Teaching+Writing

__ Understanding, Teaching and Assessing Writing  __ When children begin to write they often struggle with the understanding of the process as it involves many steps. You have to learn how to hold the pencil, how to create the shapes of the letters and how to express the letters into corresponding sentences. Children also have to distinguish the difference between the spoken language and the written language. When speaking you can use hand gestures to convey the message where as when you are writing you have to produce a much more descriptive example. That’s why you need to use punctuation, word order, simile and metaphor to help the reader understand what you are writing (Hill, 2006, p.281). When children are developing their writing they go through phases from beginning, early emergent, emergent, early, transition and extending. During these phases they are understanding that letters and symbols mean things and that some symbols are not letters. They also pick up skills such as when writing the English language it is written from left to right and there are gaps in between words. Reading also helps in the development of writing as the children can reproduce the certain structure and language features they have read. Both reading and writing combined help support each other as writing helps the child when reading it make sense of what they have written (Parry, Hornsby, 1990, p.9). While they are beginning to understand what they are writing they are also learning how to place letters in the correct place and how the sounding of language can be presented. It is much more helpful to have the child write about something that they are interested in as they stay more involved in the process. The student learns writing in a number of different ways shared writing, interactive writing, guided writing and modeled writing (Turbill, 1984, p.25). When writing a genre is introduced as it gives the student a pattern to follow which makes it easier for them. Having a genre is also a good basis for analyzing and assessing the child’s work. There are three broad genres used they are recount, narrative and procedural (Stewart-Dore, 1986, p.29). For the child to understand the writing they have to develop their writing process which involves them selecting their ideas, organizing their ideas, making several drafts of their work so that they are able to proof read any mistakes, revise, publish and then response and evaluation (Hill, 2006, p.294). These steps are all important as they help the child with their punctuation, grammar and handwriting skills something that will be a huge part of their schooling lives. When assessing the students work in the early writing there are 3 main elements to look for written language, ideas and text conventions (Hill, 2006, p.289). The written language sees the teacher assessing what the child knows about words, the ideas sees if the child has come up with ideas of their own and the text conventions see if the child has written in the left to right procedure and whether the right punctuation has been used. There is also a format for assessing the child’s work when they are at a much more complex stage. On the Assessing writing page you will find examples of the two types of assessments.