Sharp pencils. Blank paper. Big Ideas.

The second grade pencil sharpener is busy. Every few minutes another student gets up to use it. Today, these seven- and eight-year-olds are writing a paragraph with a topic sentence, evidence, and conclusion. Every elementary student in Spring Lake Park Schools will spend a lot of time at school today writing.  

Skills elementary students will need in coming years are built step by step. With each pencil scratch and key stroke, the foundation is being laid for the future.

Second grade writing is serious business on this day. Students are writing about the westward expansion and the settlers’ impact on Native Americans. A chart paper at the front of the room reminds students of what this paragraph should include - topic sentence, three pieces of evidence, conclusion. They’re also paying attention to vocabulary words, transition words and punctuation. It’s a lot to think about.

Teacher Natalie Laciskey models the steps of the writing process at the front of the class as students watch in near silence. She refers to the chart paper hanging on the wall as she goes. After she’s done, she asks students to put on their teacher hats. They mime taking a hat and putting it on their heads.

“Ok, now, we’re going to look at some strong work and some weak work, and I want you to think like the teacher and tell me what you see,” she says as she projects the first example.

It’s not long before hands shoot up around the room.

“It has a paragraph but is missing a topic sentence and evidence,” exclaims a student named Ari. “Can I read the next one?”

“Yes, you can,” says Natalie.

Another student chimes in, “They have good vocabulary and transition words, though.”

“That’s right. Good,” says Natalie.

They talk through several examples and quickly identify what is expected. Skillfully, Natalie has walked through the rubric in second grade terms – the goals and expectations for this writing - and shown them examples of what is strong and weak work. The writing begins. Natalie and Kelsey Urness, multilingual learning teacher, circle the room to check in on students as they work.

 “Do you need anything before your evidence and after your topic sentence?” asks Kelsey of one student.

They go look at the chart paper together.

“Transition word!” exclaims the student. She gives him a high five.

Building foundations

Across the hallway, first graders in Katie Ayu’s class are still learning to read, and there is a wide gap in skills. Some of them are just grasping letter names and sounds. Others are reading. Several students are English language learners just grasping a new language.

“Especially with these younger kids, there's so many components to writing. How do you hold the pencil? I feel like writing is always the piece that never gets the spotlight but is so important,” says Katie.

In first grade, students focus on things like sentence structure, identifying punctuation, letter formation, and sizing and spacing. The mechanics of writing take a lot of fine motor skills. It can be a lot for some of them, but they're building stamina.

Halfway through the year, they are starting a big writing project. The result will be a 4-page book that each student writes and illustrates.

“I start by showing them what the end product will be. I have samples to show how they get to be illustrators and authors,” says Katie. “That really piques their interest.”

The main character in a book they just read talks about loving to tell stories and then writing her own book, her own story. They use that as a jumping off point.

“I tell them, ‘We're going to get to be like Anna,’ the main character,” says Katie. “Then, we plan – What are your interests and what kind of characters do you like? Let's build our story around a character. At this point, even the kids who have retreated a bit as writing got harder, are engaged and excited to be writing their own book about something that they love.”

From there, they go step-by-step. It’s guided the whole time. They do a story map. They name their character, pick settings, name a problem and come up with a solution to that problem.

“A lot of them really challenged themselves further than I would expect,” says Katie.

She guides them through the writing from introduction to plots and how the character changes throughout. Using transition sequential words – first, next, last – they get to a resolution at the end. Pretty soon they have a book. The last step is the Meet the Author page. They draw a picture of themselves and share a couple things they love.

“I always save these projects and give them to families at conferences in February, and that's really fun,” says Katie. “They surprise me every time.”

After the books are done, each student gets a turn in the author's chair. They each get to read their stories to the class.

Learning in multiple languages

Katie co-teaches with Kelsey and many of the supports Kelsey uses with multilingual learners are helpful for all of her first grade students.

“Some students might need support with the structure of a sentence,” says Kelsey. “They might be missing parts of a sentence or not understand what makes a complete sentence. I use language frames to support with that. The structure of the sentence is set out for them, but they have to know how to fill it in.”

Support looks different depending on each student. Kelsey will co-teach during the whole class time. During this time, English learners get a lot of exposure to the language and strong examples from classmates. She also pulls students out to work in smaller groups aligned to what they're doing in the classroom but focusing more on their level of language needs.

“Our English language learners have different levels of proficiency in their heritage languages, too,” says Kelsey. “Maybe they can listen and understand it, but they don't necessarily speak it. Or, they don't know how to read in their heritage language. That can sometimes impact their ability to read and write in English.”

While Kelsey might be working with students with as many as 20 different first languages, John Seal is working primarily with students whose first language is either English or Spanish in his role at Woodcrest Spanish Immersion School. For the last four years, he’s taught English Language Arts to students in Kindergarten through fourth grade at the immersion school.

Over time, enrollment at Woodcrest has gone from being predominantly students who speak English at home to many more who speak Spanish. With this evolution, formal English learning has transitioned from starting in third grade to starting much earlier.

“By the time these students get to 7^th grade at Westwood they will have five classes where the language of instruction is English and two classes where the language of instruction is Spanish,” says John. “We have to make sure they are ready.”

Because students are learning in Spanish for most of their day, they learn things like letter formation sizing and spacing as a part of Spanish Language Arts.

“If students are spending a lot of time on a particular skill in Spanish, we can spend less on it in English class but refer students to their Spanish Language Arts instruction,” he says.

His second graders are using the Wit and Wisdom curricular resource, the same as other Spring Lake Park schools. Similar to classrooms across the district, his students are reading and writing a lot during their English Language Arts time.

“With vocabulary, we really strive to emphasize cognates – the words that are similar to a word in the other language. For a lot of kids, it’s like they have a little wall between the two languages,” says John. “They say, ‘I can read in Spanish, but I can't read in English.’”

English and Spanish share a large number of cognate pairs. This means words in both languages that share a similar spelling, pronunciation and meaning, such as family and familia. Teaching students to be aware of cognates helps them make the connections and expand their language.

“Slowly, students realize there's not a wall between English and Spanish. There’s actually a bridge,” says John. “They can use their knowledge of one language or the other to increase their knowledge of the other.”

When it comes to writing, John uses similar strategies to other teachers across the district. When a student shows him a sentence, and if it has errors, he asks them to read it to him out loud.

“They read it and their ears can hear it's not right. It's like playing music. You can hear when you hit a wrong note,” says John. “It’s the same when we're writing and speaking. You don't necessarily need to know the part of speech or the tense of the verb to hear that it has errors.”

Similarly, Kelsey finds that if students can orally tell her what they want to write, she can help them put their thoughts into a complete sentence. This is common for all students, not just English learners.

Going deeper with each step

By the end of first grade, the goal is for students to be able to generate their own complete sentences, know capital letters, and ending punctuation.

“I want them to be able to write a paragraph of 3-5 sentences on their own, with those details by the end of the year,” says Katie. “That's what I would consider awesome.”

It’s a big growth leap, and one Darcy Brodt has seen firsthand looping with students. She has stayed with her first graders into their second grade year.

“The big thing is to see the progress they make,” says Darcy. “In first grade, it's a lot of writing together. I still model in second grade a lot, but there’s a slow progression to more independent work. They write more and even do a research project with multiple paragraphs.”

With each grade level, the steps remain the same – brainstorming, planning, introduction, evidence, conclusion. The complexity and depth grow over time as students master different components.  

“We brainstorm together. We work on our planning sheets to record facts. We make facts into complete sentences,” says Darcy. “It’s a lot of practice – a lot of modeling. Then, giving feedback.”

On this day, Darcy’s second graders are researching a favorite animal and writing an informative paragraph about it. One student is reading about arctic foxes using the Epic app on her iPad. She’s choosing to listen to the book. As the narrator reads aloud, the words light up for the reader to follow. The student pauses often to note facts.

“The more the kids are reading and writing, they each benefit the other so much,” says Darcy. “Having great, authentic, amazing books and then being able to write about the characters or create their own ending - that is engaging and good practice.”

Each piece of writing has a checklist – their rubric - detailing what it needs to include. They know and can see what is expected. Darcy models the whole writing process. Students work independently. Then, they share with a peer for feedback before sharing with Darcy.

“Often, parents can’t believe how well they can write, but it’s because we write every day,” says Darcy.

Students use the Book Creator app to keep a vocabulary journal for each module. They track words they found a little tricky or want to practice. Each vocabulary word is recorded in their journal to help with retention. 

Creating skills and portfolios

At every stage, there is specific work that really highlights growth and student’s passions. The first grader’s 4-page books. The second grader’s writing about the western settlers. A first research project. These types of projects end up in a student portfolio.

“I have portfolios for all the kids,” says Darcy. “I keep their best work. We always talk about the artist’s portfolio and putting their best work in their portfolio.”

By fifth grade, student portfolios are growing. Students work on informative writing, persuasive writing, public speaking and research. Each type of writing contains skills they’ve been working on for years, but with added components and growing complexity as they master and move on to new elements. Now, notes in their workbook get transferred into Google Docs which is where they write rough drafts and final copies. Editing and revising are newer ideas.

“We talk about how our writing is never done. I could sit down and look at this and rewrite it and make it better,” says Sue Byl, long-time fifth grade teacher. “They want to have a final product, so revising a piece can be very hard.”

The level of thinking is also growing in complexity. At the end of a recent module, the question was - How do cultural beliefs and values guide people? They analyzed a speech Chief Joseph gave in Washington, D.C. in 1877. They had to look at that speech and talk about his values and beliefs based on what he said in the speech.

“We had spent a lot of time looking at the speech,” says Sue. “We looked for values in each of the paragraphs, and we highlighted evidence. Then, they had to write.”

One student chose to write about equality and honesty and pulled evidence from the speech that backed this up. For each point, the students have to elaborate with evidence from the text.

“We talk about how powerful quotes can be in our writing,” says Sue. “Right now, the kids are working on finding quotes, and they're practicing paraphrasing, too. We're really preparing them for research, because they're going to need that.”

Sue emphasizes how the curricular resource, Wit and Wisdom, really helps support student preparation.

“I love the graphic organizers – these are visuals and structures that help break down the pieces,” says Sue. “It sets them up well when we're doing research. One example has them paraphrasing evidence using quotes, so this is their note taking. They're already organizing for their research project.”

Research may sound dull, but through the project, Sue often observes a transformation in her fifth graders and glimpses of how they will be ready to move on to middle and high school.

After students complete their research projects, they're very proud. Going through the writing process is when they start to take ownership. Watching them be proud of what they’ve done is a really cool thing. I always see it in fifth grade. I see that they're learning to be independent writers. Sue Byl, fifth grade teacher