Early+Years+Writers

‘Writing is a process which involves students in constructing messages, by representing ideas, feelings and information in print as a way of communicating’ (ECL lecture notes week 6 2011, p 2).

__Stages of literacy development __

The main thing we learnt from Early Years writers is that children of similar ages are at all different stages in their writing development. Some children really enjoy writing while others are not so fond of it. There are six phases in literacy development which are; beginning, early-emergent, emergent, early, transitional and extending. Beginning writing - this is where children might use a drawing to tell the story or scribble lines from left to right on the page. Early-emergent writing - this is where the child might use symbols to represent words or even write some letters. Emergent writing - this is where the child will start to use letters and putting spaces in between letters to create words, also their usually writing from left to right. Early writing - children are creating their own spelling for words. Capital letters are being used more frequently and spacing between words is more consistent. Children are introduced to different text types e.g. narrative, informative etc. Transitional writing - this is where the amount of writing increases, punctuation is developing and spelling is improving. Extending writing - this is where the child's writing resembles that of an adult and spelling is accurate most of the time. (Hill 2006, p283-285)

During the writing process it is important for teacher to assess the students writing to monitor improvement over time. See figure 1 for emergent and early writing assessment sheet and figure 2 for more complex writing.

 Figure 1: Emergent and early writing assessment sheet (Hill 2006, p.290) Figure 2: More complex writing assessment sheet (Hill 2006, p.292) __Tools for writing __ During the literacy block observation and practicum we observed many different tools that teachers used to help children with their writing. Some of these included mind maps and the conferencing method. Mind maps (see figure 3) are a great tool to help start the writing process. It allows the children to make a plan and map out their ideas for their writing. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 120%;">Figure 3: Mind Map (123RF, 2011) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 115%;">

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 115%;">The conferencing method (see figure 4) is where the writing task is broken down into smaller sections for the children to focus on. The five sections are prewriting including planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.

__<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 21px;">Text types __

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 120%;">Early years writers need to be exposed to a range of different text types when both reading and writing. In the early years students need to be able to write a range of different pieces using different text types and know the purpose of each different text type. Some of these text types include:


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 120%;">Narratives - to entertain with a focus on people, places and events.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 120%;">Recount - to tell of past events.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 120%;">Instructions or Procedure - to explain how to do something.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 120%;">Explanation - to explain how something works or how is was formed.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 115%;">Argument or Persuasive - to persuade through logical argument.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 115%;">Figure 4: The conferencing method (Shpliteracy, 2011)