PROBLEM What is the one subject area that suffers the most during testing? Writing is our country’s

With one child I was supporting them whilst writing their own name. By the end of the activity they were all using a pencil and holding it effectively to form recognisable letters.

Learning to read and write as a child is an experience that all can relate to. The average child learns to read and write at the early ages of three and four. Developing literacy at an early age is crucial to academic development as well as to performance in life. Early development can be just what a child needs to stimulate their minds, which in turn is assisting in the evolution of their future. The early and latter stages of development in a child’s literacy journey are the makings for their reading and writing skills. It also plays part in their analysis of obstacles as well as their developed or problematic literacy future. A child

Encouraging children?s reading and writing skills in their early years is a critical component of

Timothy Rasinski and Nancy Padak, in their article, “Write Soon!” from The Reading Teacher (2009) emphasize that reading and writing are important skills and explain how parents can easily incorporate them into everyday life. They support this idea by presenting simple ways that parents and their children can do this, such as writing notes to each other, exchanging journals, or making lists. The authors wrote this article in order to help teachers guide parents through developing and supporting their child’s literacy. Rasinski and Padak’s writing is aimed toward teachers who can ultimately use these instructions to encourage

Teachers, who are aware of children becoming emergent writers, can better understand the amount of effort and concentration required. Teachers can appreciate the value of observing children’s early writing for evidence of children’s developing phonological knowledge of written language.

This journal article is published by Roger Beard and Andrew Burrell Roger is a professor of Primary Education and Head, School of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the Institute of Education, University of London; Andrew is School of Early Childhood and Primary Education, Institute of Education, University of London. They make a standardised task with repetitive design to study narrative writing by 112 elementary students (60 boys, 52 girls) in England. The test includes a 10-minute description writing task and a 30-minute narrative writing task, and the kids are been teaching by specially trained panels. From the test, the students writing have been increased. The author state, “More specifically, there was greater use of action to develop character and main event, connectives to inject suspense, exclamations for impact, adventurous vocabulary to add interest and verbs to emphasize action, thoughts or feelings.” (90) The result of this study would be beneficial on researching literacy education and children's interest.

Teaching children handwriting has been an accepted and integral part of early childhood education. But the Common Core Standards that many schools have now adopted no longer require that handwriting be taught past kindergarten and first grade. Should such methods be abandoned? Is writing even helpful? Don’t we have computers to do the writing for us, so do we really need handwriting? Is writing effective? Maria Konnikova addresses these questions in her article What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades published in The New York Times on June 2, 2014. She cites the concerns of neuroscientists and psychologists that handwriting has long term benefits in both children and adults. Writing stimulates neurons in the brain to increase learning, memory, and

Children are becoming involved with written language – they are starting to learn to read and write.

Literacy: Brynlee approaches learning situations with a positive attitude and persistence. She is able to use sentence starters to help convey her ideas. Brynlee is also able to use ‘and’ in her writing to connect her ideas. She is encouraged to consistently use finger spaces in her writing to make is easier to read. She has a popsicle stick to use as a physical reminder to help organize her work. She is beginning to expand her writing by adding details. For example, when writing about our lunch she wrote, “I have a hot rod it is red”. She is also encouraged to consistently use lowercase letters inside her sentences. Brynlee has an alphabet visual on her desk as a reminder. She is also in a group for literacy that focuses on sight words and word families, which will support her in further developing her reading and writing. When reading, Brynlee is able to sound out her words and communicate her comprehension skills. She would benefit from using RAZ Kids to further develop her reading abilities. Brynlee is supported in this goal by engaging in a small-guided reading group. We focus on using

Early writing skills are easily visible and include marks on paper, scribbling and drawing. Even these scribbles display characteristics of the writing if the child's culture. Consequently, "the writings of four year olds from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and America will look different long before the children can write conventionally. (Strickland and Morrow 3) As time goes on children wills tart to try and attempt marks that look more and more like letters. Robert Gundlach calls this mix of writing and drawing a "mixed medium". (Bee 5) The beginning stages of reading are less visible because it takes place internally. The child may

Effective writing is becoming a real concern among teachers and college professors. As a matter of fact, the quality of writing appears to be worse than it used to be. In past years, studies have proven that there is a constant decline in people's writing ability. This article, Student Writing: Strategies to Reverse Ongoing Decline, gives you some insight as to the decline and ways to improve your writing skills.

David waited until every page was passed by me, and every book was over to ask for the other. On the second section of the Literacy Rating Scale, right next to the reading station, the teacher had works of art of the children, and in the middle, was their names. I asked David to show me his, he walked straight to this piece of art. I responded, “wow David I see what you did, do you see your name?” He responded with a jump, a smile, and a firm “yes!” He pointed to his name; hence, I was able to record David can accurately recognize his own name. Followed by the free choice, learning stations where through 36-month-old children do not get writing utensils, he did hold the paintbrush with a high grip. On outside time, while the children were playing I had the chance to talk with the teacher and asked her about the aspects I was not able to observe on David. These were communication through writing, beginning writing, and writing in play. To these three questions in the same afore order, she answered David does not denote manipulation of writing tools, and communicates through writing all the time, but does

In “An Effective Framework for Primary-Grade Guided Writing Instruction”, it discusses what guided writing is and how it can help students in their writing abilities. Guided writing is a small group of students who share similar needs in their writing abilities that are receiving instruction from the teacher together. This article discusses the steps in this framework and how teachers can help scaffold their students learning. There are four steps to this framework; “brief, shared experience, discussion of strategic behavior of writing, students’ time to write individually with immediate guidance from the teacher, and connecting students’ immediate writing to an audience.” (Gibson,2008,325) During this framework, the teachers should always

Ziviani and Elkins (1984) developed an evaluation scale for the manuscript (printing) writing ability of children aged 7-14 years. Handwriting ability was judged based on the evaluation of readability components (letter formation, size, spacing, and straightness) and on writing speed. For each individual letter and symbol form to be written, exact specifications as to readability components were defined in order to enable the most objective measurements possible. The reliability and validity of the scale, comparing its results to defined criteria of readability found in the research and comparing the scale scores to scores assigned by teachers. Inter-rater (.76-.97) and test-retest reliability were found to be moderate to high (.44-.93). Content

Analysing children’s writing is critically important because it allows teachers to have an understanding of what the child knows already, and what he/she needs to build on with their writing (Stewart, 2012). In the paragraphs ahead, two samples have been chosen and have been analysed using the Victorian Essential Learning Standards and the Western Australia First Steps Developmental Continuum.