Journal Starters for Freebie Friday

We are back to school and today we will get our new classes.  I just found out yesterday afternoon that my class would change from mostly grade 3's to over half second graders.  We have more kids who registered in our school this week, especially in kindergarten.  Last year we had one class of kindergartens and a k-1 combo with about 8 kindies.  This year we have 2 full classes of kindies and a handful that will be in with one of the grade one classes!  That's lots of kids coming up!
So we all spent several hours re-configuring our classes.  I am very excited to meet my new class!

Last year half of my class were firsties.  In the many years that I've taught grade one I have always had them write daily in their Journals, starting on Day 1.  Well, maybe Day 2.......

Since most of them didn't know HOW to write yet, this involved me printing "I like" in EVERY Journal and then drawing an ink line (even though the notebooks they use are already interlined - I noticed that many of the kids didn't "see" the lines that came printed on the page and wrote huge or slanty or randomly on the page.....).  Major time drain!

Last year I had an inspirational moment and made a page on my iPad with sentence starters and nice dark lines for them to print on.  They look like this:

They worked perfectly.  I just printed them off on the photocopier, cut them down to size and the kids did their printing on them, then cut them out and glued them into their notebooks!  Why didn't I think
of that 20 years ago?!?  (Well to be fair with myself I only got the iPad 2 years ago.)
If you have emergent writers you might find these really handy, too.  I used them until about mid-November when most of the kids were becoming more confident and independent writers.

There are quite a few different sentence starters, and extra lines for your high achievers who are ready to print more.
Sentence starters include:
I am                     I went to        I saw a...It was...
I like
I can                    I want
I have
Here is a
I see a
I see a...It is...
I have a...It is...

To get a set go to my store to pick up the freebie.
Then hop over to Freebie Friday at Teaching Blog Addict to see more goodies.

Have a great weekend!