Writing Strategies to Build Strong Writers

Do your students need some extra help writing sentences? Let’s spend some time brushing up on the writing strategies your students NEED! For my first graders to be successful at writing paragraphs by the end of the year, they need to be able to expand, combine, and proofread their sentences.

Expanding Sentences

At the beginning of the school year, we work on writing simple sentences. We begin with sentences such as I see the cat. As the year progresses and my students master writing simple sentences, we begin to expand the sentences by adding an adjective, conjunction, or preposition to the sentence. This helps students add details and make their sentences more exciting!

If your students need extra help learning to write a simple sentence, then check out this post: How to Write a Complete Sentence

Combining Sentences

Learning to combine sentences is such an important skill for our little learners as they begin to write paragraphs. You know those repetitive sentences that our little ones write as they are first learning?

I like my cat. I like my mom. I like my dog. I like my ball….

You know the ones! Teaching our students to combine these sentences using conjunctions always makes their writing more interesting. I always begin by teaching how to take two similar sentences and combine them using the word and. Once they can combine using and, we move on to other conjunctions to continue to make their writing more interesting.

Proofreading Sentences

Proofreading is what makes our writing complete! Learning how to add capitalization marks, correct spelling, and add the proper ending mark helps to polish writing as our little learners write final drafts. In my first grade class, I like to have my students write a rough draft in their journals on primary lined paper. This writing paper is so helpful because there are large white space areas between their writing lines. We use this space to add their proofreading marks and make any necessary corrections.

After editing their writing, it is time to write a final draft! To get your students more excited about writing their final draft, you can give them a special paper with a border to write their final drafts on. Then, add their polished writing to a Writing Wall Bulletin Board to show off that beautiful writing!

Free Writing Strategies Tools

I want to give you a tool to use as you work on these strategies with your students! This writing intervention freebie includes 3 worksheets that are designed to target the 3 individual writing skills. By explicitly teaching the skill, your students will learn how to apply the skill to their writing. They will also work on proper handwriting as they rewrite their corrected, expanded, and combined sentences.

I hope these worksheets help your students pick up their pencils and get right back to working on writing! If you are looking for additional worksheets to use with your students, you can find these in my Printable Writing Intervention Bundle. Have a great rest of your school year!

This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.

Written on January 9th, 2021 by Laurin Brainard