ELA300English, Language and Literacy in

Education 3

Semester 1, 2015

Assignment 2

Understanding Students Writing

Abbie MullanS215121

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Writing is both a process and a product by which we can only learn to write through practice.

Understanding a students’ writing is a fundamental process of identifying their strengths and weaknesses and

being able to help develop their writing skills. According to Campbell and Green (2009), “children’s

development in writing follows a recognised pattern from early scribbles and drawings in infancy towards

control of the dimensions of writing during the school years.” It is important for young children to experiment

in a range of ways when practicing writing in order to develop their emerging writing skills and progress into

the early stages of understanding writing for different purposes. The Writing Developmental Continuum

(1994) “identifies six phases of writing development, and also lists indicators to assist teachers to observe in

which phase a child’s writing samples may be places”. The phases include: Role play writing, experimental

writing, early writing, conventional writing, proficient writing and advanced writing. The developmental

continuum for writing allows educators to identify a students strengths and weaknesses and create a range of

pedagogical approaches to support the students writing development.

Appendix 1 refers to the specific Australian Curriculum learning outcomes for the sample of

students writing in Appendix 2, a 6 year olds personal recount of their weekend. According to the Writing

Developmental Continuum, this writer is in the Early Writing stages meaning they are able to make basic

sentence structures and understand graphophonic or code systems of writing. The writer demonstrates an

understanding and knowledge about the relationships between letters and sounds in writing and as a result can

be linked to Luke and Freebody’s (2009) Four Resources Model that “describes the sets of resources or

literacy practices that literate people draw on and use” (Wing, J.L. 2009. p. 5). This piece of writing can be

acknowledged under the text encoder and text decoder practices where the rules of written and visual

language involved are used in order to create or interpret visual or written texts. The piece of writing was

analysed using the composition of the text, process of writing and presentation of text with the overall

assessment showing various strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths: The writer shows a contextual understanding for creating this type of text and understands the

orientation and sequence of events that a recount entails. They have sound comprehension of basic grammar

and punctuation at this age and aren’t afraid to use “invented spelling”. The writer is able to write using

sufficient line spacing while writing relatively straight on the lines. They appear to have comprehensive

graphophonic, phonological and alphabetic knowledge with these of course having the potential to be further

developed in order to progress the students writing ability. The writer is able to identify where they have made

mistakes and make note of these themselves.

Weaknesses: Although the student appears to use capital letters in the correct spot after a full stop and at the

start of a sentence, at times they use a capital letter in inappropriate parts of a sentence. For example: We Bud

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(bought) 19 fish. This perhaps shows that the student is using a capital letter for anything that is important to

them, in this case when he “Bud” (bought) the fish. The writer also appears to write the letter “s” around the

wrong way each time meaning they are struggling to understand the proper formation and direction this letter

goes in. Although the fluency of this piece of writing is acceptable for this age, this can be improved upon

through further writing development practice. The writer has a sound and developing understanding of

semantic and syntactic knowledge that will develop over time and currently appears to be both a strength and

weakness in this piece of writing.

Developing writing (appendix 3 shows teacher assessed writing piece): The development of the students

writing will be assessed through formative assessment strategies over the course of a few weeks after the

implementation of specific pedagogical approaches. Students with the same writing abilities will be identified

in the classroom and grouped together when working through the developmental strategies. This will ensure

that each student feels included and is working with others on the same learning development continuum as

each other. In order to demonstrate how texts are created and for what purpose and context, examples should

be shown to the writer as a way of scaffolding them for their writing practice. This can be done in a model

writing activity where the teacher demonstrates the structure of a recount, including grammar, punctuation and

spelling in an example of a context of writing. In order to address the use of lower and upper case letters,

ensure that the alphabet is displayed around the classroom and contains both lower and upper case letters

easily accessible for the student. Remind the student that a capital letter is only to be used in the following

ways:

Title

To start a sentence

Someone’s name (or a proper noun)

When using an acronym (probably not so relevant at this age)

To target mixing up of upper and lower case letters and phonological awareness, it is important that the

student has sound alphabet knowledge and is able to discern sounds. Activities to improve phonological

awareness include:

Syllabification

Initial sound identification

Segmentation

Blending

Sound manipulation

Spelling multi-syllabic words

(McCandlish, S. 2006)

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To address the proper formation of letters, using lined paper, have the student practice writing the

letter “s”, or any other letter they have failed to write the correct way. The importance of semantic and

syntactic knowledge will be reinforced through creating activities that demonstrate how “sounds can be

represented in print and how letters or groups of letters represent sounds” (Wing, J.L. 2009. p. 5). According

to Lesley Wing Jan (2009), “modelling is a powerful way of teaching children how written language is

structured and used for different purposes, audiences and contexts.” Strategies to be used over the course of

the weeks can include shared/interactive, guided, modelled and independent writing activities.

Shared/Interactive and Guided writing: An activity of a small group of students sharing the same identified

need focusing on punctuation, writing and complete sentences and the fluency of paragraphs. The teacher is to

guide this activity to jointly structure and share ideas and writing while eventually allowing students to

assume most of the control of their learning.

Modelled Writing: As discussed, students will be shown an explicit demonstration of what is expected of

them including modelling the context and processes of creating a text such as a recount.

Independent writing: “During this time students have the opportunity to craft their own texts and

demonstrate their control of what has been modelled to them in previous parts of the session” (ACT

Government, 2010). Students are to work on their own to develop their writing skills and are encouraged to

write for real purposes and audiences.

While it is important to focus on students’ punctuation and spelling, this will develop over time

and through practice as this is important in the context of constructing texts. According to Winch et al (2011),

“punctuation is important because it adds significant meaning to writing. Punctuation is best taught through

children’s own writings and readings”. An activity to develop spelling and punctuation could include

encouraging the student to put a line under words they are not sure how to spell, identifying common word

patterns, identifying homonyms and creating a list of words that the student struggles with on a weekly basis

and have the student practice these. Through practice and learning from their mistakes, over time this writer

will develop an understanding for the context of writing and their weaknesses will strengthen with guidance

and ongoing assessment.

APPENDIX 1:

Australian Curriculum: English Year 1

Text Structure and Key Learning Outcomes:

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Organisation:

Understand that the purposes texts

serve shape their structure in

predictable ways (ACELA1447)

Discussing and comparing the purposes of familiar texts drawn

from local contexts and interests

Becoming familiar with the typical stages of types of text including

recount and procedure

Using different types of texts, for example procedures (including

recipes) and discussing the text structure

Creating Texts:

Create short imaginative and

informative texts that show

emerging use of appropriate text

structure, sentence-level grammar,

word choice, spelling, punctuation

and appropriate multimodal

elements, for example illustrations

and diagrams (ACELY1661)

Key Learning Outcomes:

Referring to learned knowledge of text structure and grammar

when creating a new text

Applying new vocabulary appropriately in creating text

Learning how to plan spoken and written communications so that

listeners and readers might follow the sequence of ideas or events

Beginning to consider audience in designing a communication

involving visual components, selecting images for maximum

impact

Reread student's own texts and

discuss possible changes to

improve meaning, spelling and

punctuation (ACELY1662)

Key Learning Outcomes:

Reading the students’ own work aloud to listen for grammatical

correctness: checking use of capital letters, full stops, question

marks and exclamation marks

Checking for inclusion of capital letters and full stops

Identifying words which might not be spelt correctly

Beginning to use dictionaries and classroom charts to check and

correct spelling of less familiar words

Write using unjoined lower case

and upper case letters

(ACELY1663)

Key Learning Outcomes:

Using correct posture and pencil grip

Learning how each letter is constructed including where to start and

the direction to follow

Writing words legibly using unjoined print script of consistent size

APPENDIX 2:

Text Details:

Year Level: Year 1 (6 year old boy)

Intended Audience: Teacher, parents, peers.

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Title: “The Weekend”

Genre: Personal Recount, past tense.

Orientation: Who? Why? Where? When? What? of the experience.

Sequence of events: Series of events and how they happened.

Prior to teacher assessment:

APPENDIX 3:

After teacher assessment to develop pedagogical writing strategies:

Please note: This piece of writing was corrected using a blue pen and the correct sounds in each word

was acknowledged using a “tick” with the corrected spelling placed above the word. The red pen

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indicates the teacher making notes about the students writing for assessment purposes and in order to

develop pedagogical strategies for this writer.

REFERENCES:

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ACT Government. (2010). Early Years Literacy and Numeracy Development. ACT Public Schools Education

and Training. Retrieved April 1, 2015 from

http://www.det.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/134895/Early_Years_Literacy_and_Numerac

y_Development_Package_2010.pdf

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2014). Foundation to year 10

curriculum. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from

http://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/foundation_-_year_10.html.

Campbell, R. & Green, D (2000). Literacies and Learners: The Development of Children s Writing (Chapter

9, pp.147 – 151).

Davis, N. (2010). Extending Writing: Using a Recount Exemplar for 5 & 6 Year Olds. Teaching and Learning

in the Australian Primary Classroom. Retrieved April 1, 2015 from

http://ninadavis.me/2010/10/08/extending-writing-using-a-recount-exemplar-with-56-year-olds/

McCandlish, S. (2006). Phonological Awareness Activities for the Classroom. Retrieved April 10, 2015 from

http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/northernadelaide/files/links/Phonological_Awareness_Bo.pdf

Winch et al. (2011). Literacy: Reading, writing and children's literature (4th ed.), ch. 15

Wing Jan, L. (2009). Write ways: Modelling writing form (3rd ed.).South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford U.P.

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