Early+Years+Writers

Early years writers

"When writing begins, children experiment with written symbols and drawing. Their writing progresses through many phases from beginning, early-emergent, emergent, early, transitional and extending." (Hill 2012, p. 329)

Assignment one and two results
Six early years learners from prep, grade one and grade two were observed and surveyed to investigate their understanding and attitudes towards writing. In addition, six Deakin University students observed writing practices in prep, grade one and grade two classrooms. The results have been analyzed below:

Attitudes towards writing:
Five out of the six children identified that they enjoyed writing in general, and one child liked writing a little bit. **However, all children identified that they enjoyed writing at school.**

Responses to question: Why do people write?


It is clear that the students have an understanding of the purposes of writing such as to communicate to others; however, they also understand that it is important to have neat hand writing.

Assessing writing:
**" There are three main elements to look for when assessing writing in the very beginning: written language, ideas and text conventions. " (Hill 2012, p. 321)** Through examining the results from the six students, a number of similarities became apparent in the writing samples that were provided. These included:
 * **What most children could do: **
 * write from left to right and top to bottom
 * write small complete sentences
 * sentences made sense and linked to accompanying drawing
 * some correct use of punctuation, e.g capital letters and full stops
 * good attempts at spelling || **What most children had difficulties with: **
 * consistent use of punctuation
 * limited ideas in relation to the book just read
 * using correct tense
 * spelling mistakes of middle sounds, e.g. swming instead of swimming
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">proof reading and editing ||

Teaching strategies observed
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">All of us witnessed the following teaching strategies:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Modelled writing
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Guided writing
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Shared and interactive writing
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Indpedendent writing

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Results from assignment two indicated that modelled, guided and independent writing were most common approaches to teaching writing in the lessons we observed. However, interactive and shared writing was only witnessed by one person. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Modelled writing was used more commonly in prep and year one classes, and in year 2 classes there was more of an emphasis on independent and guided writing.

Relationship between writing and students interests
//“If children write about topics that interest them and they have choices about what to write, then they have to select the letters and words to communicate their meaning..... This is a more meaningful and useful activity than repetitive worksheets designed for children to identify letters." (Hill, 2012 p. 320).// <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">A common theme that was evident through results from assignment one and two, as well as observations from placements was that children were generally more excited about writing if the topic was of interest to them or selected by them. For example, results from assignment one displayed that the children enjoyed writing about their interests such as sport, television shows, family and recounts of what they did on the weekend. Hence, these results emphasize the importance of tapping into a childs funds of knowledge during literacy practices.

__Different text types__
Hill (2012, p. 360) asserts that many teachers use six main genre types when teaching children about different types of text: recount, narrative, procedure, explanation, report and argument'.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">During placement, there was a learning focus on procedural writing for my grade two class. The class was taught about the structure and components of a procedure and practiced it regularly. The class then completed an assesment on procedural writing where they were given a recipe in the incorrect order and they had to rewrite it in their books in the correct order with headings such as goal, materials etc.

__<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Phases of literacy development and assessment of writing __
Hill (2012, p. 5) states that "the phases of literacy development enables teachers to envisage the distance or zone of proximal development between what students can do and more sophisticated understandings."

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Six students writing samples were analysed for assignment one in terms of the phases of literacy development (Hill 2012, p.6). The results are as follows:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3 students were in the emergent stage progressing towards the early stage, showing evidence of:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Leaving spaces between words
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Understandsing of what sentances are
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Using some forms of punctuation
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Writing simple sentances

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3 students were in the early stage, progressing towards the transitional stage,showinf evidence of:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">An awareness of punctution and can use most forms of punctuation
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Writing about topics that are meaningful
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Writing multiple sentances

Writing samples from placement: These are photos of two students work from a year two class and a classroom poster that student's used to check their work. As you can see there is a significant difference in the two samples of writing in terms of ideas, written language and text conventions.