a community of writers and pattern books. The children are so successful and it is easily differentiated. This is a book that you will continually revisit throughout years.
A must have for first grade teachers!

Excellent resource for First Grade teachers
This is a helpful guide for First Grade teachers who want to incorporate the writing process into their classroom. The information is clear and well-organized and follows the flow of the school year.

An essential companion for teachers of First Grade Writers
Stephanie Parsons' book speaks directly to teachers. It explains the thinking behind a writing workshop - what we need to understand in order to set our own goals for our students and to plan and organise successful units of study. I love the way she has provided a consistent framework for the development of each unit of study; this so helps my own planning and then develops each part of the framework giving examples of possible teaching points. I have recommended this book to every First Grade teacher I know.