Elementary Curriculum for
First Grade - Communication Arts

"Writing"

Content

• Retells a story from personal experience that makes sense and stays on topic by speaking, drawing or writing. (D)
• Retells a story that makes sense and stays on topic by speaking, drawing or writing. (D)
• Communicates ideas that makes sense and stays on topic, by speaking, drawing or writing. (D)
• Talks about a self-selected topic or a teacher prompt. (D)
• Writes about a self-selected topic or a teacher prompt. (D)
• Responds to literature using personal experience and opinion. (I)

Style

• Speaks with own personality showing. (D)
• Speaks in complete sentences. (D)
• Develops awareness of author’s voice and personality, word choice and interesting sentences. (D)
• Writes complete sentences. (I)

Organization

• Expresses a single thought. (D)
• Stays on topic when speaking, drawing and/or writing. (D)
• Tells or retells a story using story grammar with correct sequence of events. (D)
• Integrates beginning, middle and end to communicate a sense of wholeness. (I)
• Writes three connected thoughts focusing writing on one main idea. (I)

Conventions

• Developing phonemic awareness. (D)
• Uses phonemic awareness to spell. (D)
• Uses emergent writing by drawing and scribbling, creating letter strings, words or letters. (D)
• Learns to name and write upper and lower case letters. (D)
• Writes from left to right, top to bottom. (D, M)
• Leaves spaces between words. (D, M)
• Uses developmental spelling with strategies towards conventional spelling. (D)
• On final drafts, uses conventional spelling for age-appropriate words, with resources. (I)
• Writes a complete sentence with a capital at the beginning and punctuation at the end. (I)
• Capitals for proper nouns. (I)