This idea of writing for a particular audience has significant importance not only in a literary sense but also in the impact it can have on the writer’s role in society itself. The more writing styles a writer can utilize the better.
“We must think of literacy as particular ways of using language for a variety of purposes, as a socio-cultural practice with intellectual significance” Moll, L. (1992)
This type of procedure is more closely allied to the approach to the teaching of writing practiced today. Pedagogical conventions regarding the teaching of writing have changed dramatically over the last twenty years or so. Technological advances in ICT, with e-mails and mobile text messaging have created a whole new style of writing available to the latest generation (although some would argue that these forms do more harm than good to the development of writing)
The greatest change in attitude toward the teaching of writing has occurred on the part of teachers and researchers, who are much more concerned with the nature of writing itself.
The transcriptional and behaviorist approaches to writing have all but disappeared to be replaced by an attitude which is not so much concerned with the end product, but centers on the process of writing.
The writing process could be described as;
Any of the activities or thinking strategies used to compose a piece of writing. These are sometimes described as cycles of planning (generating ideas, setting goals and organising), translating (putting a plan into writing) and reviewing (evaluating and revising); or they can be categorised as activities such as prewriting, drafting, revising and editing. National Writing Project (2003)
In this approach the children have much more input and control over their writing with teachers recognising that more attention should be paid to how the work arrives at the end product as opposed to what the end product contains.
An effective teacher of writing should recognise that children are legitimate authors and that they experience difficulties in their writing. An effective teacher would work on any errors and use the good elements of a child’s work as a springboard for greater achievement.
The term “writing process” suggests that writing is a linear progression, following a series of steps to accomplish an end, when in fact this is not entirely the truth.
Sometimes an author may start with an idea for the ending of a piece of work before the beginning is even conceived. The work may be re-visited many times and re-drafted again and again until the writer is satisfied (or dissatisfied) with what they have.
As Donald Graves suggests…
“The writing process is anything a writer does from the time the idea came until the piece is completed or abandoned. There is no particular order. So it’s not effective to teach writing process in a lock-step rigid manner” (1983)
This drafting and re-drafting of the child’s thoughts and ideas makes the writing much more creative and meaningful, if the child has the feeling that they have created something on their own, this will assign some kind of ownership to the work.
As Graves so eloquently states………..
“Owners of their work are far more likely to take care of their ‘property’ than those who ‘rent’ their work from the teacher, to whom it really belongs.” (1981)
The importance of writing for an audience was mentioned earlier, as this helps the writer dictate the style or genre of the work. However, early years writers do not have much experience of different writing styles. The importance of genre becomes much more prominent as the child enters the latter phase of key stage 1 and into key stage 2, with exercises in different styles (formal, informal, instructional etc) practiced.
It is very important that emphasis is placed on the suggestion that all writing is significant as the greater range of genre the children have access to then the broader their concept of the writing process will be.
As mentioned earlier, the rules and regulations of transcriptional writing are difficult to ignore and impossible to disregard completely. Nevertheless, a balance between transcription and the writing process must be struck and must be closely monitored. The rules of grammar and punctuation etc should be used as a tool to aid writing, not restrict it.
The introduction of the National Literacy strategy was supposed to facilitate an enhanced learning environment for the learning of reading and writing. However, many feel that the twenty minutes allotted for the completion of independent work is insufficient and perhaps even counter productive as it can become too structured, smothering creativity and expression. It is felt by some (this writer included) that more time should be found for extended writing exercises.
The strategy can be seen to be a very rigid linear process with pressure to move through the sections and onto the next part of the framework. There is little provision for discussion or drafting and re-drafting, or using writing partners to share experiences and ideas, all of which expand the learning / writing experience. The idea of using literacy across all areas of the curriculum does aid the writing process, particularly in the sciences along with history and geography, but there is still insufficient time allowed for creative writing and it is creative writing which the children most seem to enjoy.
The high tech era we live in today offers greater opportunity than ever for children to become more competent writers, particularly in the area of ICT which makes it much easier to draft, re-draft, proof-read, correct and distribute work than ever was possible twenty years ago.
Over the course of my placement I chose a 5 year old boy to work with on a writing experiment. The reason this particular child was chosen was because he was a very shy and quiet child who was not at all confident when producing written pieces of work, this I felt would give me the greatest opportunity to get some interesting data.
Because of the age group I was working in there was very little diversity in the writing styles and genre and the literacy hour concentrated mainly on word level work, recognizing sounds, consonant clusters etc. subsequently I decided to give the child some different styles to work with and see how he coped.
Term 1- two week placement.
The first piece of work he produced was to write about a guided reading story we did together entitled “vegetable soup” (Appendix A). The first element to consider was transcriptional. The spelling is almost unrecognizable as English, and was impossible to understand without mediation, the only words easily distinguishable were “is” and “soup”. I asked him how he managed to spell soup and he told me that he had asked his friend to find it on the word bank cards. This was at least a strategy he was using to aid his writing; he understood that a word bank could help him. After looking at some of the other children in the class it was obvious that he was way behind what was expected of him at that stage (although he wasn’t regarded as being one of the lower ability children).
The next piece of work was the following week when I asked him to tell me what he did at the weekend. I set him 20 minutes for this task and then left him to it. After only 7-8 minutes he was at my side saying he had finished. All he had written was “I went to nniewo” [I went to nemo] (Appendix B).
At least on this occasion almost all of the words were recognizable and he had attempted to spell the words on his own. I tried to get him to write a little more but he was very reluctant to do so. He simply said ”it’s all I can think of” and “I don’t know what to write”.
I gave him some praise for trying hard and told him I wished he had written a little more because it sounded like a lot of fun and left it at that.
I was thinking about his attitude toward writing and I felt that he was not comfortable at all about writing.
The next day I decided on a different approach. We sat together and just chatted for 5 or 6 minutes, I asked him about any fun stuff he had done lately and he proceeded to tell me about a recent family trip to Beamish. He spoke enthusiastically and fluently for a good 3-4 minutes and I was very optimistic that this enthusiasm would be transferred to his written work. (Appendix C)
20 minutes later the result was not as I had hoped “I suw suyw dus. I had a nis dey.” (I saw a silly bus. I had a nice day.) At least he had attempted two sentences this time which was an improvement and it was encouraging to see the correct use of capital letters and full stops.
Later in the day I sat with him and started a casual conversation about Beamish. Eventually I brought the conversation around to his piece of work and I weaned out of him the reason he did not like writing. His response was a little startling, he said that he did not like doing writing because he always gets the spellings and capitals wrong and he doesn’t get a sticker. So in his mind he logically assumes that the less he writes, the less chance of making mistakes and receiving a sticker.
This is exactly the type of thing which was mentioned earlier in this piece of work, the child was so afraid of the teacher “manicuring the corpse” that his writing was stifled. Now this is not to say that this was happening in the rest of the class, quite the opposite in fact. It is just this particular child’s mind-set.
With this in mind I decided to try a different approach a couple of days later we read a story together about a magic key and talked about it afterwards. I then asked him to write about what he would do if he found a magic key, but I told him not to worry about spelling the words correctly, just to try his best. 10 minutes later he came up with “one day I found a magic key and I wish I had a gud Bur (brother) and his name was Ben”. (Appendix D)
This was one of the longest pieces of work he had written unaided; I praised him, gave him the sticker he wanted and he went away happy.
At this point I assessed his performance using the schools writing assessment sheet (Appendix 2). His expected level was 1b but he was clearly below this level. However he was starting to work toward his expected level in some aspects, particularly punctuation.
Term 2 four week placement
There wasn’t as much opportunity to work with Sam individually this time round as he was absent for the first week of my placement and by the 2nd week I was doing around 8o% whole class teaching. However on the first Monday of his return I asked him to write about why he was absent. (Appendix E)
“I was sick. No im beda”. (now I’m better). The work was still short but there were two sentences and punctuation was very good, spelling was a little patchy but it was clearly recognizable. I went through the corrections with him and told him I was very pleased with him.
Over the next three weeks I was careful to keep an eye on his progress and closely monitor his writing across the curriculum.
I noticed a marked improvement since I was last there and he had become a lot more confident in my company. This confidence showed in the work he was producing. I wanted to work on a limerick, and before we started we spoke about the conventions of a limerick, its form pattern etc. I then read Sam two Spike Milligan limericks. He was delighted at the nonsensical nature and especially the invented words which were used. Afterwards we had a discussion about what he could do for his limerick and passed a few ideas between us. It was obvious to see that Sam was very enthusiastic so I gave Sam the opportunity to do a first draft at home. (Appendix F)
The next morning he came straight up to me and showed me his efforts, his mum told me that he sat for an age with her working out the poem and was very pleased at the results. Later, we worked together on his draft and came up with the final version. (Appendix G) I had never seen him so willing to do written work which goes some way to prove that the more interest you can create, the better results you will get. It was by far the best piece of written work I had seen Sam produce.
At the end of the placement I decided to assess him again with the same assessment criteria as before.
I was very pleased to see that, in my view, he had moved up to his expected level in writing and in some cases was working toward a higher level.
Overall I was happy with the progress Sam had made and felt that he had made some significant gains. I felt his strengths were aspects of punctuation particularly full stops and capital letters, his compositional skills were definitely improving and the content of his work was gaining in complexity.
His weaknesses were his spelling and possibly handwriting but the improvements he had made in the short time I worked with him gave me great optimism that these could be overcame.
If I had more time to continue working with Sam there are certain aspects of his writing that I would be concerned with. I would like to get his writing attainment up to level 1a across the board, and perhaps I could remedy this through this action plan
- Work on his spelling using available resources (word banks, dictionaries, displays, phonic strategies) I would also consider setting extra work to be completed at home, with parental support.
- Enhance his writing skills by encouraging him to write about whatever interested him. Giving him as much opportunity as possible to do so.
- Encourage writing in free time by ensuring that as many resources as possible were on hand. (paper, pencils, books etc)
- Handwriting should improve with practice, not just in the literacy hour but also across the curriculum.
This piece of work in a very narrow look at the subject of writing and 3000 words is nowhere near enough to cover everything but I have selected some of what I think are the key issues. It was enjoyable and interesting to carry out, and I felt that it gave me a good grounding to take on to my career.
Bibliography
Britton, J., et al. (1975). Development of writing abilities, 11-18. Urbana, Ill: NCTE.
Calkins, L. (1994) The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann,
Clegg, A. B. Ed (1965) The Excitement of Writing, London, Chatto & Windus.
Graham, J. & Kelly, A. Eds (1998) Writing Under Control, London, David Fulton.
Graves, D, H. (1983) Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, Portsmouth, N.H, Heinemann.
Graves, D. H., & Hansen, J. (1983). The Author’s Chair. Language Arts, 60, 176–183.
Graves, D. (1981) Renters and Owners: Donald Graves on writing, in, English Magazine, 8, Autumn, .
Moll, L. (1992) Literacy Research in Community and Classrooms: A socio-cultural Approach. In R, Beach et al (Eds), Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Literacy Research. Urbana, Illinois, National Council of Teachers of English.
National Writing Project (US) and Nagin, C. (2003) Because Writing Matters; Improving Students Writing in Our Schools, San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass.
Richardson, M. (1935) Writing and Writing Patterns, London, University of London Press.
Smith, F. (1982) Writing and the Writer, London, Heinemann.
Spencer, E. (1983) Writing Matters-Across the Curriculum, Kent, Hodder & Stoughton.
Appendix 1
Childs portfolio of written work
Appendix A
Independent work writing about a story in guided reading
Unsupported
10 minutes to complete
Appendix B
Writing about what he did at the weekend
Unsupported
7-8 minutes to complete
Appendix C
Writing about a family day out to Beamish
Unsupported
20 minutes to complete
Appendix D
Writing about a book we had read
Unsupported
10 minutes to complete
Appendix E
Writing about a recent absence from school
Unsupported
10 minutes to complete
Appendix F
Writing a limerick about himself (1st draft)
Supported at home
Unspecified time
Appendix G
Writing a limerick (final draft)
Supported (in class)
1 hour
Appendix 2
Assessment sheet
