Content (General): Writing

Although writing is the last language skill to be acquired in one's native language, it is a very important skill in school. Students who are literate in their home languages may be introduced to writing soon after oral practice, and written exercises may facilitate independent and accelerated learning.

• Manuscript. Students should be able to write both capital and lower case letters.
• Cursive. Students should be able to write capital and lower case letters, as well as join letters into words.
• Copy. For independent writing practice, students may copy any material that they understand, in either cursive or manuscript.
• Answer Questions. After practice with oral question and answer patterns, students can respond to written questions and exercises (workbooks or worksheets, for example).
• Capitalization of names, beginning of sentences, days, months, titles of respect, etc.
• Punctuation.
  • End sentences with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark.
  • Use a comma in dates, series, etc.
  • Quotation marks
  • Addressing envelopes and letters.
• Controlled Composition. Student rewrites a paragraph, making any of a number of specified changes. For example:
  • Change John to Mary. This requires changing he to she, his to hers, etc.)
  • Change nouns to pronouns.
  • Make contractions.
  • Make questions.
  • Change tense (I am writing to I wrote).
  • Combine short sentences into longer ones.
• Dictation. Adult or peer dictates short sentences and the student writes them. Because of the spelling difficulties inherent in English, only words students can spell should be used.
• Spelling.
  • Name and address.
  • Days of the week.
  • Months, dates.
  • Seasons.
  • Numbers.
  • Name of the teacher.
  • Function words as introduced.
  • As many vocabulary words as the child can easily assimilate.

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