SIMPLE Paragraph Writing for Little Learners
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Paragraph writing can be intimidating, especially for little learners just beginning the writing journey.
Over twenty-eight years I have tried numerous ways to teach paragraph writing. Depending on the learning style and motivation, some methods have been more successful than others.
What have we used?
Our recent success involved colors and glue. Yes, the creative, crafty, visual learner.
First, said learner narrated her paragraph to me. She spoke, I wrote. The paragraph was of interest, her topic choice. In fact, it was her idea.
The most important initial step toward writing success: the content must be intriguing, something that matters to the learner.
After she narrated her paragraph and I wrote the words neatly on lined paper, we discussed what a sentence was and why each sentence was important to the paragraph. The first sentence pulls the reader in, the last sentence wraps up or concludes. We also discussed punctuation.
I drew a black line after each sentence, a stop sign.
She selected construction paper; the number of colors dependent on the number of sentences.
The next step of her writing was to write one sentence on each color. After writing each sentence, she placed the sentences in paragraph order. This step was important as one of the sentences was better placed toward the end of the paragraph. With one sentence per color we could easily change the order of the sentences.
Once sentence order was finalized, she glued the edges. Done! She reread her paragraph and then proudly displayed on Dad's side of the table, waiting for him to arrive home from work.
