Reading and Writing in First Grade

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Question: How do young children use the basal texts in their own writing?

Answer: “Students tended to use the style, format and sentence structure of [basal] readers as models in their own writing.” BL Eckhoff. 1986. P. 440.

Comment: Back in the early 1980’s, my wife Barbara, a first-grade teacher in the Downingtown, PA School District, began making blank paperback books of folded sheets of 8 1/2” x 11”paper, stapled length-wise.

She created an author’s center in which her first-graders made their own books. The results were remarkable. As this research says, the students used the basal stories’ style, format and sentence structure. They put the text either at the top or bottom of each page and drew pictures to illustrate the text at the opposite end of the page. Those first-grade students have retained their “books” even after graduation, which either they have told her or their parents have told her. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” RK Durst and JD Marshall. Research in the Teaching of English (December 1987), 422-443.