Daily Sentence Editing

Hello, friends!! How's your week? Did you have school yesterday?  We did not have kids but we had meetings and time to plan!  Hooray to my principal for giving us time!  I feel like all we ever need is time, right?!  I was able to get some things organized and cleaned up.  It's always hard to stay on top of everything, especially when trying to find a balance, which is what I've been trying to do lately.  Sometimes, I have to let stuff go and deal with it another time!

Tonight's post is all about sentence editing.  We are knee-deep in these!  We began in October, when we finished our handwriting books.  We do not have a formal handwriting program; we just use a free one from TpT.  We do a page a day and once finished, move on to our daily sentence editing.  The new Common Core State Standards call for a lot in the "language" department and sentence edits fit nicely into it.  First graders are expected to: capitalize dates and names of people, use end punctuation for sentences, use commas in dates and to separate single words in a series, and read and write common sight words.  When I created my sentence edits, I kept all of these areas in mind.  What I like about my sentence edits is that they are very much appropriate for first grade and second grade.  The students can typically read the sentences with a little guidance.  

We are working through my writing Unit 2: Writing for Others, which teaches a lot of the mechanics of writing {capitals, sight words, punctuation, spacing, etc..}, so my students are somewhat familiar with how to do these things.  I like doing the sentence edits in addition, because it's a constant review, which I've found that emergent readers and writers need!  Knowing when to use a capital letter is tricky, tricky!  

Here's how I use sentence edits in the classroom:  

Each day, I project the page onto our white board.  We read the sentence two times first; once echo and once choral.  Next, I ask for students to look for things that "just don't look write" or "may be missing." They love finding the mistakes!  I correct the mistakes.  Once we've found them all, I write the sentence correctly, with an emphasis on spacing, and draw a picture to match.  Finally, the children are given their own papers to copy the sentence correctly and draw a picture to match.  As they finish, they raise their hands and I come around to check.  I  sign my initials in the bottom box that says, "Checked  by a buddy?"  In another month or so, they will begin checking their papers with their peers.  

*Organizational Tip: I keep all sentence edits in a binder so I can quickly pull them to copy when I need them.  My binder is organized by month and you can check out my blog post about it here.  

I have created a sentence edit pack for September-June.  Each pack is available individually, or as a bundle to save.  The bundle is reduced even further starting today through Sunday!  I hope you'll take a moment to check it out!  

xo

Megan