Using Sentence Frames to Enhance Writing in a K-1 Classroom

Elementary is a school
full of opportunities for students. It is located in
Northern Virginia in a neighborhood. The school is
a center school for the Advanced Academics
Program (AAP),therefore the student body is
made up of local students as well as students
who are in the AAP program. The school is
a Kennedy Center Changing Education Through
the Arts (CETA) school. This makes the school
unique because the arts are integrated
into the core curriculum at the school.
The Core Class
The classroom in which the research
took place is a Kindergarten- First Grade
multiage classroom. There are 13 First Graders
and 9 Kindergarteners for a total of 22 students.
There are 6 students who qualify for ESOL
services and 3 students who are pulled for
Advanced Academic Placement enrichment. Mrs. T
practices Responsive Classroom in her
room to help students become independent in
their decisions and take responsibility for their
actions. The classroom is rich with text to
influence student writing and students have a
variety of opportunities and avenues to express
themselves through writing.
The Process
Having a multiage classroom presents the
challenge of scaffolding enough for both ages while
extending for the First Graders to prepare them to
enter Second Grade. I noticed that many of the
students were struggling to find the words to start
sentences and would end up writing down answers
without actually starting a sentence to let the
reader know what they were writing about. I
wondered if using a sentence frame would help
students to better form their ideas and limit the
number of responses that seemed to be written
without a clear purpose stated to the reader.
The Research
Sentence frames or paragraph frames help
students to organize information and better
understand the relationship between their writing
and the information presented. Implementation is
achieved by first reading the text to the students
and then showing them the frame to write from
(Wiesendanger).
Sentence frames and paragraph frames are
most effective when students are provided with the
frame or have the frame to copy to begin their
sentences and then fill in their responses to the
prompts (Cudd & Roberts).
The Question:
How will introducing a
sentence frame in language
arts help students to write
about the problem and
solution in a story
Data Collection
I decided to collect data through multiple
avenues. The main data collection was through
samples of student writing analysis. To scaffold the
writing for different ability levels all writing papers
had space to draw a picture as well as write words.
The second type of data collection was tallying how
many students decided to use the sentence frame
when given the option. The third type of data
collection was student interviews to assess if
students were finding the sentence frame to be
useful. To conduct the interviews, I asked students
if the sentence frames helped them to write and if
they liked using it. I also provided a sample of a
worksheet we had used so they could see what I was
talking about.
Implementation
The students had already reviewed and
talked about finding the problem and solution in a
story, therefore my implementation was more
focused on using the sentence frame rather than
teaching the new material.
I began implementing the sentence frame
by reading aloud Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato
and discussing the problem and solution in the story
with the students. As a class, we phrased our
responses to be in the sentence frame format. Then,
I gave students a paper to write their response with
an area to draw their picture. Most students did not
write in complete sentences and a few wrote about
something other than the problem and solution.
During the second implementation, I read a
big book aloud, Guinea Pig Grass, and again asked
students to formulate their response for the
problem and solution of the story. Then, students
wrote their responses on paper which had already
been prepared with the sentence frame. The
student responses were much more clear and
concise.
Over the next week, students continued to
write about the problem and solution to text at the
listening center and at the big book station.
For the final implementation, I read The
Best Loved Bear and we discussed the problem and
solution as a group. Then students were given a
choice of writing on paper prepared with the
sentence frame or without it.
The Sentence Frame:
The problem in ________
is ____________. The
solution to the problem is
_________.