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It’s Memoir Time in First Grade
Stories about watching ocean waves, daring Halloween adventures, and early Christmas mornings filled Jessica Farney’s first-grade classroom during the daily writing workshop.
The Pequenakonck Elementary School students were busy telling stories about their favorite memories. Despite it being a writing lesson, the actual writing came at the very end of the process.
Students brainstormed five different memories, choosing one to depict with drawings of the beginning, middle and end. While speaking the story aloud to themselves or a friend they found their words and formed simple sentences. Only then did they pick up a pencil and commit their story to paper, focusing on developing writing skills, such as capitalization, word spacing and letter formation.
“This is when we went on the roller coaster,” said Luke as he pointed to his picture, where he had neatly written, “I went on the roller coaster.”
His classmate Leonardo illustrated and wrote a thrilling story about finding a snake, picking it up, and showing it to his brother.
“We talk about critical and creative thinking; this is both,” said Farney. “It’s critical because they are learning to write, but it’s creative because it’s their own story to tell about their own moment in time.”
The class is guided by Farney's "once we’re done, we’ve just begun” motto and as students completed one story, they looked to their brainstorming chart to find a new story to tell.