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The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of writing skills

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The Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of writing skills

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What are writing readiness (pre-writing) skills?

Pre-writing skills are the fundamental skills children need to develop before they are able to write. These skills contribute to the child's ability to hold and use a pencil, and the ability to draw, write, copy, and colour. A major component of pre-writing skills are the pre-writing shapes. These are the pencil strokes that most letters, numbers and early drawings are comprised of. They are typically mastered in sequential order, and to an age specific level. These strokes include the following strokes: |, -, O, +, /, square, \, X, and Δ.

Why are writing readiness (pre-writing) skills important?

Pre-writing skills are essential for the child to be able to develop the ability to hold and move a pencil fluently and effectively and therefore produce legible writing. When these skills are underdeveloped it can lead to frustration and resistance due to the child not being able to produce legible writing or to 'keep up' in class due to fatigue. This can then result in poor self esteem and academic performance.

What are the building blocks necessary to develop writing readiness (pre-writing)?

Hand and finger strength: An ability to exert force against resistance using the hands and fingers that allows the necessary muscle power for controlled movement of the pencil.

Crossing the mid-line: The ability to cross the imaginary line running from a person's nose to pelvis that divides the body into left and right sides.

Pencil grasp: The efficiency of how the pencil is held, allowing age appropriate pencil movement generation.

Hand eye coordination: The ability to process information received from the eyes to control, guide and direct the hands in the performance of a task such as handwriting.

Bilateral integration: Using two hands together with one hand leading (e.g. holding and moving the pencil with the dominant hand while the other hand helps by holding the writing paper).

Upper body strength: The strength and stability provided by the shoulder to allow controlled hand movement for good pencil control.

Object manipulation: The ability to skilfully manipulate tools (including holding and moving pencils and scissors) and controlled use of everyday tools (such as a toothbrush, hairbrush, cutlery).

Visual perception: The brain's ability to interpret and make sense of visual images seen by the eyes, such as letters and numbers.

Hand dominance: The consistent use of one (usually the same) hand for task performance, which allows refined skills to develop.

Hand division: Using just the thumb, index and middle finger for manipulation, leaving the fourth and little finger tucked into the palm stabilizing the other fingers but not participating.

How can I tell if my child has problems with writing readiness (pre-writing) skills?

If a child has difficulties with writing readiness they might:

Have an awkward pencil grasp.

Have difficulty controlling a pencil for colouring, drawing or writing.

Show a tendency to use their whole hand to manipulate objects rather than just a few fingers.

Have poor endurance for pencil based activities.

Display messy and/or slow handwriting.

Have difficulty staying within the lines when colouring.

Apply inappropriate pressure to the paper for pencil based activities (either too heavy and frequently breaks the pencil, or too light and 'spidery').

Have poor upper limb strength (weak shoulders).

Have difficulty coordinating both hands together for two handed tasks.

Have poor hand-eye coordination.

Be verbally skilled but has difficulty showing this on paper (i.e. writing, drawing or colouring).

Not meet the pre-writing expectations outlined below.

What other problems can occur when a child has writing readiness (pre-writing) skill difficulties?

When a child has writing readiness difficulties, they might also have difficulties with:

Behaviour: The may avoid or refuse to participate in pencil and other fine motor tasks.

Self esteem: when they compare their work against that of their peers.

Academic performance: They find it more difficult and be slower completing these tasks, contributing to slower skills acquisition (e.g. learning to write their name, or draw a person).

Self care: The ability to (age appropriately) master independence in everyday life activities (such as dressing, eating, cleaning teeth, brushing hair).

Avoidance: Preferring to get others to perform fine motor tasks for them under their direction, rather than actually doing themselves (e.g. "Daddy, draw me a house", or "build me a rocket", with refusal to do it themselves).

What can be done to improve writing readiness (pre-writing) skills?

Hand dominance: Determine and reinforce the dominant hand use in precision task performance.

Experience: Encourage participation in activities that involve grasping and manipulating small objects such drawing, puzzles, opening containers, threading or other related tasks.

Poking and pointing: Practice tasks that use just one or two fingers (not all at once) e.g. poking games.

Praise and encouragement when your child engages in fine motor activities, especially if they are persistent when finding an activity difficult.

Hand and finger strength (e.g. scrunching, paper, using tweezers, play dough, pegs).

Sensory play activities (e.g. rice play, finger painting) to assist the development of tactile awareness.

Hand-eye coordination: Practice activities that involve hand-eye coordination (e.g. throwing and catching) and crossing the mid-line (e.g. reaching across the body to pick up items).

Upper limb strength: Encourage play activities that develop upper limb strength (e.g. climbing ladders, wheelbarrow walking).

What activities can help improve writing readiness (pre-writing) skills?

Threading and lacing with a variety of sized laces.

Play-doh (playdough) activities that may involve rolling with hands or a rolling pin, hiding objects such as coins in the play dough or just creative construction.

Scissor projects that may involve cutting out geometric shapes to then paste them together to make pictures such as robots, trains or houses.

Tongs or teabag squeezers to pick up objects.

Drawing or writing on a vertical surface.

Every day activities that require finger strength such as opening containers and jars.

Pre writing shapes: Practice drawing the pre-writing shapes (l, -, O, +, /, square, \, X, and Δ).

Finger games: that practice specific finger movements such as Incy wincy Spider.

Craft: Make things using old boxes, egg cartons, wool, paper and sticky or masking tape.

Construction: Building with duplo, lego, mobilo or other construction toys.

Why should I seek therapy if I notice difficulties with writing readiness (pre-writing) skills in my child?

Therapeutic intervention to help a child with writing readiness difficulties is important to:

Improve ability in, and persistence with, fine motor tasks for academic performance.

Increase school readiness skills for your child's emotional comfort and ease of transition into school.

Help a child to develop age appropriate self care tasks such as doing up buttons and zips.

Avoid my child becoming disengaged in an academic environment due to difficulties completing colouring, drawing and writing.

Avoid frustrations experienced by parents, teachers and children when the child is struggling to remain engaged in academic activities.

Help develop and maintain my child's positive sense of well being through belief in their pencil skills for academic and play tasks.

Ensure that my child doesn't fall behind their peers in development of handwriting or drawing.

If left untreated what can difficulties with writing readiness (pre-writing) skills lead to?

When children have difficulties with writing readiness, they are might also have difficulties with:

Meeting (preschool or school based academic criteria due to poor pencil skills and rapid fatigue.

Difficulties mastering letter and number formation.

Learning to write their own name or draw age appropriate pictures (pre-school age).

Excessive pressure and anxiety in a school-aged child due to difficulties 'keeping up' in class.

Completing worksheets or tests due to difficulty answering all written questions within the allocated time.

Poor self esteem when a child compares their abilities with their peers.

Difficulty manipulating items for construction (puzzles, lego).

What type of therapy is recommended writing readiness (pre-writing) difficulties?

If your child has difficulties with writing readiness (pre-writing) skills, it is recommended they consult an Occupational Therapist.

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Writing Readiness (Pre-Writing) Skills - Kid Sense Child Development

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What are writing readiness (pre-writing) skills? Pre-writing skills are the fundamental skills children need to develop before they are able to write. These skills contribute to the child's ability to hold and use a pencil, and the ability to draw, write, copy, and colour. A major component of pre-writing skills are the pre-writing shapes.

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Ages and stages for written development

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Written Communication Development Chart - Kid Sense Child Development

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Back to Child Development Charts Written communication involves components of the physical performance of handwriting, typing, spelling, grammar and story planning. Note: Each stage of development assumes that the preceding stages have been successfully achieved. How to use this chart: Review the skills demonstrated by the child up to their current age.

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What is handwriting performance?

Although we commonly think of handwriting as simply what we see written on the page, handwriting actually reflects two equally important aspects:

Product: What the written outcome looks like (e.g. Are the letters neat, legible, written on the line and correctly formed?).

Performance: How the handwriting is performed (e.g. How is the pencil held? How fast is the task performed? Is there any pain during performance?).

Both these crucial aspects of handwriting are themselves dependent upon several underlying abilities including:

Legibility (readability/what is produced): Influenced by letter/number awareness and formation; writing on (not above) the line; leaving appropriate spaces between letters and words, and letters being the correct size. At a very basic level, it is also dependent upon the ability to form the 'pre-writing shapes' that combine to form letters and numbers (e.g. o + l = a).

Mechanics: Where the movement comes from (either from the shoulder, elbow, wrist or fingers) to allow appropriate pencil fluency and support appropriate pencil skill endurance which is influenced by pencil grip, finger strength and control, sensory processing (especially in the hand and fingers) and positioning (e.g. posture at the table).

Why is handwriting performance important?

Writing is the means by which children's academic performance is assessed. In fact, in the upper grades, handwriting performance can significantly determine the quantity of writing produced in exams, as well as the legibility. It is best mastered early in the schooling career to prevent bad habits forming.

The underlying skills that determine handwriting abilities are similar to those for other everyday (self care) dexterous hand skills (e.g. doing up buttons, cleaning teeth, tying shoelaces). They are interestingly also the same as those for keyboard use! Thus it is crucial to recognise that even if you are not interested in developing handwriting but you are in developing keyboard skills, the same underlying skills are necessary.

Typing versus handwriting: Despite the advent of computers and the belief by many that typing is more important than writing as a life skill, there is rarely reason to totally exclude handwriting skill development as the pre-requisite skills for efficient keyboard use are the same as for handwriting. Furthermore, despite the use of computers we still need the ability to hand write in small amounts for filling in forms, signing cheques and the like, as well as performing the tasks that reinforce appropriate finger control for the daily tasks mentioned above.

What are the building blocks necessary to develop handwriting performance?

Hand dominance: The consistent use of one (usually the same) hand for task performance, which allows refined skills to develop.

Hand division: Using just the thumb, index and middle finger for manipulation, leaving the fourth and little finger tucked into the palm, not participating but supporting the remaining 3 fingers.

Hand and finger strength: An ability to exert force against resistance using the hands and fingers.

Shoulder stability: The ability to use the shoulder joint muscles to hold the shoulder steady which then allows the arm to be held in different positions while the forearm and hand perform handwriting.

Letter awareness: Consistent knowledge of the letters appearance, sound and later its name, either by visual recognition or by writing them (age appropriateness must be considered).

Number awareness: Consistent knowledge of the correct formation and orientation of numbers, associated with an understanding of what the numbers mean .

Pencil control: The control with which a pencil is held and moved in a designated or desired way, which is also influenced by finger strength and sensory processing.

Pencil mechanics: How the pencil is held and moved, including appropriate pressure applied to the paper with the pencil.

Pre-writing skills: The pencil strokes that comprise most letters, numbers and early drawings (including: l, -, o, +, /,square, \, X, and Δ).

Visual perception: The brain's ability to interpret and make sense of visual images seen by the eye, such as letters and numbers.

Planning and sequencing: The sequential multi-step task/activity performance to achieve a well-defined result.

Postural control: The ability to stabilise the trunk and neck to enable coordination of other limbs such as the arm (and hand) for writing.

How can I tell if my child has problems with handwriting performance?

If a child has difficulties with handwriting performance they might:

Look awkward in the way they hold the pencil and produce the writing.

Have writing that is messy, illegible, letters are not written on the line and/or are not the correct size.

Demonstrate awkward, laborious or incorrect letter and/or number formation.

Be slow to complete written tasks or tires rapidly when writing.

Fatigue quickly while sitting at a computer to type and use a mouse.

Be able to explain their ideas verbally, but struggles to write them down.

Avoid writing, or writes the most concise answers possible despite verbally answering articulately at length.

Fail to stabilise the page with their non dominant hand and slumps at the table.

Apply inappropriate pressure to the paper when writing (either too heavy and frequently breaks the pencil, or too light and 'spidery' so it is hard to read).

Fail to meet the pencil grasp (process) expectations or handwriting performance expectations such as:

Pencil Grasp Expectations by Age

1-1½ years
palmer-supinate grasp

The crayon is held in a fisted (whole hand) grasp with the wrist slightly bent in towards the body. The arm moves as a whole unit to move the pencil.

2-3 years
digital-pronate grasp

The crayon is held with 5 fingers. The elbow remains still while the forearm moves as a solid unit to move the crayon, resulting in large crayon marks. The crayon is held in mid finger shaft rather than close to the tip of the fingers.

3½-4 years
static tripod grasp

The pencil is held with four fingers with a slightly elongated (flattened) web-space. The wrist is held still while the hand moves as a unit, and the wrist is straight not extended.

The pencil is ideally held with three fingers and with a rounded web-space that allows ideal isolated finger control for precise and refined pencil control, with the pencil movement generated in the fingers only. The wrist is held slightly extended to allow more isolated finger movement, and the forearm is slightly turned over towards the table.

The ideal pencil skills: A three fingered pencil grip with the fingers or thumb not overlapping the pencil or fingers and no hyper-extension (bending backwards) of finger joints. All pencil movement is generated in the isolated fingers (rather than the shoulder, elbow or wrist) which then allows good fluid pencil movement (fluency) for refined control and size. An upright posture at the desk with shoulders relaxed is also important in supporting appropriate pencil skills.

Handwriting Performance Expectations

Start of Preschool

Begin exploration of letter awareness in learning letter appearance and the sounds they make (not their names).

Begin to develop letter formation to combine components of letters (e.g. 'o' and 'l' make an "a").

Begin to develop number recognition.

End of Preschool

Begin to develop letter awareness in learning letter appearance and sound.

Begin to develop letter formation (lower case only) by combining the components of letters ('o' and 'l' make an "a").

Begin writing their name with fairly good legibility and reasonable ease.

Reception (first year of school)

Write consistently on the line.

Correctly form letters and numbers (some incorrect orientation is acceptable).

Leave spaces between words.

Write letters that are consistently the same size.

Use lower case letters only, with the exception of capitals in names.

Write their name legibly and accurately.

Recognise all letter sounds.

Year 1

Write consistently on the line and within lines.

Correctly form all letters and numbers (minimal incorrect orientation is acceptable).

Leave spaces between words and letters.

Distinguish between tall and short letters and those that sit beneath the line.

Year 2

Write consistently on the line, within regular sized lined paper lines.

Correctly form all letters and numbers (no incorrect orientation).

Leave spaces between words and letters.

Distinguish between tall and short letters and those that sit beneath the line.

Semi to complete mastery of upper case letters.

Year 3

Write consistently on the line, within regular sized lined paper lines.

Correctly form all letters and numbers (no incorrect orientation).

Leave spaces between words and letters.

Distinguish between tall and short letters and those that sit beneath the line.

Complete mastery of upper case letters.

Begin mastery of link script/cursive writing.

Display easily legible writing.

What other problems can occur when a child has handwriting performance difficulties?

When children have difficulties with handwriting performance, they are might also have difficulties with:

Learning such as mastering letter and number formation appropriately.

Planning and organisation of physical performance such as how to pick up and hold the pencil correctly each time.

Planning and organisation of cognitive performance such as how to plan the story content and flow. When writing stories they might be very similar rather than extending the theme each time.

Handwriting speed: Slowed by awkward physical or thinking skills.

Developing cursive or link script writing that can only be easily achieved when fluid movement of the pencil has been mastered.

Postural control and balance: The ability to stabilise the trunk and neck to enable coordination of limbs such as the arm and hand for handwriting.

Self care: The ability to hold utensils such as a toothbrush, open zip lock bags, do buttons and zips or tie laces.

What can be done to improve handwriting performance?

Pencil mechanics: Improve how the pencil is held and moved, including the pencil pressure applied to the paper.

Fluency: Enhance the fluidity of pencil movement - often achieved by improving the pencil grip and movement to minimize the muscular effort required which in turn minimises fatigue and enhances handwriting speed.

Master pre-writing shapes: These combine to form letters, numbers and geometric shapes.

Letter formation (early): Teach letter formation in groups of letters formed similarly (so they learn 4-5 groups of letters rather than learning 26 individual letters) for formation, orientation and sound.

Letter Size: Teaching size variations (e.g. some have tails that go below the line), and Upper case versus Lower case.

Number skills: Including number name, its meaning (the number that it represents in 1 to 1 counting), formation, and orientation.

Phonological (sound) awareness: Including rhyme, segmenting words into syllables and single sounds, blending sounds together, identifying sounds in different positions in words and manipulating sounds within words.

Master each individual skill in isolation before combining the multiple skills together in the context of spelling or writing.

Posture: Ensure an upright posture at the table and good arm strength (as the solid base) from which to support appropriate hand control.

Finger strength development: To enable a child to hold and move the pencil or other utensils with good control.

What activities can help improve handwriting performance?

Pencil fluency practice (age appropriate patterns designed to enhance fluid pencil movement akin to writing).

Letter (and number) formation practice in groups of common formation or starting point.

Using a pencil grip, specific shape/size pencil and/or slant board to write with to improve how the pencil is held and moved.

Adapted handwriting paper to support appropriate letter size, writing on the line and spacing between letters and words.

Pegs: Make an animal face on a paper plate and put pegs around the edges to make fur as a fun way of building finger strength.

Play-doh: Rolling, squishing, pinching and making things with playdough to increase finger strength.

Why should I seek therapy if I notice difficulties with handwriting performance in my child?

Therapeutic intervention to help a child with handwriting performance difficulties is important to:

Avoid my child becoming disengaged in an academic environment due to difficulties completing handwriting activities in class as handwriting difficulties are the leading cause of academic under-performance.

Avoid frustration experienced by parents, teachers and the child when the child is struggling to remain engaged in academic activities that involve handwriting.

Prevent a large skill deficit developing between a child's high reading capacity and lower spelling and writing skills which only serves to reinforce the dislike of handwriting.

Improve the legibility of my child's writing so they can get appropriate credit for the work they have produced.

Ensure that my child's handwriting (and subsequent spelling) progresses age appropriately rather than falling behind due to fatigue from physical handwriting challenges.

Ensure that my child is able to get their ideas down on paper in a timely manner.

Ensure that what my child writes matches their intellectual/verbal capacity as much as possible.

If left untreated what can difficulties with handwriting performance lead to?

When children have difficulties with handwriting performance, they are might also have difficulties with:

Poor persistence with handwriting tasks, which puts a child at risk of becoming disengaged in an academic environment and under-performing academically.

Difficulties meeting academic criteria due to poor handwriting skills.

Increased pressure and anxiety in a school aged child due to difficulties keeping up in class.

Difficulties completing exams due to difficulty answering all questions in writing within the allocated time.

Poor self esteem when a child compares their abilities with their peers.

Being pressured to turn to IT as the solution when they don't have the underlying skills for success in this written communication from either.

What type of therapy is recommended for handwriting performance difficulties?

If your child has difficulties with written expectations, it is recommended they consult an Occupational Therapist.

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Handwriting performance - Kid Sense Child Development

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What is handwriting performance? Although we commonly think of handwriting as simply what we see written on the page, handwriting actually reflects two equally important aspects: Product: What the written outcome looks like (e.g. Are the letters neat, legible, written on the line and correctly formed?). Performance: How the handwriting is performed (e.g.

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​Explore how educators can create authentic, and engaging writing experiences with children, while embedding important learning foci for development of emergent literacy.

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Understanding Beginning Writing Skills in Preschoolers

By Kristin Stanberry

It's easy to keep track of your preschooler's growth in height and weight. But how can you measure your child's development in other areas? For instance, can you tell if he or she is learning and mastering age-appropriate writing skills?

As your child's parent and first teacher, there is no one better to observe and gather information about the progress she is making during the preschool years. The questions and tips that follow will help you understand what type of early writing skills your 3- and 4-year-old child should be developing and how you can support her budding writing skills.

Is your child developing age-appropriate writing skills?
The most important thing for parents to remember is that writing during the preschool years is, well, messy! The goal is to help children understand how writing works, that it connects in meaningful ways to reading, and that it communicates information, through words and symbols. Do you know what basic writing skills your child should be learning and mastering at ages 3 or 4? Review the following questions, and note how your child is doing in each area. Does my child:

Express ideas and stories through pictures she draws?

Use pencils, crayons, and markers for drawing and writing?

Copy and draw lines and circles, and symbols like "X" and "+"?

Attempt (with some success) to write some of the letters in her first name?

Show an understanding of how writing and drawing help us communicate and function in everyday life?

Encouraging early writing skills at home
Now that you understand some of the beginning writing skills your child should have, you can reinforce those skills and help her make further progress. It's easy (and fun!) to practice writing with your child throughout the day. Here are some activities to try:

Let your child use writing tools such as pencils, washable markers, chalk, and crayons. Gather and organize these materials, along with some paper, in a box that your child can decorate and have access to.

Encourage your child to use drawing to express ideas and tell stories.

Show your child that written words are a part of daily life. From grocery lists and email messages to billboards and signs in stores, writing is everywhere!

Teach your child to print her first name. (Be patient, as this will take practice.) This is very empowering for a preschooler!

Label your child's belongings with her name. And, let your child label some of her own things (such as a notebook or crayon box).

Let your child mold clay letters for hands-on practice shaping letters of the alphabet.

Help your child create a pretend menu using pictures of food from newspapers and magazines

Note: If your child has a regular babysitter or daycare provider, be sure to pass these tips along to the caregiver.

Promoting early writing skills at preschool
There is a growing emphasis on structured learning in today's preschools and while there is still plenty of play time, time in school tends to follow a more rigorous curriculum than in the past. To keep track of how well your young child is learning to write, you'll want to:

Ask your child's teacher how writing is being taught and practiced - and whether your child is doing well or struggling.

Find out what specific early writing skills your child will need to master in order to have a successful start in kindergarten.

Collect samples of your child's writing in the work and projects she brings home, display them at home, and discuss them together.

Encourage your child to talk about school and learning, and try to gauge how she feels about writing.

Cause for concern? Where to turn for advice and assistance
If you're worried that your child's writing skills are below-average for her age group, rest assured that not all preschoolers learn to write at the same pace. However, you may want to seek help if your child:

Dislikes and avoids writing and copying.

Is late in learning to copy and write.

Has trouble remembering the shapes of letters and numbers.

Frequently reverses or otherwise incorrectly draws letters, numbers, and symbols.

Discuss your concerns with your child's preschool teacher or other personnel at your local school district. Your child's pediatrician might also be able to provide guidance. And, be sure that your child has undergone vision and hearing screenings. If you're concerned that your child may have a learning disability or delay, you should contact your public school system and request (in writing) that a diagnostic screening (at no cost to you) be conducted (available under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

Suggested Tip!

Read Books New Ways

Does it feel like you've read the same story 100 times? Read it a new way: Ask the child questions about what they think will happen next and encourage them to tell you what they see in the illustrations.
Learn more >

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Understanding Beginning Writing Skills in Preschoolers

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How can you tell if your child is learning and mastering age-appropriate writing skills? The questions and tips that follow will help you understand what type of early writing skills your 3- and 4-year-old child should be developing and how you can support her budding writing skills.

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Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers

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This practice guide provides four recommendations for improving elementary students’ writing. Each recommendation includes implementation steps and solutions for common roadblocks. The recommendations also summarize and rate supporting evidence. This guide is geared toward teachers, literacy coaches…

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teaching elementary school students to be effective writers

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WWC | Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers

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This practice guide provides four recommendations for improving elementary students’ writing. Each recommendation includes implementation steps and solutions for common roadblocks. The recommendations also summarize and rate supporting evidence. This guide is geared toward teachers, literacy coaches, and other educators who want to improve the writing of their elementary students.

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Why writing matters.

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Introduction

During free-choice time, Mrs. Jackson (all names are pseudonyms and vignettes fictional) moves around her preschool classroom. Her students are busy in centers - some engaging in dramatic play, some working in journals, and some drawing animals at the science center. Carmen looks up to Mrs. Jackson as she passes her table and asks, "How do I write snake?"

Mrs. Jackson looks around the classroom at her students, who are just beginning to experiment with writing. Some students, like Carmen, know the names of all the letters and can produce most of them accurately. A lot of Carmen's classmates, however, are still learning to write their own names, and others do not yet know the difference between drawing and writing. How can Mrs. Jackson help all of her students when they are in such different places in their development?

How should Mrs. Jackson respond? Should she name the letters of the word? Focus on the sounds in the word? Encourage Carmen to write down her "best guess" and praise her hard work? And how should Mrs. Jackson help the next child, and the next?

Many preschool teachers recognize the importance of early writing by making writing materials available in their classrooms and providing opportunities to write during the school day (Gerde & Bingham, 2012). However, for teachers like Mrs. Jackson who want to offer explicit writing instruction to their students, the diversity of skill levels in a typical classroom presents a real challenge. Preschool teachers receive limited practical guidance about how to apply the research on early writing to help individualize instruction for children. Not surprisingly, recent research indicates that few teachers understand how to appropriately scaffold instruction to help children take the next step in their writing development (Gerde & Bingham, 2012).

In this article, we offer a straightforward framework that teachers can use to easily evaluate children's writing and help children take the next step in development. We address why it is important to foster early writing skills, how writing typically develops in young children, and how teachers can actively support this development. We discuss in detail four different students who might appear in a typical preschool classroom and how teachers can use their understanding of early writing to shape instruction for these students.

We also provide examples and concrete suggestions for fitting individualized writing instruction into common classroom contexts, including centers, journaling, and morning message. This article will help teachers individualize early writing support for all students and at the same time foster other important early literacy skills through writing.

Early writing and why it matters

Early writing, often used synonymously with the term emergent writing, encompasses the following: (a) the manual act of producing physical marks (i.e., mechanics), (b) the meanings children attribute to these markings (i.e., composition), and (c) understandings about how written language works (i.e., orthographic knowledge; Berninger, 2009). Although mechanics and composition are important features of early writing, we focus our attention on orthographic knowledge-how children's marks reflect growing understandings of the writing system.

These understandings include both general conventions (e.g., print goes from left to right on a page) and understandings of specific features (e.g., speech can be represented by individual sounds, which can be written down using letters). We use the term early writing to refer to children's representations of their knowledge about the writing system (i.e., orthographic knowledge).

Early writing is one of the best predictors of children's later reading success (National Early Literacy Panel [NELP], 2008). Specifically, early writing is part of a set of important foundational literacy skills that serve as necessary precursors to conventional reading (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998), including developing understandings of both print (i.e., print concept and alphabet knowledge) and sound (i.e., phonological awareness).

Print knowledge includes general understandings of how print works (e.g., left-to-right directionality) and the names and sounds of the alphabet. Knowledge about sound, or phonological awareness, includes the ability to attend to and manipulate sound structure of language, progressing from awareness of larger chunks (e.g., sentences, rhyme, beginning sounds) to blending and segmenting individual units of sound (i.e., phonemic awareness), for example, understanding that the word cat is made up of /c/, /a/, and /t/. These early skills work together to lay a foundation for later reading success (NELP, 2008).

As children integrate their knowledge of print and sound, they begin to grasp the alphabetic principle, a critical achievement in early literacy. The alphabetic principle is the understanding that oral language is made up of smaller sounds and that letters represent those sounds in a systematic way. Children can grow in their understanding of how print and sound work together through experimenting with writing. Writing serves as a type of laboratory, in which even very young children are actively creating and testing hypotheses about how writing works (Bissex, 1980). Children notice print in their environment and use their experiences to invent and revise ideas about the rules that govern writing, "cracking the code" of literacy one piece at a time.

For example, a child might believe based on his experience with print and knowledge of the world that really big animals have really big written representations. So he might represent the word elephant with a very big and wide scribble and might represent the word bee with a very short, tiny scribble. As he begins to grasp the alphabetic principle, his hypotheses change, and he may later represent the word elephant with an L and the word bee with the letter B.

How early writing develops

To help young children develop as writers, teachers need to understand typical writing development and use this knowledge to identify what children already know and what they are ready to learn next. Specifically, each child's writing provides teachers with a window into what that child knows about print and sound.

Children learning to write in an alphabetic language such as English typically follow a specific sequence of development (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2008; Clay, 1975; Ferreiro & Teberosky, 1982; Hildreth, 1936; Kaderavek & Justice, 2000; Lieberman, 1985; Schickedanz & Casbergue, 2009; Temple, Nathan, & Temple, 2012). Drawing on this body of work we next describe four levels of early writing development, designed to provide teachers with a straightforward framework with which to evaluate children's written efforts.

Drawing and Scribbling

Early in development, children's drawings are their writings, and children make no distinction between the two when asked to write. Children then begin to make separate marks representing "writing" apart from their drawings, a key developmental event indicating that children have begun to grasp the functionality of writing as separate from illustration. These early marks are often directionless scribbles. These scribbles then begin to take on features of written text children see in their environment, becoming horizontal and moving from left to right on a page. The scribbles eventually evolve into separate, distinct characters (e.g., Lieberman, 1985).

Connections to other literacy skills

Children who are drawing and scribbling usually do not yet understand that writing is related to speech. Similarly, when listening to a storybook being read aloud, children at this level may not understand that the text carries its own meaning, and that the words the teacher is saying to tell the story come from the text (Justice, Pullen, & Pence, 2008). Their alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness skills are at the beginning points in development. They may know a few letter names, such as the first letter in their name. They may also be working on phonological awareness skills that attend to larger units of spoken language, such as rhyme.

Letters and Letter-Like Forms

Next, children begin to write with letter-like forms and a few letter shapes. Although these early forms mimic letter shapes, they are at first not conventional letters. When children do begin writing conventional letters, they often produce what may appear to be random strings of letters because they do not yet connect letters to the sounds in spoken language. Children typically begin by reproducing letters found in their names. The first letter of their first names, along with other name letters, are usually seen repeatedly in children's early writing (Treiman, Kessler, & Bourassa, 2001). Children at this level may mix symbols and numbers with random letter-like forms and conventional letters.

Connections to other literacy skills

When children are consistently writing with seemingly random letters and letter-like forms, they understand that print carries meaning, but they still do not generally understand that letters represent the sounds in spoken words in a systematic way. Although they may be growing in phonological awareness and developing knowledge of the alphabet, including the names of some letters, they have not yet made the speech-to-print connection. Because they represent their knowledge of print in their writings without representing sounds, their messages cannot be understood by adults without children's interpretations.

Salient and Beginning Sounds

Children reach a critical point in writing development when they start to represent the sounds that they hear in spoken language. Relying on their growing knowledge of both print and sound, children begin to invent spellings, which means they create logical phonetic spellings based on their knowledge.

They often represent salient sounds, or the sounds that are the most prominent because of the way they feel in the child's mouth (Bear et al., 2008). For example, a child might write B for the word baby, because her lips come together twice when saying the word. She might spell V for elevator, because that sound is the most distinct due to the vibration felt when saying the word. She might logically substitute F for V because the sounds feel similar on the lips. Beginning sounds in words are often the most salient ones, so children will have many beginning sounds in words represented. When writing a sentence, children may represent a letter for each salient sound they hear, for each word or for each syllable. For example, when writing the sentence, I like juice, a child may write IKJ without any spaces.

Connections to other literacy skills

Children who are writing with salient and beginning sounds are beginning to grasp the alphabetic principle. At this point, children combine their knowledge of print and sound for the first time. They are just beginning to understand this principle and cannot yet identify where spoken words begin and end in written text (Morris, Bloodgood, Lomax, & Perney, 2003), so they usually do not use spaces between words while writing. This understanding shows up in in children's "reading" as well. When finger-pointing to the words in memorized texts such as songs and nursery rhymes, children will most likely point to words according to stress units or syllables, getting off track on multisyllabic words (Flanigan, 2007).

Beginning and Ending Sounds

As children's phonemic awareness grows to the point at which they can attend to individual sounds in words, they begin to represent beginning and ending sounds of words in their writing. They also consistently write with spaces between words, indicating that they understand where word boundaries occur. When writing the simple consonant-vowel-consonant pattern word map, children at this level will write MP.

Children also use a letter-name strategy when beginning to spell, using their knowledge of letter names to create spellings; for example, eight might be spelled AT. Children who are writing with beginning and ending sounds generally do not consistently represent the middle sounds in words, especially vowel sounds, until the next phase in their development (see Bear et al., 2008).

Connections to other literacy skills

Children's invented spellings mirror their early reading ability very closely (Morris et al., 2003). At this level, they are able to finger-point accurately to the words of a memorized rhyme and make self-corrections if they get off track. They actively use their knowledge of letter sounds and letter names to help them identify words, but often guess based on the first letter and sometimes last letter of a word, not yet attending to the vowel sounds; cat and cut would be most likely read the same way (Ehri, 2005). Over time, children's spellings become more conventional as they learn to represent all the sounds in words.

Providing appropriate support for young writers

This developmental writing framework provides teachers with guidance for appropriately scaffolding young children's efforts in early writing. The next sections provide classroom examples of individualizing writing support for children in each of the four developmental levels. In each example, Mrs. Jackson uses her observations of what the child already knows (as represented correctly in his or her writing) and what he or she is on the verge of learning (according to his or her level of development) to scaffold work for that child within his or her instructional range. By using the framework outlined in the Table 1, Mrs. Jackson is able to efficiently provide support to each child, moving him or her toward the next step of writing development.

Drawing and Scribbling: Katrina

"This says castle," Katrina says, pointing to her drawing of a castle in her journal. Katrina is an imaginative young girl who, inspired by story time today, wants to build a castle in the block center. The center is already full, so Katrina must sign up for the next turn, writing her name as a single horizontal scribble. While she waits, she draws a plan for her castle in her journal. Mrs. Jackson provides time in class every day for students to write or draw in their journals and encourages their use throughout the day.

At this point in her development, Katrina has had little experience with print and pays more attention to the pictures in books. Her journal pages contain only drawings, and she draws or scribbles when asked to write. She can recognize her name and about three letters that appear in her name, but she has not yet begun to learn the sounds associated with these letters and does not yet incorporate them into her writing.

As indicated by Table 1, there are three important goals for Katrina's writing development. She needs to develop a distinction between pictures and text, start using individual units while writing, and develop her representation of her own name beyond the first letter.

Mrs. Jackson decides to focus on the first goal today and uses the picture book from story time as an example of the difference between pictures and print. "I love your castle, Katrina! Let's look at our book again. Yes, there's a picture of a castle there too! And let me show you one other thing, over here, there is the word castle. See, the book tells the story in two ways - in the pictures and in the writing." Mrs. Jackson coaches Katrina to add some scribbles beneath her picture and praises the result - "It looks like the book now!" She then directs Katrina's attention back to the book, highlighting how each word is made up of letters. She focuses on some words that include the letter k, the letter most familiar to Katrina.

Going forward, Mrs. Jackson will engage Katrina in a dialogue about her journal entries, over time encouraging her to incorporate familiar letters into her writing. Although Katrina's journal does not at all resemble conventional writing at this point, it is the first step toward making print concrete for Katrina. At this point, Katrina's writing development focuses on increasing her knowledge of print; she is not yet ready to integrate phonological awareness or her letter-sound knowledge into her writing activities.

Letters and Letter-Like Forms: Marvin

Marvin is playing doctor in a dramatic play center, writing and signing prescriptions for other students in his group. All of Mrs. Jackson's centers include opportunities and materials for writing. Mrs. Jackson encourages students to make signs and labels for their creations at the blocks and clay centers, draw and label animals and plants in the science center, and incorporate writing into dramatic play, for example, taking orders in a restaurant. Centers give children the chance to experiment with writing at their own level in playful, authentic contexts.

Each prescription Marvin writes includes his name, which he writes as MAV, along with a few other characters that look like letters or numbers. As is often the case for young writers, Marvin's name writing is more advanced than his other writings. He remembers what his name looks like from memory rather than writing letters based on the sounds he hears; he doesn't yet understand that Marvin starts with the /m/ sound. Over the course of the week, Marvin has written several journal entries using a combination of M, A, V, and other characters that resemble letters and numbers, as is typical for children at this second level of writing development.

Judging by the letter-like forms he includes in his writing, Marvin does understand that he should be writing more than three letters, but he isn't sure what to add. Because Marvin's writing does not have any connection to the sounds in the words, the goals for his instruction should push him toward making that connection and developing the alphabetic principle. As indicated by the Table, Marvin needs to make connections between print and sound and use that knowledge to begin to represent beginning or salient sounds in his writing.

When Mrs. Jackson stops by the play center, she praises Marvin: "I like how you wrote your name! Let's write your friends' names on their prescriptions, too!" She then talks to Marvin about the letter M - it is the first letter in his name, and the first sound in his name is /m/. They practice saying "/m/, /m/, Marvin" together while pointing to the letter M. Then Mrs. Jackson asks Marvin which of his "patients" in the dramatic play center have names that start with /m/. With her support, Marvin identifies Maria and Meredith and writes their names down as M's combined with scribbles. With Mrs. Jackson's direction and support, Marvin is also able to identify the /s/ at the beginning of Sam and /l/ at the beginning of Liz. In each case, Mrs. Jackson identifies the letter that makes the target sound and helps Marvin write the letter on the prescription.

Marvin is developing an understanding of how letters represent sounds at the beginning of words, a first step toward grasping the alphabetic principle. Going forward, Mrs. Jackson will encourage Marvin to identify beginning and salient sounds and to match those to letters in his writing in play centers and in his journal, embedding this systematic connection in his mind.

Salient and Beginning Sounds: Carmen

"How do I write snake?" asks Carmen. Carmen is working on a draw-and-label activity in the science center. Because centers allow each child to work at his or her own level, Carmen has labeled a picture of a tiger with T, an elephant with L, and a snake with S. Her ability to identify a salient sound in each word and match it to a letter indicates that she has begun to sound out the words she writes phonetically, and this pattern holds throughout her other class writings this week.

Carmen has an initial understanding of the alphabetic principle and understands that speech is systematically connected to print in a left-to-right fashion. Like most children in this level of writing development, she often uses only one letter to represent syllables or entire words, rather than representing each individual sound.

Her writing skill reflects her other literacy skills; Carmen knows all the letter names and letter sounds and has excellent awareness of the beginning sounds in words. However, when finger-pointing to a known text, such as a nursery rhyme, she often gets off track when she encounters two-syllable words. She generally cannot distinguish between written words that begin with the same sound. For example, she may identify the same word as mom or mother.

As indicated by Table 1, the key goal for Carmen is beginning to hear and represent additional sounds in words in her writing, in particular identifying both initial and final sounds in words. Mrs. Jackson looks at the S on Carmen's paper. "I like the way you wrote down the first sound you heard in the word snake. S-s-s-nake. Great job! Do you hear any other sounds in snake? Let's say the word together and stretch it out."

As they stretch out the word, Mrs. Jackson emphasizes the final /k/ sound, which Carmen identifies. Mrs. Jackson follows up by asking, "How do you write [the sound] /k/?" Carmen might choose the letter C, because that letter represents the /k/ at the beginning of her own name. Carmen settles on the spelling SC, and Mrs. Jackson praises her effort, because Carmen is using the letter-sound correspondences she knows to write based on the sounds she hears within words. During both center and journal time, Mrs. Jackson will encourage Carmen to listen for the final sound in the word and represent that sound in her writing as well as the initial sound. Carmen is spelling!

Beginning and Ending Sounds: Jayden

Jayden is working in the story-writing center, recounting and illustrating the class's recent field trip to a farm. He has written his own name and the names of his friends accurately and has begun to list some animals they saw on the trip, for example, DG for dog, GT for goat, and PG for pig.

Jayden is a diligent writer of words, working very slowly and carefully sounding out words. He has memorized a few simple words that he always writes accurately, such as his friends' names. His other writings this week show that he is primarily writing with beginning and ending sounds in words. He represents most consonant sounds correctly in writing but may still exhibit some confusion with letter names, such as writing YN for when because the pronunciation of the letter-name Y ("why") makes the /w/ sound.

Jayden knows virtually all letter names and letter sounds. In terms of vowels, he is most familiar with the long sounds, which match the names of those letters. For example, he writes snow as SO. He is also able to track a memorized rhyme, self-correcting as he attempts to make the speech-to-print match. He is also actively using his knowledge of letter names and letter sounds to help him sound out words, but this process is slow and labor-intensive for him. He has trouble distinguishing between similar words such as bed and bad, as he does not always attend to vowel sounds in words. When reading, he relies heavily on contextual clues and picture supports to guess the right word when he is unsure.

Because Jayden is working at the fourth level of writing development, two goals are appropriate for him: consistently representing middle vowel sounds in his writing, and writing some simple, complete words. Achieving these goals will also support his reading development by helping him sound out words more accurately.

Mrs. Jackson tries to draw Jayden's attention to the vowel sound in simple words. To build on Jayden's spelling of the word goat ( GT), Mrs. Jackson draws a rectangle with three sections, or boxes, on a piece of paper. She writes the letters G and T in the first and last boxes, respectively. "You wrote two sounds, but there are three. G is at the beginning of goat; T is at the end of goat. What do you hear in the middle?" Mrs. Jackson emphasizes the long /o/ sound. Jayden identifies the sound and writes an O in the middle box, spelling GOT. This spelling represents a step forward in that Jayden is focusing on the medial vowel sound. Moving forward, Mrs. Jackson will support Jayden by continuing to work on both long and short vowel sounds in other simple words.

Putting it all together

As demonstrated by Mrs. Jackson's classroom, preschool children vary widely in their ability to write, and individual instruction is key to scaffolding each child's development. Teachers can also support children of all levels of writing ability within one activity, however, by strategically individualizing how they involve each child.

The morning message is one activity Mrs. Jackson uses to engage children in the process of writing by cocreating a meaningful message for the class. Although this activity is teacher directed, Mrs. Jackson creates an interactive writing environment by modeling the writing process for all children and engaging some children each day in writing as they share the pen.

Mrs. Jackson begins, "Children, we are going to write the words to our message so we can read them." This statement reminds children such as Katrina that we read the words we write. She says and writes, "This week we are studying transportation. Mrs. Jackson peddled her bicycle to school today." When she comes to the word bicycle, she asks, "Who can help me begin the word bicycle? Marvin, what sound do you hear at the beginning of b-b-bicycle?" Mrs. Jackson calls on Marvin because she knows he needs practice making connections between letters and their sounds. Marvin responds, "b-b-bicycle." "Great, Marvin, bicycle does begin with /b/. Does anyone know what letter makes the /b/ sound?" Carmen exclaims, " B!" "Yes, B!" Mrs. Jackson offers Marvin the marker so he can write the B.

Next she asks the children, "How did you get to school today?" Both Katrina and Carmen rode the bus, so Mrs. Jackson brings them up together. She reads aloud as she writes, "____ and ____ rode the____." She invites Katrina and Carmen to write their names in the blanks. Katrina scribbles from left-to-right, and Carmen writes all the letters in her name. Pointing to each word, Mrs. Jackson reads, " Katrina and Carmen rode the... What word is next, Katrina? What type of transportation did you and Carmen take to school?" Katrina says, " Bus."

Mrs. Jackson draws three small boxes in the last blank, one to represent each letter in the word. She says to the class, "Let's write the word bus together. Bus has three letters, 1, 2, 3 [points to the three boxes]. Let's think about the first sound in the word bus. Bus and bicycle begin with the same sound! What letter should I write? ...Great, bus begins with B. Carmen, what other sounds do you hear in bus?" She emphasizes the /s/ at the end of bus. Carmen replies, " S," and Mrs. Jackson directs her to write the S in the last box. "Great you heard /b/ for B and /s/ for S. Listen closely because there is another sound in the middle of the word. Buuuuuus. Jayden, what do you hear?" Jayden says, " U" and adds the U into BUS. At the end of their writing, Mrs. Jackson reads the entire message, pointing to each word and asking children to read along with her.

Conclusion

In this article, we have provided a framework for teachers to understand the goals and types of activities for supporting children at each level of early writing development (see Table 1). How can teachers use this framework to help children move forward in their writing development? The first step is to determine each child's current level of development through observing children's writing. A thoughtful, ongoing examination of children's early writing can provide teachers with a window into children's knowledge of print and sound that can inform productive instruction.

Although writing progresses in a developmental order, it is not necessarily the case that children master one level before moving to the next. Many children move back and forth between levels of difficulty, particularly across writing tasks (e.g., name writing vs. story writing), sometimes exhibiting different levels on the same day! Because children show this flexibility in their writing, it would be helpful for teachers to evaluate three or more writing samples taken over the course of a few days across different classroom contexts. Only one of these samples should be name writing, as children tend to write their names at a more sophisticated level than they do other words (Levin, Both-de Vries, Aram, & Bus, 2005).

From these writings, a teacher can identify the highest level at which children are consistently writing (apart from their name-writing representation). There is one key question to consider when determining writing level: Are children representing any sounds in their writing? The answer to this question tells teachers whether children are beginning to grasp the alphabetic principle (i.e., salient and beginning sounds; beginning and ending sounds). After determining each child's level, teachers can use Table 1 to readily identify the appropriate goals and teaching strategies for each level across common classroom writing contexts.

Effectively incorporating support for children's varying writing skills provides a gateway to developing other critical literacy skills and significantly contributes to later reading achievement (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). The knowledge teachers gain from assessing children's writing samples can be used to select appropriate, individualized strategies for scaffolding and expanding children's writing efforts. Individualizing writing instruction provides meaningful and approachable writing experiences for all children, setting the stage for reading and writing success for years to come.

Note

The preparation of this article was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305A060021 to the University of Virginia-funding the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education.

Biographies

Sonia Q. Cabell is a research scientist at the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. e-mail [email protected]

Laura S. Tortorelli is a graduate student at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.

Hope K. Gerde is an assistant professor at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.

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How Do I Write...? Scaffolding Preschoolers' Early Writing Skills

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During free-choice time, Mrs. Jackson (all names are pseudonyms and vignettes fictional) moves around her preschool classroom. Her students are busy in centers - some engaging in dramatic play, some working in journals, and some drawing animals at the science center. Carmen looks up to Mrs.

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Mary Amato's Tips for Keeping a Writer's Notebook

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Find out why it's a good idea for young aspiring writers to keep a journal, and get practical tips on journal writing from children's author and writing coach Mary Amato. She says, don't forget to bring a writing journal everywhere you go!

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Includes stories with prompts to encourage writing.

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Literacy (Ages 6 to 8) | Ready To Learn 2010-2015 Initiative (PBS KIDS Lab) | PBS LearningMedia

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Browse our collection of online games for kids ages 6-8 and reinforce your literacy abilities while practicing basic computer skills! Descubre nuestra colección de juegos en línea para niños de 6 a 8 años y consolida habilidades de alfabetización, practicando habilidades de informática.

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Additional PBS interactive games offered in English and Spanish for EL learners.

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Literacy (Ages 6 to 8) | Ready To Learn 2010-2015 Initiative (PBS KIDS Lab) | PBS LearningMedia

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Browse our collection of online activities for kids ages 6-8 and reinforce your literacy abilities while practicing basic computer skills. Descubre nuestra colección de actividades en línea para niños de 6 a 8 años y consolida habilidades de alfabetización, practicando habilidades básicas de informática.

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Developing and Encouraging Writing Skills at home

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Developing and Encouraging Writing Skills at home

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Developing Writing and Spelling at Home (Pre-K)

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When engaging in writing, young children often mirror what they see around them; adults and older children writing lists, notes, text messaging. They are observing the way writing is used in our everyday lives. Here are some simple things families can do to support young children's writing.

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These apps and websites cover several of the skills that kids need to become strong writers. Whether you have a preschooler just learning to form letters or an older kid who's learning the finer points of constructing stories and self-expression through writing, you'll find excellent learning tools on our list.
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13 Excellent Writing Apps and Websites for Kids | Brightly

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These apps and websites cover several of the skills that kids need to become strong writers. Whether you have a preschooler just learning to form letters or an older kid who's learning the finer points of constructing stories and self-expression through writing, you'll find excellent learning tools on our list.

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Inspiring Young Writers - Multiple Reviews and App Links

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Inspiring Young Writers - Multiple Reviews and App Links

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Top Picks

RELATED

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Writing Platforms and Communities

Writing A-Z

Abundant, thorough resources help both teachers and students

Bottom line: This full-service program can help teachers easily weave writing into their curriculum.

Grades: K–6 Price: Free to try

Night Zookeeper

Impressive, subscription-based writing resource with individual feedback

Bottom line: This platform will inspire young writers but does require a generous budget.

Quill

Let students do the writing to make grammar lessons more meaningful

Bottom line: This tool offers excellent opportunities for grammar and writing practice, well-tailored to students' abilities and needs.

Grades: 1–12 Price: Free, Paid

BoomWriter

Collaborative writing platform has the potential to motivate

Bottom line: There's creativity possibility in this tool's unique brand of collaborative and competitive writing, but teachers should take care to keep things positive.

Edublogs

Encourage student expression and maintain digital portfolios with easy-to-use blog creator

Bottom line: Edublogs is a fantastic platform for any teacher committed to providing consistent opportunities for creation and reflection.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free, Paid

StoriumEdu

Collaborative writing game inspires purposeful storytelling

Bottom line: With some planning and customization, this unique card game can motivate thoughtful and sustained creative writing in your classroom.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free to try

ThinkCERCA

Structured literacy program inspires deep analysis, thoughtful writing

Bottom line: This is an expertly scaffolded and pedagogically sound resource for developing critical reading and writing skills.

Writable

Stellar program scaffolds the writing process with peer review and feedback

Bottom line: This is an intelligently structured tool for teaching writing and review that focuses on process as much as product.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free to try

NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program

Wildly engaging contest turns students into novelists in 30 days

Bottom line: A thoughtful adaptation of the famous and fun grown-up novel writing contest, NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program is brimming with advice and encouragement as well as classroom support.

Storytelling and Book Makers

Tell About This

Photo and word prompts inspire storytelling; app records the results

Bottom line: Versatile tool can be used as a pre-writing or publishing activity.

Grades: Pre-K–1 Price: Free to try, Paid

Write About This

Fun pictures and prompts are great for getting kids to start writing

Bottom line: The tool’s flexibility for many possible applications makes it an excellent bet.

Grades: Pre-K–5 Price: $3.99

My Story School eBook Maker

Sleek platform is a great artistic tool, intro to digital creation

Bottom line: This is a great and accessible option for getting kids telling stories and introducing them to digital creation tools.

Book Creator

Magically easy way to create and publish digital books and multimedia

Bottom line: This is a top-quality creation tool that lets students of many ages and abilities publish their own digital books.

Grades: K–12 Price: Free to try

Elementari

Storybook creation tool offers cool blend of ELA, art, and coding

Bottom line: This is a great storytelling tool for younger kids that also offers an entry point into coding and computational thinking.

Grades: 1–5 Price: Free, Paid

Storybird

Social storytelling site helps kids create, publish storybooks

Bottom line: A great fit for teachers looking to develop students' writing and digital citizenship skills through storybook creation.

Grades: K–12 Price: Free to try

Me: A Kid's Diary

Unique take on self-exploration relies on prompts to guide reflection

Bottom line: With plenty of ways to express and document their thoughts and more, this app can help students learn something new about themselves.

Shadow Puppet Edu

Resource-rich video slideshow maker a gem for a variety of classrooms

Bottom line: Easy-to-use free tool is a must-have for elementary classrooms; just keep an eye on sharing and privacy.

StoryJumper

Free storybook creation site has great support for classrooms

Bottom line: Reliable storytelling tool gives students solid tools to create, collaborate, and share work including real, printed books.

For Special Needs Students

Read&Write

Useful text-to-speech extension unlocks the written word

Bottom line: This handy set of accessibility tools helps students get the access they need when they need it, promoting independence and building confidence.

Grades: K–12 Price: Free, Free to try

Pictello

Fabulous tool can help kids create social stories

Bottom line: Pictello is a great way for kids to create social stories that can help them find their unique voice and prepare for internal and external struggles.

Grades: 1–5 Price: $19.99

CAST UDL Book Builder

Sensitively designed so any student can write and share books

Bottom line: CAST UDL Book Builder is an excellent resource to get kids started on digital content creation; it's simple and straightforward and caters to a variety of learning styles.

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Interactive Learning Opportunities

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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Emergent writing is young children's first attempts at the writing process. Children as young as 2 years old begin to imitate the act of writing by creating drawings and symbolic markings that represent their thoughts and ideas (Rowe & Neitzel 2010; Dennis & Votteler 2013). This is the beginning of a series of stages that children progress through as they learn to write (see "Stages of Emergent Writing"). Emergent writing skills, such as the development of namewriting proficiency, are important predictors of children's future reading and writing skills (National Center for Family & Literacy 2008; Puranik & Lonigan 2012).

Teachers play an important role in the development of 3- to 5-year-olds' emergent writing by encouraging children to communicate their thoughts and record their ideas (Hall et al. 2015). In some early childhood classrooms, however, emergent writing experiences are almost nonexistent. One recent study, which is in accord with earlier research, found that 4- and 5-year-olds (spread across 81 classrooms) averaged just two minutes a day either writing or being taught writing (Pelatti et al. 2014). This article shares a framework for understanding emergent writing and ties the framework to differentiating young children's emergent writing experiences.

Understanding emergent writing

Researchers and educators often use the term emergent literacy to define a broad set of language and literacy skills focused primarily on the development and significance of emergent reading skills. To better understand writing development-and to support teachers' work with young children-researchers have proposed a framework to explain emergent writing practices (Puranik & Lonigan 2014). The framework is composed of three domains: conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and generative knowledge.

Conceptual knowledge includes learning the function of writing. In this domain, young children learn that writing has a purpose and that print is meaningful (i.e., it communicates ideas, stories, and facts). For example, young children become aware that the red street sign says Stop and the letters under the yellow arch spell McDonald's. They recognize that certain symbols, logos, and markings have specific meanings (Wu 2009).

Procedural knowledge is the mechanics of letter and word writing (e.g., name writing) and includes spelling and gaining alphabet knowledge. Learning the alphabetic code (including how to form letters and the sounds associated with each letter) is an essential component of gaining procedural knowledge. Children benefit from having multiple opportunities throughout the day to develop fine motor skills and finger dexterity using a variety of manipulatives (e.g., magnetic letters, pegboards) and writing implements.

Generative knowledge describes children's abilities to write phrases and sentences that convey meaning. It is the ability to translate thoughts into writing that goes beyond the word level (Puranik & Lonigan 2014). During early childhood, teachers are laying the foundation for generative knowledge as children learn to express themselves orally and experiment with different forms of written communication, such as composing a story, writing notes, creating lists, and taking messages. Children can dictate words, phrases, or sentences that an adult can record on paper, or they can share ideas for group writing.

Developing conceptual, procedural, and generative knowledge of writing

Children gain knowledge of and interest in writing as they are continually exposed to print and writing in their environment. There are multiple strategies teachers can use to scaffold children's writing, such as verbally reminding children to use writing in their classroom activities and providing appropriate writing instructions (Gerde, Bingham, & Wasik 2012). By being aware of children's current fine motor abilities and their progress in emergent writing, teachers can use a mix of strategies to foster growth in each child's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978).

Practicing name writing

One of the first words children usually learn to write is their first name (Both-de Vries & Bus 2008). Name writing increases children's conceptual and procedural knowledge. Names are meaningful to children, and preschoolers typically are interested in learning to write the letters in their name, especially the first letter (Both-de Vries & Bus 2008). Namewriting proficiency provides a foundation for other literacy knowledge and skills; it is associated with alphabet knowledge, letter writing, print concepts, and spelling (Cabell et al. 2009; Drouin & Harmon 2009; Puranik & Lonigan 2012).

Preschoolers benefit from daily writing experiences, so it is helpful to embed writing in the daily routine, such as having children write (or attempt to write) their names at sign-in and during choice times. Be sensitive to preschoolers' varying levels of fine motor skills and promote the joy of experimenting with the art of writing, regardless of a child's current skill level. Encourage invented spelling (Ouellette & Sénéchal 2017) and attempts at writing letters or letter-like symbols.

As Ms. Han's preschoolers enter the classroom, they sign in, with parental support, by writing their names on a whiteboard at the classroom entrance. Children in Ms. Noel's classroom go to a special table and sign in as they enter the room. Ms. Patel instructs her preschoolers to answer the question of the day by writing their names under their chosen answers. Today, the children write their names to answer the question "What are your favorite small animals-piglets, ducklings, or kittens?" Juan and Maria help their friends read the question and write their names under the appropriate headings. Pedro writes Pdr under the piglets heading, Anthony writes his complete name under ducklings, and Tess writes the letter T under kittens. In Mr. Ryan's class, children write their names during different activities. Today, children sign in as they pretend to visit the doctor in one learning center and sign for a package delivery in another. Meanwhile, Tommy walks around the room asking other preschoolers to sign their names in the autograph book he created in the writing center.

Tips for teachers

Develop a sign-in or sign-out routine that allows children to write, or attempt to write, their names each day. In some classrooms, or for some children, the routine may begin with writing the first letter instead of the whole name or with scribbling letterlike symbols.

Use peer helpers to aid children with the name-writing process.

Model writing your name and promote name-writing activities in several centers through the day, such as having children sign their name as they write a prescription or when they complete a painting.

Learning from teacher modeling

Children benefit from teachers modeling writing and from opportunities to interact with others on writing projects. Teachers can connect writing to topics of interest, think aloud about the process of composing a message (Dennis & Votteler 2013), and explain how to plan what to write (e.g., choosing words and topics, along with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation). Children struggling to attain early writing skills benefit from explicit teaching (Hall et al. 2015). Teach children that letters create words and words create sentences. Use environmental print (e.g., labels, charts, signs, toy packaging, clothing, and billboards) to help children realize that print is meaningful and functional (Neumann, Hood, & Ford 2013). These types of activities build both conceptual and procedural knowledge.

When Ms. Noel sits with the children during snack, she talks with them about the different foods they like to eat. Ben tells her he likes chicken. She writes on a small whiteboard, "Ben likes chicken." She asks Ben to read the phrase to a friend. Later, Ben writes the phrase himself.

Mr. Ryan conducts a sticky note poll. He creates a giant spiderweb and writes the question, "Are you afraid of spiders? Yes or no." He gives the children sticky notes so each can write either yes or no and then place it on the giant web. This activity is followed by a discussion of spiders.

Tips for teachers

Explicitly model writing by showing the writing process to children and thinking aloud while writing. Instead of writing the question of the day or the morning message before the children arrive, write it in front of them.

​Label specific items in the room, and draw children's attention to the written words. Write out functional phrases on signs related to routines, such as "Take three crackers" or "Wash hands before eating," then read and display the signs.

​Have the children paint large classroom signs related to themes being explored, such as the National Weather Station, Snack Bar, Public Library, or Entomology Center.

Writing throughout the day

Preschoolers enjoy experimenting with the writing process. Emergent writing experiences can include spontaneous writing during center time and teacherguided writing activities. Writing can become an important component of every learning center in the preschool classroom (Pool & Carter 2011), especially if teachers strategically place a variety of writing materials throughout the classroom and offer specific guidance on using the materials (Mayer 2007). (See "Learning Centers: Adding Meaningful Writing Materials and Literacy Props.")

Teachers can intentionally promote peer-to-peer scaffolding by having children participate in collaborative writing experiences. Read-alouds are also a wonderful means of promoting writing; there are a number of stories that feature characters in books writing letters, stories, messages, and lists (see "Books That Promote Writing"). Model writing stories, making lists, or labeling objects, and then encourage your preschoolers to write a response letter to a character in a story, create their own storybook, or write a wish list or a shopping list. Such a variety of writing experiences will also build their generative knowledge of writing.

Ms. Han has strategically placed a variety of writing materials throughout the classroom-a scientific journal in the discovery area so children can record their observations and ideas; a graph paper notebook in the block area for drafting blueprints with designs and words; and a receipt book, paper, and markers in the dramatic play area. Savannah sits at the discovery center looking at a classroom experiment. Ms. Han asks, "Savannah, could you write about your observations in our science journal?" Savannah begins writing in the journal.

Three boys are playing in the block area. Ms. Han asks, "What are you building?" Marcus replies, "We are going to build a rocket ship." Ms. Han says, "Could you create a blueprint of your rocket and then build it?" The boys eagerly begin drawing a plan. Several children in the dramatic play center are drawing different types of flowers for a flower market. Ms. Han says, "In a flower market, signs tell customers what is for sale and how much it costs. Would you like to create some signs?" The children readily agree and start to create signs.

Tips for teachers

Strategically place writing materials, such as sticky notes, small chalkboards, whiteboards, envelopes, clipboards, journals, stencils, golf pencils, markers, and various types, sizes, and colors of paper throughout the classroom.

Provide specific teacher guidance to scaffold children's writing. While some children may be off and running with an open-ended question, others might be better supported if the teacher helps write their ideas-at least to get them started.

Create writing opportunities connected to your current classroom themes or topics of interest. Involve the children in collaborative writing projects, such as creating a diorama after a farm visit and making labels for the different animals and the barn. With teacher support, the class could also develop a narrative to describe their farm visit.

Home-school connection

Both preschool writing instruction and home writing experiences are essential components of helping children develop writing skills. A major advantage of the home- school connection is that children see the value of what they learn in school when parents actively participate in the same type of activities at home. Teachers can encourage parents to display photos of their child engaged in writing activities at home and to share samples of their child's writing or drawings from home to inform instruction (Schickedanz & Casbergue 2009). To maximize parental involvement and support, teachers should be sensitive to the diversity of the families in their programs and be inclusive by promoting writing in children's home languages. These experiences can help promote children's conceptual, procedural, and generative knowledge.

Ms. Noel wants to strengthen home-school connections with the families in her program. She decides to introduce the children to Chester (a stuffed teddy bear). She tells the children that Chester wants to learn more about what the children do at home and to go on some weekend adventures. She says, "Each weekend, Chester will travel home with a child in our class. During the time Chester stays at your house, take pictures of the activities you do with Chester and write about them in the Chester Weekend Adventures journal. At the beginning of the week, bring Chester and the journal back to school to share what you did. We will put Chester and the journal in the classroom library when he is not on a visit, so everyone can see where he has been." The children are excited about taking Chester home and writing about their adventures.

Tips for teachers

Find writing opportunities that strengthen home-school connections. For example, encourage families to create books at home related to a particular theme or a specific topic. Invite children to share their books with the class and then add them to the library.

Invite families to share the types of writing activities their children engage in at home. Encourage parents to establish routines that include writing lists, messages, stories, and letters.

Give families postcards to mail to friends in other states and countries. Have them ask their friends to mail a reply to the preschool class. Create a display of the return messages and postcards.

Teachers play an important role in promoting emergent writing development by scaffolding writing activities that engage young children in building their conceptual, procedural, and generative knowledge. Writing can easily be embedded in daily routines as children write their names, engage in learning centers, practice writing for a purpose based on teacher and peer models, and contribute to group writing activities. Be intentional during interactions with children and incorporate best practices. Promote the development of emergent writing-and emergent literacy-by implementing purposeful strategies that encourage writing in the classroom and at home. Teachers who provide young children with a diverse array of early writing experiences lay the foundation for kindergarten readiness.

Authors' note: A special thanks to all of the teachers who participated in the Striving Readers Literacy Program and shared their literacy ideas. Thanks to Barbara Berrios for sharing the Chester Bear idea.

References

Both-de Vries, A.C., & A.G. Bus. 2008. "Name Writing: A First Step to Phonetic Writing? Does the Name Have a Special Role in Understanding the Symbolic Function of Writing?" Literacy Teaching and Learning 12 (2): 37-55.

Cabell, S.Q., L.M. Justice, T.A. Zucker, & A.S. McGinty. 2009. "Emergent Name-Writing Abilities of Preschool-Age Children with Language Impairment." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 40 (1): 53-66.

Dennis, L.R., & N.K. Votteler. 2013. "Preschool Teachers and Children's Emergent Writing: Supporting Diverse Learners." Early Childhood Education Journal 41 (6): 439-46.

Drouin, M., & J. Harmon. 2009. "Name Writing and Letter Knowledge in Preschoolers: Incongruities in Skills and the Usefulness of Name Writing as a Developmental Indicator." Early Childhood Research Quarterly 24 (3): 263-70.

Gerde, H.K., G.E. Bingham, & B.A. Wasik. 2012. "Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices." Early Childhood Education Journal 40 (6): 351-59.

Hall, A.H., A. Simpson, Y. Guo, & S. Wang. 2015. "Examining the Effects of Preschool Writing Instruction on Emergent Literacy Skills: A Systematic Review of the Literature." Literacy Research and Instruction 54 (2): 115-34.

Mayer, K. 2007. "Emerging Knowledge about Emergent Writing." Young Children 62 (1): 34-41.

National Center for Family Literacy. 2008. Developing Early Literacy: A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention. Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Neumann, M.M., M. Hood, & R.M. Ford. 2013. "Using Environmental Print to Enhance Emergent Literacy and Print Motivation." Reading and Writing 26 (5): 771-93.

Ouellette, G., & M. Sénéchal. 2017. "Invented Spelling in Kindergarten as a Predictor of Reading and Spelling in Grade 1: A New Pathway to Literacy, or Just the Same Road, Less Known?" Developmental Psychology 53 (1): 77-88.

Pelatti, C.Y., S.B. Piasta, L.M. Justice, & A. O'Connell. 2014. "Language- and Literacy-Learning Opportunities in Early Childhood Classrooms: Children's Typical Experiences and Within-Classroom Variability." Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (4): 445-56.

Pool, J.L., & D.R. Carter. 2011. "Creating Print-Rich Learning Centers." Teaching Young Children 4 (4): 18-20.

Puranik, C.S., & C.J. Lonigan. 2012. "Name-Writing Proficiency, Not Length of Name, Is Associated with Preschool Children's Emergent Literacy Skills." Early Childhood Research Quarterly 27 (2): 284-94.

Puranik, C.S., & C.J. Lonigan. 2014. "Emergent Writing in Preschoolers: Preliminary Evidence for a Theoretical Framework." Reading Research Quarterly 49 (4): 453-67.

Rowe, D.W., & C. Neitzel. 2010. "Interest and Agency in 2- and 3-Year-Olds' Participation in Emergent Writing." Reading Research Quarterly 45 (2): 169-95.

Schickedanz, J.A., & R.M. Casbergue. 2009. Writing in Preschool: Learning to Orchestrate Meaning and Marks. 2nd ed. Preschool Literacy Collection. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Ed. & trans. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wu, L.Y. 2009. "Children's Graphical Representations and Emergent Writing: Evidence from Children's Drawings." Early Child Development and Care 179 (1): 69-79.

Photographs: pp. 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, courtesy of the authors; p. 74, © iStock

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Emergent writing skills, such as the development of namewriting proficiency, are important predictors of children's future reading and writing skills.

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Simple Ways to Assess the Writing Skills of Students with Learning Disabilities

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Student writing can be evaluated on five product factors: fluency, content, conventions, syntax, and vocabulary. Writing samples also should be assessed across a variety of purposes for writing to give a complete picture of a student’s writing performance across different text structures and genres.…

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Dysgraphia: More Than Just Bad Handwriting

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Teachers and parents should suspect dysgraphia if a child's handwriting is unusually difficult to read. Find out more about this neurological problem that can cause physical pain as some children struggle to write.

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By Amanda Morin

Students with dysgraphia can have trouble with handwriting, typing, and spelling. What classroom accommodations can help? Here are some ways teachers can make all aspects of writing easier.

Classroom materials and routines

Provide pencil grips or different types of pens or pencils to see what works best for the student.

Provide handouts so there's less to copy from the board.

Provide typed copies of classroom notes or lesson outlines to help the student take notes.

Provide extra time to take notes and copy material.

Allow the student to use an audio recorder or a laptop in class.

Provide paper with different-colored or raised lines to help form letters in the right space.

Provide graph paper (or lined paper to be used sideways) to help line up math problems.

Provide paper assignments with name, date, title, etc., already filled in.

Provide information needed to start writing assignments early.

Help the student break writing assignments into steps.

Provide a rubric and explain how each step is graded.

Give examples of finished assignments.

Offer alternatives to written responses, like giving an oral report.

Completing tests and assignments

Adapt test formats to cut down on handwriting. For example, use "circle the answer" or "fill in the blank" questions.

Grade based on what the student knows, not on handwriting or spelling.

Use a scribe or speech-to-text so the student can dictate test answers and writing assignments.

Let the student choose to either print or use cursive for handwritten responses.

Allow a "proofreader" to look for errors.

Provide extended time on tests.

Provide a quiet room for tests if needed.

Does your child struggle with handwriting? Explore fun, effective expert tips to practice at home.

Tell us what interests you

About the author

About the author

Amanda Morin is the author of "The Everything Parent's Guide to Special Education" and the former director of thought leadership at Understood. As an expert and writer, she helped build Understood from its earliest days.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Whitney Hollins is a special education teacher and adjunct instructor at Hunter College.

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Students with dysgraphia can have trouble with handwriting, typing, and spelling. What classroom accommodations can help? Here are some ways teachers can make all aspects of writing easier. Classroom materials and routines Provide pencil grips or different types of pens or pencils to see what works best for the student.

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Second Language Writing

Learning to write in another language can be a challenging endeavor, especially for those with very limited second language proficiency. In fact, writing is often one of the most difficult skills for ELL students to acquire. It makes sense; after all, would you be more successful at naming a few words in another language, such as Spanish, or at writing a paragraph in that language?

ELL students often receive accommodations to help them acquire language skills to succeed in school. Let's look at some common writing accommodations for ELL students.

Use of a Bilingual Dictionary

For writing assignments and assessments, allow ELL students to use a bilingual word-to-word dictionary that provides vocabulary words in their native language. This accommodation is typically useful for students who are literate in their first language, and who have at least an intermediate level of English proficiency.

Bilingual dictionaries can be helpful during writing practice, but it often takes a significant amount of time to look up unknown words in another language, and this can be a hindrance to student motivation. Additionally, while they provide word-to-word translations of vocabulary, dictionaries often don't teach students to use the correct form of the word. This can result in unclear writing. For these reasons, allow students to use bilingual dictionaries as a supplemental writing aid, and only if they actually want to use them.

Sentence Frames

Sentence frames are sentence templates that teachers provide to students to help them complete a writing task. Often, sentence frames are accompanied by word banks so that students can choose the appropriate words to fill in the blanks.

Sentence frames reduce the pressure associated with asking an ELL student to produce language. They help model the correct format and structure of the English language, so students have exemplary models to refer to. Over time, students will need to depend less and less on the sentence frames as they learn to write their own sentences.

For example, if you want a student to write a paragraph comparing and contrasting an apple to an orange, some frames you might provide include:

An apple has _____, but an orange has _____.

Both apples and oranges are _____.

An apple tastes _____, while an orange tastes _____.

An apple is different from an orange because _____.

Two differences between apples and oranges are _____ and _____.

Two similarities between apples and oranges are _____ and _____.

Reduced Writing Load

The practice of producing writing in your second language can be overwhelming. ELL students should not be required to produce the same amount of text as their native-speaking peers. The amount of time it may take for a low-proficiency ELL student to write just one sentence is much more than the time it would take a native speaker on the same task.

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accommodations for ell students in writing | study.com

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Accommodations for ELL Students in Writing | Study.com

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Learning to write in another language can be a challenging endeavor, especially for those with very limited second language proficiency. In fact, writing is often one of the most difficult skills for ELL students to acquire.

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Engaging ELL students in writing activities

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Engaging ELL students in writing activities

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"The meaning of even a single word is rather more complex than one might imagine."

- Editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, 1980, p. viii

"Teacher, do we need our pencils today?" my Puerto Rican elementary students would urgently ask when I came to their classroom to escort them to my English as a Second Language classroom. I was a student teacher in a Massachusetts elementary school, and it took me awhile to figure out the correlation between the pencil and hallway behavior. If I replied, "Yes, you should bring a pencil," the walk to my classroom took 15 minutes and involved a lot of disruptions, student squabbles, drifting students and other various misbehaviors. As a student teacher, I was very focused on keeping order and creating a challenging learning environment. If I replied, "No, you don't need a pencil today," the walk to my classroom took about five minutes, even with a stop at the drinking fountain.

So, what was the correlation? Writing. The students knew that if they had to bring a pencil they would have to do writing in the class, and they dreaded it. If they didn't need a pencil, we would be working on projects or doing more verbal work, and they liked that. What they weren't expecting was that half-way through my student teaching, I bought 10 boxes of pencils and kept them in my classroom, so they never had to bring a pencil to class - I had plenty to go around. This improved the hallway behavior, but still left me with the question of how to improve ESL student writing when they were frustrated by the practice and went to great lengths to avoid it.

I have been teaching ESL for many years and there is no perfect solution to this problem; however, I do believe I have added quite a few writing activities to my bag of tricks and improved my ability to differentiate writing tasks based on student ability. As I improved my ability to ensure that each student would be successful in the writing activity, their confidence increased, and they were less likely to engage in disruptive behavior. You know what I'm talking about - the long, dramatic search for a pencilâ€¦ and then paperâ€¦ or the meandering walk about the room to get yesterday's writing draft, or the ever popular, "15 minute pencil sharpening" session. I hope some of the writing activities I share with you will help you to reduce anxiety in your ESL students and increase their language and writing skills.

There is a very important correlation between writing and language development. As students develop language skills, they often develop listening skills first (lots of input they can understand), then speaking (they begin to formulate their ideas in the second language), then reading (they can understand the sound/symbol correspondence of the new language and make sense of the words) and finally writing (they have enough language to express their own ideas in writing). This is not true for 100% of language learners, but it is true for the majority of them. Why is writing often the last skill to emerge? It almost seems that reading would be more difficult because the student needs to sound out words and understand the author's message. It would seem writing might be easier because students are sharing their own ideas already in their heads and simply putting them on paper. However, writing requires a lot more processing of language in order to produce a message.

First the student must have an idea, then think of the appropriate way to say it, then start to write it and spell it correctly, and then create another sentence to continue to communicate the idea. If we add the students' worry that they are making huge, embarrassing errors or that their ideas aren't very good in the first place, then we begin to understand the complexity involved in writing in a second language. In fact, the way we communicate, or the way students put their ideas on paper, is largely influenced by their culture. In some of my classes, my Asian students were very confused when I told them to revise their writing because this was a "first draft." In their experience they had always written an item once and submitted it as "the final," and then the teacher would correct it. The idea that they had to write it over again didn't make sense to them. Students from other cultures may have developed a storytelling style that involves laying out a lot of background information and detail and takes quite a while to get to the point. In most western writing, we expect a topic sentence or a lead paragraph that will tell us what the point is, and then everything written after that leads to a direct conclusion. Many of my students had great difficulty connecting their ideas this way.

With that said, teachers have a big task in improving ESL student writing skills, but the payoff for instructional dedication can be great. A researcher on adolescent literacy at the University of Minnesota, David O'Brien, did a study on improving the reading skills of adolescent students. All of the students were involved in a six week study and during that time they were responsible for creating brochures and other types of communication on computers. They had criteria to input a certain amount of text and graphics to create a final project. This required lots of thought and revisions to achieve the final result. At the end of the six weeks the students took a reading test and the majority of them had improved their reading skills significantly. This was a very interesting result, considering that the teachers had not focused on teaching reading skills. The conclusion was that students used meta-cognition to process language and work with it in a more meaningful way, so that consequently their reading skills improved even though they were mostly working on writing.

Additional positive academic results have been seen in the "90 90 90 Schools." These are schools that researchers have identified as 90% poverty, 90% students of color and 90% achieving standards. This is a most remarkable combination in the educational world. The researchers examined these schools and found one common denominator among them - they all focused on developing writing skills. Each school had an agreed upon writing curriculum and methodology that was used at all grade levels, and student writing was prominently displayed throughout the building and in classrooms. Students used writing in all content areas to demonstrate academic concepts learned. In the end, 90% of the students in these schools were able to pass state grade-level tests based on the academic standards.

Now that I have hopefully convinced you that all your hard work will pay off, I would like to introduce some effective writing activities. I would like to acknowledge that there are many types of effective writing instruction used in classrooms today, including process writing, graphic organizers as writing planning tools, vocabulary stretchers, etcâ€¦ and all of those are beneficial to ELL students. For the purpose of this article, I will focus on a few writing activities that I think are particularly useful when working with students with a wide-range of English language skills.

How to differentiate writing activities:

With some pre-planning, a teacher can create a writing assignment that will allow every student to be successful. For example, the teacher may give a writing assignment that has A, B and C levels (or they can be number or color-coded).

ELL students at Level A copy a sentence or short passage exactly as it is written. This helps beginning-level students who are not very familiar with the language, but may be able to interpret some of the information as they copy it.

Level B students receive a paragraph or two that has blank spaces in the text. The students write the word or phrase that completes the sentence. This allows the student to write an amount that is not overwhelming and helps them comprehend the information.

Level C students write on their own, but perhaps they receive paragraph prompts or are allowed to look in a book, but must put the idea in their own words. After some practice with this system and getting to know your students' English language skills, you will be able to create a system that works best for your class.

Language Experience Approach

The Language Experience Approach draws on instructional techniques used with younger children who have not yet developed literacy skills. In this approach, the teacher presents information to the students, or they have an "experience" of some sort - for example, a field trip, or acting out a scene in a book. Then the students tell the teacher what to write on the board to explain the experience. This may be useful as an activity for a volunteer or teacher's aide to use with a small group of ESL students during literacy time. Here are the steps.

1. Experience something - for example, the students have listened to the story, "The Little Red Hen" and then acted it out.

2. The teacher stands by the board or a large sheet of paper and says to the students, "Tell me the story of the Little Red Hen."

3. As each student tells a part of the story, the teacher writes it down on the board, just as it was stated. For example, a student might say, "The Little Red Hen work so hard and nobody want help her." This continues until each student has spoken or the story is finished.

4. Then the teacher tells the students, "Let's read the story together and listen to see if the story makes sense and if there is anything we want to change."

5. After reading the story, the teacher asks students if they want to change anything. For example, one student may raise her hand and say, "I think it should say, "worked" not "work." The teacher may ask other students if they agree or disagree.

6. If the suggested change is correct, the teacher offers praise and moves on to the next suggestion. If the suggested change is not correct, the teacher should help the student analyze the suggested change. For example, if the student says, "I think it should say, â€˜The Little Red Hen she worked so hardâ€¦." The teacher would ask if others agree and see if there is discussion, then the teacher could point out that the Little Red Hen is the pronoun or "name," so in English we don't need to put it in twice. We can say "She worked so hard." Or "The Little Red Hen worked so hard."

7. When students have analyzed and corrected the whole text, the teacher may either circle a few more spots where students missed corrections and they can be challenged to figure out what the change should be, or the students can be instructed to copy the text with the corrections included.

8. As a final activity, students are instructed to take the story home and read it to three people and bring it back with signatures.

After this activity, usually even beginning-level ELL students are able to read the story to others because it was their experience, it is in their own words, and they have worked with the text in a meaningful way.

Sentence Auction

This activity helps students analyze common writing errors through a personalized activity since they are trying to buy their own sentences. Once a week or once a month, a teacher can hold a "Sentence Auction." The teacher takes sentence examples from student writing - some of which have errors and some that don't, and writes them on a handout or overhead projector. The identity of the student who wrote each sentence is not revealed. To begin the sentence auction, each student is given an "account" of perhaps $300. The students are told to "bid" on the good sentences. The winner is the student with the highest number of "good" sentences.

1. The teacher takes on the persona of an "Auctioneer" and opens the bidding at $10.

2. The teacher reads out the sentence confidently exactly as it is written. "Him want to go to school very bad." Who will give me $10?"

3. The students take turns bidding until the teacher decides who has "won" the bid.

4. Some sentences will not sell because students will know they are "bad." Just leave those sentences and move to the next one.

5. After all the sentences have been sold, the teacher goes through the list and the students say whether the sentence was good or bad. If they agree that it was a bad sentence, then the teacher asks them to explain how they can make it a "good" sentence.

6. Finally the students can count how many "good" sentences they have (since they may have bought some bad ones) and a winner is declared.

7. The teacher may want to give a little prize or certificate to the student. In a variation of this activity students can work in pairs or groups to buy the sentences.

Error correction

I have never "corrected" my students' writing mistakes, at least not in the traditional way. I have always told my students, "If I correct your English, I improve my English; if you correct your English, you improve yours." I handled corrections in one of two ways: either I identified what errors I would be looking for in the writing submission or I told them I would only circle five errors in the whole paper. If I pre-set the errors I would look for, for example correct use of past tense, I would only correct past tense errors, even if I saw other glaring errors in the paper. Sometimes this was hard to do, but I wanted to maintain the students' focus on the writing improvement we were working on. If I set a number of errors I would circle, for example, five, then I carefully chose those five and ignored the rest. When I returned the papers, the students were responsible for correcting their own mistakes. If they weren't sure how to do it, they could check with a classmate, and if no one knew, then I would assist. Invariably the students would ask, "Are these the only errors in the paper?" and I would tell them no. They might be disappointed, but they came to understand the value of correcting their own errors when they submitted a piece of writing.

Quick Write

One of the challenges for ELL students when they approach writing is their anxiety about writing their ideas correctly and writing a lot of information in English. This may feel overwhelming when a student is assigned an essay. In order to get students comfortable with the idea of just putting ideas on paper and not worrying about mistakes, we do regular "quick writes." For "quick writes" I give the students a topic and then tell them to write as much as they can for five minutes. They need to keep their pencils on the paper and even if they can't think of anything to write or they are worried about how to spell things, they are supposed to keep writing. At the end of five minutes, the students count how many words they were able to write and they keep track in a log. The objective is that they will see progress in the amount of writing they are able to do in five minutes' time and hopefully apply this fluency to their essay writing.

Cinquain poems

Cinquain poems offer great flexibility in working with ELL students of a variety of language levels. The basic Cinquain formula is as follows, but teachers can modify it as needed according to the student language level.

One noun
Two adjectives
Three gerunds (words + ing)
A short sentence.
A one-word summary
An example of a Cinquain a student might write:
Home
Warm, happy
Loving, welcoming, helping
People you love.
Family

There really is no wrong way to do a Cinquain, students can put key vocabulary words together any way they like to create the message they desire. Teachers may want to use Cinquains to reinforce new content vocabulary and concepts as well.

With these writing activities to try in your classroom, the only thing left is to buy a few boxes of pencils, hand them out to your ELL students and help them discover the possibility of joy in writing. Teachers who use a variety of activities and strategies to help ELL students become comfortable with expressing their ideas in a new language and finding success with small writing tasks, will give their students' confidence for a lifetime of self-expression. I offer this Cinquain poem to sum it up.

Writing
Fun, creative
Thinking, sharing, revising
Lots of ideas.
Proud
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Improving Writing Skills: ELLs and the Joy of Writing

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"The meaning of even a single word is rather more complex than one might imagine." - Editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, 1980, p. viii "Teacher, do we need our pencils today?" my Puerto Rican elementary students would urgently ask when I came to their classroom to escort them to my English as a Second Language classroom.