Writing Benchmarks and Anchor Papers - First Grade:FALL

All descriptors must be evident.

Writing Characteristics

Writing contains logical phonetic spelling, including vowels in most syllables (may not be correct ones).
Contains many correctly spelled high frequency words.
Contains the substance (meaningful thoughts) of a few sentences on a related topic even though it may not be accurately punctuated.
Names and the pronoun “I” are capitalized.
Simple sentences are usually punctuated
correctly.
Contains a variety of sentence structures and
lengths, though they may not be accurately punctuated.
Lower case letters usually used appropriately.
Contains subject verb agreement most of the time.

Writer Behaviors

Uses own ideas to create text.
Experiments with new or favorite words.

** To bridge to the next phase, the child should use more varied complex sentence structures even though they may not be accurately punctuated (rather than a series of accurately punctuated simple sentences).