Paragraph Writing & Structure Puzzles: 1st & 2nd Grade Paragraph Writing Outline
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What educators are saying
Description
Learning to structure writing is a critical skill for 1st and 2nd grade writers. These paragraph puzzles were created has a hands-on way to help students internalize how writers organize their ideas in different contexts.
Working in teams, my students organize several sentences (anywhere from 4 to 7) into a paragraph that makes sense. Typically, students can nail the title but after that it gets a little dicey. Learning the nuances between a main idea and a wrap-up sentence takes time. Learning how an example supports a detail (and is not actually the supporting detail) - oh my!
I use these whole-group during Writer’s Workshop, although they would make a great reading/writing center. Students rotate to all the paragraphs within the hour. The first few were pretty rough. Then, around paragraph 3 everything seems to click as groups are rocking their paragraph organization and have the best conversations with one another about the paragraphs. It typically takes us an hour (some of the time spent in reading and some of the time spent in writing) to finish one set of puzzles, but it is time well invested as students learn paragraph structure.
2020 Update: A digital Google Slides version of the puzzles has been added to this resource.
In this resource, there are 6 paragraphs for each mode/genre of writing for a total of 24 paragraphs.
Printable Version:
- Inform/Explain Paragraphs
- Compare/Contrast Paragraphs
- Sequence of Events Paragraphs
- Opinion Paragraphs
- Teacher Answer Keys
Digital Version:
- Inform/Explain Paragraphs
- Compare/Contrast Paragraphs
- Sequence of Events Paragraphs
- Opinion Paragraphs
- Teacher Answer Keys
- Teacher Directions for Using
Happy Teaching,
Catherine
