All About Turtles

Read the facts together and underline the ones your child will use. Have your child finish each sentence, then read the whole piece aloud so it sounds like a short report. For a how to, act out the steps first, and use the answer key where the page has one.

Read a fact card about turtles, their hard shells and their eggs, then write 4 sentences with A turtle is and I learned. A fact is something true you can check. The directions on the page read: Read the fact card first. Then, write 4 sentences about turtles, one on each row. Start each one with the printed words. Use facts from the card in your own words, or copy them.

Yes, both. We made it for 1st Grade writing, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with informative writing. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

CCSS W.1.2 asks first graders to name a topic, give some facts about it, and provide some sense of closure. The All About sheets supply the facts to read, so students practice choosing and writing them, and the how-to sheets ask for steps children already know.

Ask whether the sentence is something that is true or something someone thinks. Facts can be checked in a book, like frogs begin life as eggs. Have your child point to the fact in the reading box or on the fact card before writing it.

At first it is fine to copy one fact to learn the form. Then have your child write a second fact in their own words, as the fact card pages ask. Over time the facts move from copied to original.

Eleven of the 30 sheets have a key: 10 All About sheets and Number the Steps to Wash a Toy Car. The 11 how-to pages and the 8 fact card pages are open writing with no key, since each child writes their own steps and sentences.