What's in a hand? How bout' the KEY to creating a proficient piece of writing in the 1st grade! We call this the hand trick. The kids now know that a proficient story needs an opening sentence, at least 3 details and a closing sentence. We decided that our hand can be a perfect reminder for those story parts. Our thumb (wiggle it) represents the opening sentence. This sentence tells what your story is going to be about. Our pointer, middle and ring fingers (wiggle em') represent the details. Details are just the "cool" things that you want to say about your topic. And our pinkie (wiggle it!!!) stands for our closing sentence. This tells what our story was about again. There you go! If your child can remember all of these things they will be well on their way to a strong piece of writing. Of course you should encourage things like neat handwriting, capitalization, punctuation, sight words and strong spelling strategies for unknown words. But, I'll be honest...it's hard for me to give a low grade to ANY story that has all of the aspects of this "hand trick". Start practicing at home. I promise, it will put them in a great position when they start writing longer stories for their 2nd grade teachers next year!
