3.+Learning+To+Write

Learning To Write

Children have wild and creative imaginations and can generally tell more detailed stories than what they can write. When learning to write, children are faced with many barriers such as how to hold a pencil correctly, how to form letters and words and how to construct sentences to convey meaning. They also learn that spoken language is very different from written text. Spoken language is accompanied by vocal tone, gestures, facial expressions and pauses to convey meaning, whereas written language requires detailed information and grammatical features to convey meaning. Young children observe their parents and older siblings use writing in everyday life. Notes on the fridge, important dates and homework all require the skills of writing that the new writers develop in stages. The stages in children’s writing are: **__ Beginning Writing __** (Hill, 2006, p283) This is where young children use drawings to convey meanings, such as a drawing of their family. They will then go on to read out the message in their drawing, pointing out and naming the members in their family. They may also attempt to write words, however do not have knowledge of letter formation leading their words to look like scribble. **__ Early Emergent Writing __** (Hill, 2006, p283) Children explore using symbols, letters and drawings to represent words. For example instead of writing ‘snake’ the child may draw a snake. **__ Emergent Writing __** (Hill, 2006, p284) In this stage young writers begin to form more letter-like symbols and begin to place these symbols together to form words. Young writers are also refining their letter formation and are well aware of writing left to right across the page. **__ Early Writing __** (Hill, 2006, p284) Young writers continue to write the sounds they hear in words leading to invented spelling. For example ‘bkum’. They are unaware of syllables and how they can be created with more than one letter, for example in the word ‘become’. At this stage young writers are aware of capital and lower case letters and the consistent spacing between words. Children are also aware of different types of genres such as recounts, narratives and information texts. **__ Transitional Writing __** (Hill, 2006, p285) In this stage young writers have sufficient knowledge of punctuation and the use of phrases is widely used. They are able to construct narratives with plots and storylines however are challenged by concluding their piece. There are four principles involved with the initial development of writing. ** The Sign Principle ** (Hill, 2006, p281) This is where new writers learn that letters and symbols have meaning. For example The letters in the name ‘Tim’ represent Tim’s name written down. ** The Flexibility Principle ** (Hill, 2006, p281) This is where new writers can differentiate letters from symbols and also learn that there is both capital and lower case letters. For example The symbol ‘$’ represents dollars. The letters ‘S’ and ‘s’ represent itself. ** The Linear Principle ** (Hill, 2006, p282) This is where new writers learn that writing words in the English language the letters and words are written left to right across a page. For example ‘The dog is black. The dog likes to sleep all day long.’ ** Spaces Between Words ** (Hill, 2006, p282) Young writers need to be aware of putting adequate spacing between their words. To encourage this, children may place their finger after each word to leave a space between the previous and the next word. Hill, S. 2006, //Developing Early Literacy: Assessment and Teaching,// Eleanor Curtain Publishing, Prahran