I have my first graders draw a picture of what they want to
say first. This could also be done with K and 2, or even
higher. Once they've drawn a picture of their prompt, I have
them verbally describe it to me. Then I have them write about
it. If you want a paragraph of five sentences, then it's a
good idea to encourage them to draw a bunch of details in the
picture.

I don't teach grammar a great deal, especially to my
newcomers. Kids need to hear it spoken a lot before it begins
to make sense to them in writing.

On 6/05/09, Hermione wrote:
> My fellow teachers and I are having a discussion about the
> best way to approach the teaching of writing to ESL
students.
>
> Here is an example piece of writing produced by an ELL:
>
> A. Birthday Robbery
> one day there was party a Birthday Party.
> It was Mr and Mrs Smiths Sons Birthday he was twelve
> They invited all the friends fo their son and their parnets.
> By the way the boy who's Birthday was his name was Keith.
> two of his best freind were there too named peter and jhon.
>
> Teacher A says the best thing to do is to conference with
> the student, and model the correct grammar and syntax for
> him with the hopes that he will begin to see the correct way
> to write his own ideas and this will be more meaningful and
> create a lasting impression because you are using HIS
> writing and HIS ideas. Teacher A says that as you make
> corrections, you explain why you are making the correcting
> such as, "When we want to show that somebody owns something,
> we put an apostrophe here, as in 'Son's birthday."
>
>
> Teacher B says to directly teach the grammar rules outside
> of the student's writing and hope that he translates this to
> his own writing. Teacher B says that if you do what teacher
> A says, then you are "writing the paper for him."
>
> What do you think?
> Hermione

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