Early+Years+Writers

As a group we had the opportunity to interview six students varying from grades 1-2 and assessed their writing abilities through questioning them on various text types and assessing writing samples. Through our engagement with early year’s learners, we have learnt that children have significant differences in terms of where they are at in writing levels. Therefore the use of the curriculum in ensuring a more individualised program for each child’s development has its major benefits. In the text ‘Developing early literacy, Assessment and teaching’ the author Susan Hill (2006) wrote about 9 different text types which can be amended for a child to suit their preferred type of writing also particularly important it helps ensure the teacher knows where the child is at in terms of their development. The 9 text types early learners explore included in Hill (2006) include; Narrative, Poetry and songs, Transactional, Recount, Procedure, Report, Explanation, Discussion and Mixed genre (pp. 309-310). We saw the majority of children use recounts, although a transactional was also used. Through collaboration of each of our 6 observations we have found early learners learn through a number of different writing techniques, including; A teacher stands up the front and provides samples of ‘how a writer uses words, sentences and text types to record ideas’ (Hill 2006, p.89). A teacher sets children off with their books and children are encouraged to write about anything they’d like, this helps ‘build fluency and motivation’ (Hill 2006, p.88). ‘A whole group activity where the teacher leads the class in exploring ways to write various text types, construct more complex sentences and check spelling and grammar’ (Hill 2006, p.88). Children are given the opportunity to interact by writing things up on the board. Hill (2006) explains that Guided writing allows children to explore a number of different text types whilst in a group or as an individual with the teacher providing mini lessons on the specific phase of text type, grammar, punctuation or spelling.
 * __INTRODUCTION__**
 * __TEXT TYPES__**
 * __WRITING TECHNIQUES__**
 * Modelled writing;**
 * Independent writing;**
 * Shared and interactive writing;**
 * Guided writing;**

Revealed in the 6 writing interests survey was that the 6 students were particularly different in terms writing interests, most of the children enjoyed writing to friends and family but when it came to writing at school there was a significant divide some children loved writing at school others not so much. All students showed evidence of understanding simple sentence structures and what to do when getting to difficult spelling words. Although evidence from the writing samples shows a significant difference in children’s writing abilities. Hill (2006) refers to the phases of literacy development as being Beginning (0 – 3 years of age), Early-emergent (3-5 years of age), Emergent (P-Kindergarten),Early (K- year 1), Transitional (Years 1-2), Extending (Years 2-4). The phases of literacy development allow teachers to view students across levels. Below in Figure 1 shows the phases of literacy development our 6 children interviewed should be placed in child a, b and d were grade 1’s while children c, e and f were grade 2’s. Figure 2 shows the children’s VELs levels.
 * __WRITING INTERESTS SURVEY__**
 * __PHASES OF LITERACY DEVELOPMENT (Hill 2006, p.6)__**
 * Figure 1;**

Amongst the 6 students interviewed there was quite a variety of differences in writing development. As teachers we need to address the fact that students in our classrooms are all unique and need to be taught with individualised programs. Overall the six children were spread across two grade levels (grade 1,2) and evaluated at four different phases in literacy development (early emergent, emergent, early and transitional) and two levels of VELs (0.5 and 1.25). The wide spread across the different phases of literacy and VELs levels proves the importance of individual programs in order to develop the skills of an early year’s writer.
 * **STUDENTS** || **LEVELS** ||
 * Child A || Working towards level 1 ||
 * Child B || Working towards level 1 ||
 * Child C || 1.25 ||
 * Child D || 1.25 ||
 * Child E || 1.25 ||
 * Child F || 1.25 ||