Skills Unit 2 Teacher Guide - EngageNY

• Work with students to first write the beginning, then the middle, and finally
the end of the story, asking students to help you transform the notes on the
planning sheet into complete sentences. Be sure to use temporal words to
describe the sequence of events (first, next, then, last, etc.).
• Assist them in formulating sentences that convey dialogue, e.g., Jane said,
“Who will buy my milk?” and point out the appropriate use of punctuation,
especially noting the quotation marks.
• As you transcribe the oral sentences, continue to model and emphasize
written sentences beginning with a capital letter and ending with a
punctuation mark.
• Although we encourage you to keep the story short, try to write more than
one paragraph. Explain that when writers write more than a few sentences,
they divide their writing into sections called paragraphs. Explain that each
paragraph is indented. Model for students how to indent by placing your
pointer (index) finger down and beginning to write the first sentence of the
paragraph after your pointer finger. Model this in the draft.
• Tell students the ending sentence of the story should wrap up the story
and let the reader know the story is finished. This is a good place to remind
students this particular story is a fable. A good way to end this retelling of the
story is to include a moral: “Take one step at a time.”
• Write the ending sentence on the chart paper. You may also wish to add “The
End” at the end of the paragraph. “The End” should not replace the actual
ending sentence.
• Read the draft to the class or read it aloud together.
• Remind students drafting is the second step in the writing process. In their
draft they wrote a starting sentence that introduced characters and setting,
the next sentences outlined the plot, and an ending sentence wrapped up the
story. The draft is written in paragraph format.
• Tell students in the next lesson they will edit their story.
Supplemental Materials
• Decodable words:
1. brown
2. down
3. how
4. now
5. town
6. power
7. flowers
8. allowed
9. crowd
10. cow
11. tower
12. powder
13. crown
14. owl
15. shower
16. vowel
17. towel
74 Unit 2 | Lesson 7
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