Learning & Development: Writing - To the letter

Literacy, along with Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design, has been designated as a 'specific' area of learning in the revised EYFS 2012. The Specific areas are dependent on the Prime areas and linked to a specific body of knowledge and skills rather than to child development. Literacy is strongly dependent on language development and ability to communicate. The EYFS 2012 highlights two aspects of literacy: (1) Reading (2) Writing.

Writing

As with reading, the writing Early Learning Goal expects a high level of skill for children at the end of the reception year, with an emphasis on phonic skills to help them spell: children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways that match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences that can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible (EYFS, 2012).

However, as with reading skills, there are two sets of skills children need as they learn to write:

1. Composition - deciding what to write and composing the message.

2. Transcription - knowing how to write it.

There are also the physical skills needed to write, which are found under Physical Development. In the Early Learning Goal there is a very clear emphasis only on the transcriptional skills, with no mention of comprehension, the purpose of the writing. But the compositional skills are very important indeed - writing needs a purpose.

Early writing skills: making marks

Although babies make marks deliberately early on in life as they move their hands backwards and forwards, perhaps through spilled food or drink, this early mark making is not related to the type of mark making that later becomes writing.

Composition: the purpose of writing

It is when young children begin to ascribe meaning to their marks that their mark making turns into a deliberate attempt to draw or write. For some children this may be as young as two, for others much later, dependent on their experience of being given opportunities to make marks. Watching adults writing provides an important model, especially when they tell the child what they are writing - for example, a shopping list, a telephone message or writing an observation on a child.

In the examples in figures 7.2 and 7.3, the children, Elshaddai and Nevaeh (aged three years and one month and three years and two months), had been watching me write and wanted to do some too. Elshaddai's mark making here was very carefully executed, but she did not say what the message was. Nevaeh was less careful but was very clear about the message and, as she points to different parts of her mark making, she tells me, 'That says mum, that's Joel, Nevaeh.'

One of the best ways of helping children to understand how to compose a message to be written down, and the most powerful model for writing, is scribing something that the child dictates to you, such as a caption they want on their drawing or a message in a card they are making. For most children, the first and most important thing they usually want to write is their own name. In the example in figure 7.4, Emma, aged only two years and seven months, is already bringing together both the transcriptional and compositional aspects of writing, as she attempts to write her name on the back of a drawing.

Transcription: writing it down

In figure 7.4, we can see Emma's attempt at writing her own name. She already knows the letters in her name and can recognise it when she sees it written, but forming the letters correctly takes time, even for a child like Emma who loves to make marks and draw, and spends a great deal of time having fun with this at home and at nursery. Lots of exploration and experimentation on a large scale, such as on large paper or outside on the ground, will help.

Linking sounds and letters for writing

When children are ready - usually, but not always, around the age of five - they will need adults to support them in learning how to break words up ('segment') into their component parts (phonemes) to write them. A phoneme written down is called a 'grapheme'. As children begin to understand how this link works, you will see them quietly sounding out the parts of a word and thinking about what letters and phonemes to use. This is when they begin to make 'phonetically plausible' attempts at writing words. Some frequently used words, however, they manage well from memory.

Effective practice

Many of the points for effective practice in reading also help to develop writing skills.

• Give children plenty of reasons to make meaningful marks in their play, such as shopping lists, registers, messages and appointments.

• Have clipboards everywhere to encourage mark making and writing, buckets of water with paintbrushes for outside, as well as chalk and chalkboards.

• Talk with the children about their writing-like marks, giving them plenty of time to tell you about what they are doing.

• Have children's names written on cards to encourage them to write their own names.

• Make books with the children - about the children themselves, their own stories or versions of familiar stories.

• Scribe for the children, writing down what they dictate to you.

Talk to them about it as you do it.

• Write in front of the children, such as the notes, lists and messages you need.

This is an edited extract of Chapter seven, Literacy, from Effective Practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage: an essential guide by Vicky Hutchin (Open University Press, in association with Nursery World)

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