First Grade Writing with Mondrian Art

Mrs. Percival's first grade class has been learning about writing using a four square writing graphic organizer. After each art class, she returns to the classroom and the children write about their art project using this format. First, they planned the writing project by writing the topic in the middle of the planning sheet and then writing four different supporting items in each of the squares. In this student examples, each student wrote about a diagonal line, horizontal lines, vertical lines, and the three primary colors. Once they planned the writing, they wrote a paragraph based upon the details in the graphic organizer. This is a great basic writing format and teaches expository writing according to the first grade Common Core. This becomes an authentic writing experience because the children are writing about something they made. It builds vocabulary and teaches basic sentence structure as well as how to write a paragraph.

Above: Jocelyn first created the artwork, then she wrote about it using a four square graphic organizer to help structure her writing.

This is a close-up of Andee's planning sheet.

This project teaching Common Core Standards:

Grade 1: ELA.W.2 (English Language Arts Informative/explanative texts which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic and provide some sense of closure.