Terilyn Bufkin

Writing and Technology Project

1. Ways of Teaching Writing

Citation: 4 Tips for teaching 2nd Grade Writing by The Room 241 Team. (2013)

https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/4-tips-for-teaching-2nd-

grade-writing/

 Reviewing the Basics

At the beginning of the year, I will review previous 1st grade content, and provide

lessons in pre-writing skills. In order to see where your children are, I need to

assess their prior knowledge. The skills learned in 1st grade are essential to

developing paragraphs, essays, and stories. Once students are able to move on,

they will be ready to start exploring the different writing styles and being aware of

who their audience is.

 Journal Writing

Each morning, I will provide a prompt on the board that will allow students to

creatively write in their journals. An example prompt might include: What makes

you feel loved? Your child would write 4-5 sentences explaining their answer,

while also giving them a space to freely express themselves without judgement

from others. This allows me to evaluate their growth and performance. It gives me

a visual to catch any weaknesses early on, and figure out a plan to improve their

skills.
 Terilyn Bufkin

2. Genres

 Informative

I would find your child’s interests in a certain topic (must be a fact), and have

them do a writing assessment over it. Your child would watch videos about that

particular topic, and then write an informational paragraph including an opening,

facts and details, as well as a closing. I’m going to have the students watch videos

to incorporate technology, while learning how to pull information from it.

Citation: Set the Routine-Informational Writing: Week 1-Sea Turtles by Jessica

Boschen (2014)

 Opinion/Argumentative

For an entire week, I will make sure that students are writing an opinion with set

of reasons each day. I want a set of work that I, and your child, can look back on

and revise over the next couple of weeks to dive deeper in opinion writing. When

your child writes each day, they can see their writing develop over time.

Citation: How To Teach Opinion Writing by Jessica Boschen (2014)

 Narrative

To introduce narrative writing into the topic, I would have your student fill in a

chart that has different personal moments (emotional, school, holiday, family, and

other). Your child would put their own ideas onto the chart, and then choose one

moment to write their narrative paper about. I would have them write in their

journals, so that they feel comfortable knowing that I would be the only one

reading it.

Citation: Personal Narrative Writing by Jessica Boschen (2014)

 Terilyn Bufkin

 Poetry

Using poetry in the classroom can help build literacy skills for early readers,

while providing a fun tool to learn rhyme/rhythm. Poetry also helps with syllables

and spelling structure. In our classroom, we will be working on a lot of free verse

poetry. This type of poetry can include or exclude rhymes. This helps your child

focus on the construction, sound, and imagery of their words.

Citation: Poetry for Second Graders by Cara Rogers

https://study.com/academy/popular/poetry-for-2nd-grade.html

3. Spelling

Citation: Citation: What Spelling Words Should you teach? By Anna G. (2013)

https://www.themeasuredmom.com/how-to-teach-spelling-where-to-begin-word-study-

part-3/

 Word Study: Spelling Inventory

In my classroom, I will provide a spelling inventory that includes a list of words

chosen to represent a variety of spelling words at increasing levels of difficulty.

When your child takes this inventory, this allows me to analyze their results and

determine his/her spelling level. This spelling inventory will look like a spelling

test, but will help me place the same learning level students in the same small

group. I’m placing your child in a small group setting, because this allows me to

strengthen different types of needs. If someone is exceling above expectations, I

would want to place them with other students in the same level, to help each other

grow even further. As for struggling learners, I would place them together, so that

I can work on their needs and help them to get where they need to be.
 Terilyn Bufkin

4. Handwriting and Keyboarding

Citation: Keyboarding Games, Greeting Cards, and Other Fun Ways to to get your K-3

Kiddos Writing by Karen Kane (2017) https://www.weareteachers.com/10-ways-

kickstart-k-3-students-writing-skills-using-technology/

Teaching your child the fundamentals of writing helps them to understand the basics of

storytelling, and this can take place on a keyboard, or paper/pencil. Teaching your child

writing fundamentals basically means that I’m going to help them get their ideas in a

shareable form. Through research, I found a few resources that I will be incorporating

into my lessons. The first would include sending e-cards. During student birthdays,

holidays, etc. we will use this time as motivation to send class e-cards. Your child will

have fun picking out themes for their cards and creating their own custom messages. This

will help the students to practice using their keyboard, writing proper greetings, and using

an email to practice for future use. Another resource that I will implement would be

reinforcing reading with writing. Reading makes students better writers! I would provide

sight words that each individual student needs to work on, and they can take time to type

out their words on a document, as well as write them out on paper. This helps with the

student’s fine motor skills, and becoming familiar with learning different words.

5. Sentence Construction

Citation: Your Second Grader’s writing Under Common Core Standards by Jessica

Kelmon (2016) https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/second-grade-writing/

Your child will be learning new language tools this year such as apostrophes, common

contractions, commas, capitalization, etc. Your child will also learn to use new words to

express herself/himself, such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns. They will be
 Terilyn Bufkin

understanding the differences between each, such as what makes an adverb and adjective

different, and choosing the correct form. After learning the required tools that are listed

above, your child will be challenged to write each day (simple and compound sentences)

to show me what they have learned, and what they need to work on.