Early Writing Development

Student Writing Samples

Stages of Emergent Writing

(6 months - 7 years)• Protowriting (scribbling)

• Letters and letter-like shapes

• Prephonemic spelling

• Early phonemic spelling

• Transitional spelling

• Conventional spelling

• Groups of words/single sentences

• Two or more sentences

• Narratives (stories, letters, etc.)

Purposes of Emergent Writing

• Functional uses

• grocery list

• letter to Santa

• examples

•Communication

•To tell a story/relate an experience

Protowriting

• Initially children represent meaning through drawing by having their crayon/pencil assume the role of agent of an action

Letters and Letter-like Shapes

• Note graphic forms in upper left of section A

• Letters follow left-to-right progression of written English

• When asked about the letters, Ashley said, “I don’t read ‘em, I just write ‘em”

Letters and Letter-like Shapes

• Evidence of awareness of written language and how culture affects the form you learn

• Top sample - Najeeba (age 4). “Here, but you can’t read it cause I wrote the story in Arabic, and in Arabic we use a lot more dots than you do in English.”

• Bottom sample - compare Najeeba’s to Dawn’s which looks more “English.”

Prephonemic

• Writing consists of apparantly random letter. A string of letters may tell a whole story.

• Megan: This says “Hi, I like to eat because I’m so hungry. I could eat a whole elephant.”

Early Phonemic• Writes initial sound or

first and last sounds. Sometimes peers can read these writings. If a child feels a word needs more letters, a random string of letters will be used to “fill in.”

• Stephanie’s birthday list: “Melissa, Laura, Tic-Tac-Toe, white cake, balloons”.

Transitional Spelling

• Children move toward conventional spelling. Writing can often be read by others.

• Matt’s story: “Once upon a time there was three bears. Father bear, mom and boy bear. And they lived happily ever after”.

Groups of Words/Single

Sentence

Two or More Sentences

Link to Instruction

•Small group task:

• Look at your writing sample

• Classify your sample based on developmental categories and reasons why

• Next instructional steps, and why

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

Sample 5