Today, I had the privilege to work with the first-grade team at York Elementary in York, Nebraska. Our job was to continue to develop writing units from their scope and sequence. They worked crazy hard! I had to ask them if we could take a break (Stop forcing Pepsi down me)! This was definitely a first for me as a presenter. Below are a few lessons learned from our JOurneY together…

#1. Integrating writing with our science and social studies standards is easy with Step Up to Writing.

#2. The first-grade team sure knows how to butter someone up…

#3. If we expect students to do well on school writing assessments, we must set classroom and individual goals.

#4. We can help our students expand their stories by teaching show me sentences instead of tell me sentences.