D1. Developing Ideas and Organizing Content
In Grade 1, students continue to strengthen and develop their ability to come up with ideas to write about, become more skilled at gathering information, organizing their ideas, and continue to build their understanding of why they are writing and how to consider their audience.
Students should have many opportunities throughout the day to write. These opportunities should be varied to include topics chosen by students but should also include opportunities to write about the topics that they are learning about in content areas (e.g. Science, Social Studies, etc.).
Students should be explicitly taught the strategies for brainstorming and for collecting information from a variety of sources, including the use of graphic organizers and note taking skills.
There is a big jump in writing expectations between the 2016 Kindergarten program and Grade 1 curriculum. We have noted specifics that pop up for the first time in Grade 1.
During Kindergarten, the focus was on:
In the 2016 Kindergarten program, the focus is on general ‘Literacy Behaviours’, as opposed to specific expectations. Here are the expectations that are outlined in the Kindergarten Program, as they related to writing:
- The alphabetic principle and how letters are used in different ways
- Understanding that letters are use to make words
- Knowledge that writing is a way to communicate our thinking to others
- How we can write for a variety of purposes
New for Grade 1:
- Identifying the topic, purpose, and audience for various simple texts they plan to create
- Generating ideas about given and chosen topics using simple strategies and drawing on various resources including their own lived experiences, and learning from other subject areas
- Gathering information and content relevant to a topic, using a single source
- Sorting and sequencing ideas and information, taking into account the text form and genre to be used
- Identifying the strategies that helped them to develop ideas for texts
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of all expectations in this strand. For a more detailed view, please see the official Ontario curriculum.
Further Reading
- See Further Readings on the D. Composition page
Suggested Resources
- See Suggested Resources on the D. Composition page
