children's writing

Children’s writing

1) Pre–Phonemic stage

• Children write incoherent squiggles which aren’t separated into words

 

 2) Semi-phonetic stage

• They start to produce some form of letter shape, some are invented and some are mirrored from what they’ve seen.
•  It’s often not split into words

 

3) Phonetic stage

• They write words using phonetic spelling
• It refines as they develop and bad spelling shouldn’t be criticised, the communication should just be rewarded

 

4) Transitional stage

• They start to learn some key patterns, even some digraphs (two letters making one sound)

 

5) Conventional stage

• They learn to spell most words

• They then start to get an awareness of punctuation as their writing and reading begins to improve
• They start to use conventions of the different words they know
•  They start to become aware of differences in formality with reading and writing

Another theory of writing development by Kroll (1981)

Stage 1: Preparatory stage

• Masters the basic motor skills needed to write
• Learns the basic principles of the spelling system.

 
Stage 2: Consolidation stage (age up to 6)

• Child writes in the same way it speaks.
• Uses short declarative sentences which include mainly ‘and’ conjunctions.
• Incomplete sentences as they don’t know how to finish the sentence off.

 
Stage 3: Differentiation stage (age up to 9)

• Child becomes aware of the difference between speaking and writing.
• Recognises the different writing styles available e.g. letter, essay.
• Lots of mistakes.
• Use writing guides and frameworks to structure work.
• Write to reflect thoughts and feelings.

 
Stage 4: Integration stage (12+)

• Child develops a personal style.
• Child understands that you can change your style according to audience and purpose.

virtuous error is when a child makes a mistake because they've never learned the correct way.


These are examples:

Insertion - adding extra letters 

Omission - leaving out letters

Substitution - substituting one letter for another

Transposition - reversing the order of letters in words

Phonetic spelling - spelling words according to the standard phonemes that graphemes make

Over/undergeneralising of spelling rules - applying or not applying rules in inappropriate contexts or one specific context

Salient (key) sounds - only including the key sounds

Child's text


'Bird of prey


Bird of prey mean that
A bird of prey hunt's
thats why it has a pointed beake
A bird of prey is very special Bird
there Just not like any sparrow becous there bigger
a better and protective but not as loving


Bird of prey fliing'


- The child sometimes fails to pluralise some key words such as 'mean' to 'means', this is an example of omission.
- The child adds 'e' onto the word 'beak' creating the word 'beake', this is an example of insertion
- the child uses the determiner 'there' instead of 'they're'. This is an example of overgeneralising words
- the child says the word 'fliing' instead of 'flying' this shows phonetic spelling