Writing Help

Hey everyone! Hope you had a great Tuesday! Tonight, my cousin and I are going to see Mama so I'm going to keep this short and sweet, but I'm having some major issues with our writing workshop and I was hoping you could give me some advice. 

 

I personally think the way we are approaching it is beyond a first grader's mind. The writing samples we've been getting lately have been just terrible. :( If the kids are writing about whatever they'd like, their writing is ok, but only a few sentences and a little disappointing for this time in the year. Now if we give them a topic like today which was on MLK jr after we've been talking about him all last week and watched a movie today, their writing was terrible. Some were off topic and others needed so much support we were practically telling them what to write.  (the topic was to write a dream they have after we talked about it and they told us on the carpet what their dream was before we gave them paper) 

Like I said, maybe it's the district and the way we are teaching it because I student taught in first grade in ohio and the kids were like night and day. :( I want my kids to be successful in writing, but feel like I am doing something wrong. How do you approach writing? Any ideas would be so much appreciated. Thanks friends!!