Everything that a child interacts with in their world is preparing them to become a reader and writer. The foundations of writing include: conversations, play, being read to, trying to write, print concepts, letter knowledge and motivation to write, exploring purposes and forms (narrative, expository, poetry), and developing language. Upon this foundation three aspects come together: finishing, producing written words, and composing meaningfully. Finishing involves self-evaluation, editing, revising, and publishing. Producing written words includes fine motor and transcription skill, alphabetic principle, and spelling strategies and patters. And finally, composing meaningfully is comprised of topic knowledge and vocabulary, written language (varied and complex syntax, semantics, rhetoric and audience awareness), and cognitive resources (planning, organizing, monitoring, self-regulation). The following are the different stages that a child goes through in learning how to write according to Reading Rockets.
Early Writing
According to Reading Rockets, it starts with scribbling and drawing. They say that children will grasp the crayon or pencil with a full fist. In doing this a child is creating a permanent record of his ideas and thoughts.Letter-like forms and shapes
Children will move from letter-like forms and shapes to letters. According to Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998); Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998), studies confirm that both phonological awareness and print awareness are important aspects of early literacy (Robin, S., Treiman, R., Rosales, N., & Otake, S. (2011). A study done by Robin,Treiman, Rosales, and Otake (2011) examined parent-child conversations about letters and pictures. They said that an important aspect of print awareness is an understanding of how print differs from another common graphic form, pictures. In the study Robin, Treiman, Rosales, and Otake (2011) found that parents talk to their children about letters, differentiating them from pictures, by 1-2 years of age and that some of these conversational patterns change in the preschool years in ways that emphasize important features of letters, such as their shape. Children also were found talking about letters and pictures in distinct ways.
Letters
Reading Rockets says that most children being writing consonants, especially those in their name. Towards the beginning of this stage there is a lack of sound-to-symbol correspondence between the words they are trying to write and the letters they use according to Reading Rockets. According to Burns, Griffin, Snow (1999) in the book Starting Out Right, it is important to provide support and encouragement for writing letters. They go on to say that as you do gradually more letters will be recognizable. Burns, Griffin, Snow (1999) said that as children learn to form letters and develop phonological awareness invented spellings may appear.
An activity that can be done according to the Burns, Griffin, Snow (1999) is to take time to write down a child's personal dictations. Then you should read back exactly what the child said, without correcting grammar or word choices. This shows the child that you value their work and helps them begin to understand the connection between spoken and written language.
Another great activity suggested by Burns, Griffin, and Snow (1999) is to have a Letter of the Day for each of three days in a row. They stated that for each letter you should decorate a poster with the uppercase letter in the middle. Next you ask the children whose first name starts with that letter to come and tape their name cards to the poster. On the second day, Burns, Griffin, and Snow (1999) suggest comparing the posters from the two days. Finally on the third day you will compare all three posters. Then you can have the children find the letter in their deck of letter cards and make a treasure hunt to find the letter in other places in the room. You can also have the children march along the letter shape written on the ground outside while for example for "B" saying "Down up, around, around." For the last two days you can play games with all three letters and encourage the children to see similarities and differences between the letters.
Another great activity suggested by Burns, Griffin, and Snow (1999) is to have a Letter of the Day for each of three days in a row. They stated that for each letter you should decorate a poster with the uppercase letter in the middle. Next you ask the children whose first name starts with that letter to come and tape their name cards to the poster. On the second day, Burns, Griffin, and Snow (1999) suggest comparing the posters from the two days. Finally on the third day you will compare all three posters. Then you can have the children find the letter in their deck of letter cards and make a treasure hunt to find the letter in other places in the room. You can also have the children march along the letter shape written on the ground outside while for example for "B" saying "Down up, around, around." For the last two days you can play games with all three letters and encourage the children to see similarities and differences between the letters.
Letters and spaces
Reading Rockets says that when a child points to individual words on a page when reading and works to match their speech to a printed word, a concept of word is developing. Typically in kindergarten, young writers will start to insert these important spaces in their own work. According to Reading Rockets, child will start to spell some high frequency words at this time.
Conventional writing and spelling
Reading Rockets says that when children are at this stage they will eventually spell most words correctly. According to Griffin (2012), when children are estimating their spelling they are helping their phonological awareness, letter knowledge, concept of print, and comprehension (if it is published to the class and content is processed). Griffin (2012) says that in early spelling children will spell using letter name knowledge, for example LF for elf and FL for fell. The following factors influence a child's success in spelling according the Griffin (2012): letter names and the child's own name, language proficiency (phonemic awareness and vocabulary), information from reading and reading lessons, copying the environment, support for content in lessons, and interest in history and structure of words. According to Griffin (2012) some teaching and learning tips include: searching for examples in reading and practicing examples in writing, doing a sound analysis, memorize high frequency words and move as many words as possible as soon as possible to out-of-awareness automatic process. Reading Rockets also says that this is the stage where children start writing for different purposes (storytelling, expository, etc.). As children continue to develop their skills Griffin (2012) suggests teaching genre specific lessons and varying the genres over the year. An activity in the writing process, as stated by Griffin (2012), is to brainstorm/organize, draft, rewrite, edit, publish, feedback (peer, teacher, and intended audience). Different ideas by Griffin (2012) to try include: writing for 20 minutes each day, use mediators/mnemonics, and integrate lower level writing skills and higher-level composing strategies. This page contains more ideas for different ways to teach writing.
Resources:
Griffin, P. (2012). Class 11 Foundations of Writing: Spelling conventional estimated (invented). [PowerPoint Slides] Retrieved from online.
Griffin, P. 92012). Class 12 Writing for memory, planning, communication, creative expression. [PowerPoint Slides] Retrieved from online.
Burns, M.S., Griffin, P. & Snow, C. E. (Eds.) (1999). Starting out right: A guide to promoting children's reading success. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
Robins, S., Treiman, R., Rosales, N., & Otake, S. (2011). Parent-Child Conversations About Letters and Pictures. Reading and Writing. Advance online publication.
Reading Rockets. How Writing Develops. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/36969/ Retrieved online May 8, 2012.
