When Donald Graves visited Australia in 1980, he started his lecture to teachers with this statement: ‘Children want to write.’. These words are as true today as they were when first spoken. Children are natural story tellers; they love attention as they recount events that occur throughout their daily lives. Also, children have vivid imaginations; much of their play occurs through fantasy and make-believe. An innate desire to tell stories combined with an active and creative mind means children are ready-made writers. The challenge is enabling them to be able to express themselves through written language.
The importance of children being knowledgeable about the content they are composing cannot be understated – children need to be the experts so that they can communicate in a constructive and meaningful way. Writing is an easier task when the author has an extensive knowledge about the topic. When children come to school, they have a limited or select knowledge of informative and persuasive writing topics. This makes it difficult for them to fluently write across various types of text. However, children come to school with an array of life events, experiences, and hopefully stories through the medium of storytelling, books, movies and television programs. This prior knowledge means that imaginative texts are the type of writing with which they are most familiar. With this background information, imaginative writing is the easiest form of writing for students to become fluent. They can draw on previous experiences to create their writing and rely on their imaginations to bring them to life. When you write about your life, you already know the information you need to tell the story. This allows you to think about how you write in addition to what you write (Peha, 2016). Within the framework of learning about imaginative writing, children can learn many language features, techniques and discover their own distinct voice that will have many benefits for other forms of writing as they progress through their schooling. Teaching writing within a context of understanding and familiarity enables children to enjoy writing and share their stories. As children become more confident in their ability and comfortable with exploring language, they are able to develop and find their unique voice; an experience that is both satisfying and empowering.
As stated, informative and persuasive texts are knowledge-based types of text and they require life-experience & knowledge to be efficiently and effectively written. Dallas Tonkin in Writing for Life (1988) states that children can hardly be expected to write a particular factual genre if they have had little or no experience of the topic. This is not to say that the early years of writing should be void of these writing experiences. Opportunities to learn about and expose children to various forms of writing should be prepared and taught, but the main focus should be on developing their ability to write and understand language, and this is easiest in the context of imaginative writing. The knowledge children gain about grammatical features, structures and their effects will greatly enhance their other forms of writing. Informative and persuasive writing should be catered for in the context of content learning. Vivienne Nicoll touches on this notion in her Foreword to Writing for Life (1988) – “Those promoting a genre approach are particularly interested in across curriculum opportunities for non-narrative writing.” Science, History and Geography are inquiry-based subjects where children have the opportunity to learn how to research and build their knowledge. This knowledge should always be transferred into writing to assist with the learning of content and building skills to write these types of text.
Writing is an art form. At its essence is creativity, but much the same as a painter needs to understand colour, form, line, shape and texture; children need to understand the structures and mechanics to become effective writers. Writing needs to be presented in a scaffolded environment that assists children to understand their tools. Scaffolds and templates are used as training wheels to support early development, and when ready, the safety of these devices can be removed to allow children to become independent writers. If we compare learning to write with another artistic endeavour such as learning a musical instrument, there is a stark contrast on how the two skills are taught. How often are children given a blank sheet, perhaps with a scenario, and asked to create a piece of meaningful writing. The children may have been shown an example of a story written by someone else and some features to focus on were discussed. Sadly though, they are left to their own devices to use the sounds and words they know, to create sentences and construct paragraphs for an original composition that will please their reader. Now, imagine handing a student an instrument - presume that they already know how to play different notes and, using the notes and chords they know, they are to construct an original composition that will be judged by the listener. The fact is that music, although creative, is not taught this way. It is taught within a structure that allows learners to build their knowledge of notes, rhythm, beats and chords. We need to take a similar approach when teaching writing. We need to ensure children understand how to turn words and ideas into sentences and those sentences into paragraphs to create writing. This requires a systematic, scaffolded approach within a supportive environment. Giving children paper and expecting them to write is neither fair nor realistic unless you are providing them with the tools they need to transfer their ideas into written work.
This is an open-ended resource & teacher discretion is required to determine how it is best used in classroom environments. It is not a direct step-by-step approach to teaching, but a flexible resource that should be used to create writing opportunities for students to foster improvement. While some aspects have a logical order, the focus is to provide natural opportunities to enhance understanding and learning. This is not a writing curriculum; it is designed to support teacher programming and make teaching easier and simplistic.
Schools may be collegial but classrooms are individual. The classroom is where a teacher takes into consideration their students and evaluates their teaching style to create the best environment for learning to take place. This resource is not designed to tell teachers how to set-up, organise and run their classroom; its purpose is to share knowledge gained on effective, yet simple, writing instruction so that children and teachers can benefit. It is up to individual teachers to assess how these tools will work best in the classroom. It will provide ideas and suggestions that have worked in classroom settings, but they may not be suitable to all environments. This resource is a tool, and craftsmen use their tools to create their masterpieces. Learn how to use this tool effectively in your classroom to transform student writing, but more importantly increase their enjoyment and engagement when writing.
The importance of children being knowledgeable about the content they are composing cannot be understated – children need to be the experts so that they can communicate in a constructive and meaningful way. Writing is an easier task when the author has an extensive knowledge about the topic. When children come to school, they have a limited or select knowledge of informative and persuasive writing topics. This makes it difficult for them to fluently write across various types of text. However, children come to school with an array of life events, experiences, and hopefully stories through the medium of storytelling, books, movies and television programs. This prior knowledge means that imaginative texts are the type of writing with which they are most familiar. With this background information, imaginative writing is the easiest form of writing for students to become fluent. They can draw on previous experiences to create their writing and rely on their imaginations to bring them to life. When you write about your life, you already know the information you need to tell the story. This allows you to think about how you write in addition to what you write (Peha, 2016). Within the framework of learning about imaginative writing, children can learn many language features, techniques and discover their own distinct voice that will have many benefits for other forms of writing as they progress through their schooling. Teaching writing within a context of understanding and familiarity enables children to enjoy writing and share their stories. As children become more confident in their ability and comfortable with exploring language, they are able to develop and find their unique voice; an experience that is both satisfying and empowering.
As stated, informative and persuasive texts are knowledge-based types of text and they require life-experience & knowledge to be efficiently and effectively written. Dallas Tonkin in Writing for Life (1988) states that children can hardly be expected to write a particular factual genre if they have had little or no experience of the topic. This is not to say that the early years of writing should be void of these writing experiences. Opportunities to learn about and expose children to various forms of writing should be prepared and taught, but the main focus should be on developing their ability to write and understand language, and this is easiest in the context of imaginative writing. The knowledge children gain about grammatical features, structures and their effects will greatly enhance their other forms of writing. Informative and persuasive writing should be catered for in the context of content learning. Vivienne Nicoll touches on this notion in her Foreword to Writing for Life (1988) – “Those promoting a genre approach are particularly interested in across curriculum opportunities for non-narrative writing.” Science, History and Geography are inquiry-based subjects where children have the opportunity to learn how to research and build their knowledge. This knowledge should always be transferred into writing to assist with the learning of content and building skills to write these types of text.
Writing is an art form. At its essence is creativity, but much the same as a painter needs to understand colour, form, line, shape and texture; children need to understand the structures and mechanics to become effective writers. Writing needs to be presented in a scaffolded environment that assists children to understand their tools. Scaffolds and templates are used as training wheels to support early development, and when ready, the safety of these devices can be removed to allow children to become independent writers. If we compare learning to write with another artistic endeavour such as learning a musical instrument, there is a stark contrast on how the two skills are taught. How often are children given a blank sheet, perhaps with a scenario, and asked to create a piece of meaningful writing. The children may have been shown an example of a story written by someone else and some features to focus on were discussed. Sadly though, they are left to their own devices to use the sounds and words they know, to create sentences and construct paragraphs for an original composition that will please their reader. Now, imagine handing a student an instrument - presume that they already know how to play different notes and, using the notes and chords they know, they are to construct an original composition that will be judged by the listener. The fact is that music, although creative, is not taught this way. It is taught within a structure that allows learners to build their knowledge of notes, rhythm, beats and chords. We need to take a similar approach when teaching writing. We need to ensure children understand how to turn words and ideas into sentences and those sentences into paragraphs to create writing. This requires a systematic, scaffolded approach within a supportive environment. Giving children paper and expecting them to write is neither fair nor realistic unless you are providing them with the tools they need to transfer their ideas into written work.
This is an open-ended resource & teacher discretion is required to determine how it is best used in classroom environments. It is not a direct step-by-step approach to teaching, but a flexible resource that should be used to create writing opportunities for students to foster improvement. While some aspects have a logical order, the focus is to provide natural opportunities to enhance understanding and learning. This is not a writing curriculum; it is designed to support teacher programming and make teaching easier and simplistic.
Schools may be collegial but classrooms are individual. The classroom is where a teacher takes into consideration their students and evaluates their teaching style to create the best environment for learning to take place. This resource is not designed to tell teachers how to set-up, organise and run their classroom; its purpose is to share knowledge gained on effective, yet simple, writing instruction so that children and teachers can benefit. It is up to individual teachers to assess how these tools will work best in the classroom. It will provide ideas and suggestions that have worked in classroom settings, but they may not be suitable to all environments. This resource is a tool, and craftsmen use their tools to create their masterpieces. Learn how to use this tool effectively in your classroom to transform student writing, but more importantly increase their enjoyment and engagement when writing.