Write About the Picture: Sentence Starters and a Word Bank

Five animals stand in a framed scene at the top of this 2nd grade picture-writing page, two raccoons, a fox, a panda and an antelope, arranged with space around them so each one can be looked at on its own. Under the frame a dashed word bank holds four picture chips with their names printed underneath, antelope, raccoon, fox and panda. Then come the writing rows, and the first three begin with a faint starter already on the line: I can see, It is, I like the. The rows after them are empty.

These starters ask for description, not a story. I can see opens a sentence about what is there, It is asks what something is like, and I like the invites an opinion, so the child ends up writing three different kinds of sentence about one picture rather than three versions of the same one. That is a gentler job than inventing events, and it is the right job for a writer who can form a sentence but freezes at a blank line. The word bank removes spelling from the decision, which matters when the noun is antelope. A teacher can read the three rows and see whether the child varied the sentence or only swapped the animal.

Print the PDF free and have the child point at what they are about to write about before starting each row, then read the finished rows back in order. The empty rows below the starters are for children who keep going, and for the ones who need a fourth sentence modeled orally. The your own words version takes the starters away entirely and gives a six-word bank, which is the next step once the sentences arrive without prompting. Fix the sentence is where the capitals and end marks used here are practiced on their own.