Write About the Picture in Your Own Words: No Starters

Not a single word is printed on the writing lines of this 2nd grade picture-writing page. A scene of fruits fills the frame at the top, a large strawberry in front with an apple, a plum, a nectarine and two mangoes around it, and beneath it a dashed word bank offers six picture chips with names, strawberry, mango, nectarine, plum, cranberry and peach. Everything below that is empty rule, row after row of it, waiting for whatever the child decides to write about the picture.

Removing the starters removes the safety and hands over the decision. A child who writes I can see a strawberry has written a caption; a child who writes about a picnic, or about which fruit they would take, has written something of their own, and only a blank line lets that happen. The six-chip bank is doing the same work it always does, keeping spelling out of the way, and it is a chip longer than the version with starters, so there is more vocabulary and more room to roam. Note that the bank names a cranberry and a peach the scene does not obviously show, so the child chooses their words rather than labeling what is in front of them.

Print the PDF free and give a minute of talking before the pencil, since children who have said their first sentence aloud almost always write it. Do not expect the whole rule to be filled; three good sentences on a page this open is a strong result. The what you see version prints I can see, It is and I like the on the first three rows and is the page to fall back on if the blank sheet stalls. Fix the sentence and the word classes sort are where the mechanics and the vocabulary get their own practice.