Writing. It is such an important skill for students to have! It boosts reading skills and helps them become more confident in school, not only as writers but as a whole. Our first graders were just not getting it. Stories of page after page of run-on sentences! Words that should be capitalized that were left untouched (yes, they even forgot to capitalize I!) and sometimes even a capital letter thrown into the middle of a word! Sight words that were spelled incorrectly. We were about to pull our hair and out and decided that something needed to help them to be better editors when writing.
My team (Bri & Lauren) and I try very hard not to reinvent the wheel. We love making our own resources but there are only so many hours in the day! We were determined to find what we were looking for on teacherspayteachers. It had to already be out there, right? All we wanted them to do was practice editing 2 sentences once a week. We wanted sentences with capitalization mistakes, missing punctuation, and misspelled words. We were even willing to pay $25 for it! Let me tell you, we searched and searched, and while many came close, none of them had all the components that we wanted. My friend Lauren said that she was just going to break down and spend $33 on one that came close so we can be done with it. We almost pressed the purchase button until a closer look revealed that we were paying that much for way less material than what we actually thought we were getting.
That was it. I knew full well I could create something easily that could help in our dilemma. It would just take some time to create all of the resources we wanted. 40 sheets (80 prompts with 2 on a page) to cover each week in school, 2 levels of writing lines (beginning writing lines for our friends who can't form letters correctly still and need those extra lines for help and advanced writing lines who have mastered handwriting), and increasing difficulty as we went on throughout the school year (the last section being more toward second grade editing). Here's what I came up with:
Each of the 40 weeks is divided into sets of 10 and their difficulty rises in each set. The amount of mistakes also rises and is listed in the corner for students to double check that they found all of the mistakes.
Here is what to expect at each level:
Week 1-10: Students find 3 mistakes in each sentence. Sentence is fairly easy.
Week 11-20: Students find 4 mistakes in each sentence. Sentence is becoming more difficult.
Week 21-30: Students find 5 mistakes in each sentence, but there are now 2 sentences (4 on a page). Two sentences are fairly easy and relate to one another.
Week 31-40: Students find 6 mistakes in each sentence, but there are now 2 sentences (4 on a page). Two sentences are becoming more difficult and relate to one another.
Here's a video preview showing some of the different levels:
We can't wait to start implementing this in our classrooms. I am sure that this practice in editing will help them become more aware as writers and will help as they begin writing their own stories!
If you'd like to grab your own copy of the Fix-it Sentences, head on over to my TPT store by clicking here. I know you'll love them as much as we do!
Along with the spelling mistakes in these editing practice papers, my students have learned to use their resource to double check their spelling. They know to go to my "sound wall" where the first 300 Fry sight words are on rings for them to grab. They bring them to their seat and can use it to help them spell words that they need to fix but can't necessarily figure out. I first started to implement this last year and boy, let me tell you, the kids LOVE them. I never thought they would actually get up and go check their spelling but they actually DO! Happy teacher heart right there. If you do want to use these sight word cards as part of your writing station, you can grab those here.