Yellow pencils, neatly sharpened and sitting in a cup. All ready for your students to begin writing on their first day of school. But how do you begin? What are the best first grade writing prompts for September?
Kindergarten or first grade students should begin slowly. Fill your first week lessons with fun writing topics to help your kindergarten and first grade students understand the writing process.
1. Labels
One of the first writing lessons you should teach is how to label. Labels help young children understand the difference between a letter and a word. It gives them practice in sounding out words and hearing beginning, middle and ending sounds.
I use this anchor chart to teach my students how to label a picture. We use the interactive writing technique of sharing the pen to have students help in the writing process.
After students understand how to label a picture, you can use this writing technique in many ways. Some good beginning of the year labeling activities are:
- label your classroom centers and supplies
- draw and label a picture of your family
- have each student draw a self portrait and label themselves. Bind it together into a book for your classroom library.
- Give students simple fall pictures to label.
Here are some examples of labeling activities that we've done in our classroom.
2. Lists
Another great first grade writing prompt for September is making a list. This is another easy way for students to practice sounding out words and combining them into common themes that go together.
One of our first week of school activities is making our classroom rules. We read the book David Goes To School by David Shannon and then we put together a list of Our Class No No's. Its a very simple interactive writing activity for the first week of school. Later, we rewrite our classroom rules into sentences that we refer to all year.
Beginning writers need lots of practice in proper letter formation and sounding out words. Making a list is a great way to practice these skills.
Another great beginning of the year writing prompt is to make a list of friends. We read the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. If you've never read this book, it's perfect for the first week of school. After we read the book, we use the interactive writing technique to make a list of our classroom friends. I include this with my writing station printable worksheets for students to practice.
I always read the book First Day Jitters to my students on the first day of school. A great first day writing activity is to make a list of the ingredients in jitter juice and then we make some for ourselves!
3. Captions
Before moving on to writing complete sentences, we will learn about captions. A few words written below a picture is called a caption. It can briefly tell about the picture. For instance if a child draws a picture of children playing outside with a sun in the sky, the caption could read “A sunny day”.
Drawing a picture and adding captions is a great writing prompt for first grade students.
4. Journal Writing
Every good writing curriculum should include journal writing. Each student should have their own journal that they write in multiple times each week.
During journal writing time, you can give students story starters or journal writing prompts to help them decide what to write about. Often times, students simply want the opportunity to free write. This is a chance for kids to write about any topic that interests them. In my classroom we do a combination of both.
I like to use these monthly journal writing prompts with my kids. Each student gets their own journal at the beginning of each month. I do a whole group directed lesson on my whiteboard using these matching google slides. Students can follow along in their journal and practice their writing too.
These google slides activities are one of the best digital resources for kids and perfect when you're teaching distance learning. I can either send home a printable version of our monthly journals or have my students work directly in our google classroom.
These tips should help you get off to a great start with your beginning writers. Need more ideas? Head over here to learn 5 easy ways to fit first grade writing into every day.
Are you ready to get this teaching process started? You can grab your first grade journals and writing centers for September here.
