Home > Student & Family Services > Teaching & Learning > Elementary Writing

Elementary Writing Curriculum

Highline Public Schools strives to provide solid foundations students need to acquire along the pathway to writing proficiency while learning to monitor their own progress and set goals along the way. Students enter school telling their stories through spoken words and drawings — and graduate as competent, purposeful writers, prepared to write in response to the demands of college, career, and citizenship.

Kindergarten

In kindergarten, students use pictures and print to demonstrate and show meaning. They realize that ideas and thoughts are communicated in symbols. Students learn to form letters and show increasing knowledge of letters, sounds, and patterns. They copy signs, labels, names, and words in environmental print. They create simple sentences, often with the same structure repeated within a piece or used in several pieces. As they choose to write for their own satisfaction, much of their writing will be about themselves, their families, pets, and friends.

First Grade

In first grade, students are able to develop an idea or item of information beyond one sentence, adding some details of description or explanation. Simple sentences are arranged with some logical development. Students use some prewriting strategies with support from the teacher. Although phonetic or sound by sound spelling is common, there is a marked increase in the number of words spelled accurately, and students demonstrate an awareness of some spelling patterns. As understanding of revising and editing develops, students reread what they write, and the clarity and accuracy of writing increases. Conventions of punctuation, directionality, spacing, and letter formation ensure work is legible.

Second Grade

In second grade, students make significant progress as they move from single-idea and patterned sentences to more detailed and sequential text, often including more than one event or descriptive parts or elements. Students demonstrate a thoughtful approach to their writing by purposeful planning and working toward accuracy and effectiveness by making some deliberate word choices. Sentence structures are varied within a single piece of writing. Students write in a variety of forms, including nonfiction, while maintaining the basic conventions of writing. Students notice mistakes while rereading and revise by adding details.

Third Grade

In third grade, students are writing longer texts, especially narratives or stories. They embed or fix their ideas in time and place and develop characters through detail and dialogue. Students organize around a central idea and elaborate or expand their ideas using complete sentences. Their writing is often divided into sections through paragraphing or book parts (e.g., tables of contents, chapters). Information gathering as part of the planning process is common, and students are becoming more selective about vocabulary or words they choose to use, especially when writing informational texts. They listen to others’ writing, offer feedback, and begin to consider suggestions from others about their own writing.

Fourth Grade

In fourth grade, students write for a range of purposes, including describing, telling a story, and explaining. They are able to produce writing that goes beyond the formulaic or writing that is not original and has been used many times before in similar situations. Because they are aware of the relationship of the topic, audience, purpose, and form, they are able to select and sometimes adapt basic forms to meet specific requirements. Their understanding and use of figurative or imaginative language introduces imagery to their writing or the ability to help create a vivid picture in the mind of the reader. Informational writing reflects understanding of specific purpose, often requiring gathering and synthesizing information from a number of resources to express and justify an opinion. Students are more aware of the conventions of writing as they reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and strive to improve.

Fifth Grade

In fifth grade, students have developed a strong personal voice in their writing. This is demonstrated by the way they sometimes inject humor into their narratives or stories and how they add emphasis or opinion into informational and persuasive writing. Students use precise, specialized vocabulary appropriately in content (math, science, social studies, etc.) -area writing. They experiment with sentence length and complex sentence structures and use different leads and endings. Student efforts working together on a piece of writing are taken seriously, often with assigned responsibilities and checklists. Scoring guides, often student created, provide decisions for judging their own work and that of others. These guides are often detailed, addressing content (what was written), organization (how it was written), style, and conventions (punctuation, grammar, etc.).

Sixth Grade



In sixth grade, students approach writing with purpose and maintain their focus. They use form, content, technique, and conventions flexibly to meet their own purposes or writing assignment requirements.
The student’s ability to write well is evident in skills of paragraphing, summarizing, and synthesizing in expressing detailed explanations, persuasion, and content-area writing, whereas fiction writing reflects an awareness of its role to entertain, explore human relationships, and persuade. Students work toward precision in spelling in all writing and evaluate honestly both their own work and the work of others, trying hard to improve weak skills and traits. Students consider writing to be an important and effective tool for furthering their own learning.

 

 

Teaching & Learning