Teaching Writing to Children

Teaching writing to children - the 4 scaffolded stages to improving writing skills while teaching creative writing.
All primary education teachers want their students to work on improving writing skills, but it doesn't happen quickly.

Developing writing skills happens gradually over a series of stages. Some children have never been guided through the stages of writing. They need teachers to model good writing skills and show them that writing is an interconnected part of the classroom communication domain.

These stages apply for all genres of writing, not just creative writing. Teaching writing requires a scaffolded series of techniques and strategies. There are four specific types of writing that teachers do in their classrooms:

Modeled Writing Shared Writing Guided Writing Independent Writing

Each teaching writing strategy can be used as a stand-alone lesson, or used at various intervals within other writing stages. I use the Six Trait Writing Process to teach specific skills and strategies in primary writing. Try using a vocabulary strategy called Vocabulary Sentences with Sentence Frames. This is a proven strategy for working on both reading and writing.

Modeled Writing

A think aloud about writing Utilizes a problem-solving approach Can be used to teach a specific element of language

Modeled writing is the first step in any teaching writing style. This is when the teacher is in front of the class doing all of the writing. If your students struggle greatly with getting their ideas going, come back to this basic step and model your writing process for them. They need to see it being done. I like to have my students sitting on the floor in front of the chart paper so we are in an intimate setting while I discuss my thinking. Make your thoughts about the writing process known to the students while you am teaching writing to children. For example, I may say, "Today I want to write about what happened to me last night. I need to make a web to sort out my thoughts, then I can start putting the words into sentences." If it is a specific skill lesson, such as great beginning sentences, I might say, "I know that author's need to have strong beginnings to hook their readers into a story. Today I am going to use a little-known fact to hook them." The key to modeled writing is to never assume your students are following you. Tell them everything you are doing and why. It is not enough for them just to watch you. As well, don't try to model so many things that the lesson goes on too long - you will lose their attention.

Shared Writing

Students contribute ideas while the teacher writes Lots of discussion, questions and answers Think alouds continue to be used

During shared writing, a teacher will scribe the words, but the students are now invited to contribute to the piece. This is the type of writing I tend to do a lot of at the beginning of the year in my second grade classroom. It would be appropriate for any primary writing. The photos below show a shared writing lesson that my class did for a special assembly we had. We were to write a very simple story that had little detail (it was to be performed by a mime). The entire process, from start to finish, took us about 45 minutes.

This shows the pre-writing session of any writing process lesson plan. This is always the first step of teaching writing to children. We listed possible topics, took a "quick and dirty" vote to narrow them down, then voted as a class on which one they thought would make the best story for our purpose.

After reaching a consensus on the topic of our story, it was time to formulate our main idea. We discussed the basic elements of a narrative story, and made a summary chart. As a class, we came up with the characters, setting, problem and solution.

We always kept this in mind: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple).

Below is our story that we wrote together. Notice that you can see where I made my thinking visible to the students as we worked. That is critical in teaching writing to children. Words are circles and crossed out, punctuation marks are changed, and substitutions have been made throughout. You can also see where the basic narrative elements were underlined in the story. Doing this helps the students see how the elements are woven into the story without saying, "The main character is..." or, "The setting was..."

The introduction to our story, Snowball Revenge. Notice how the basic narrative elements are underlined.

The middle of our short story. My thinking is visually present through cross-outs, changes in punctuation, and changing of words.

The story comes to a satisfactory conclusion when the naughty little boy learns a lesson. Note the use of onomatopoeias, a focus lesson from a previous week.

Guided Writing

The step between teacher directed and independent writing Teacher utilizes prompts and clues to help develop ideas and organization Teacher works with students either small group or independently Oral discussion of sentences before writing

Guided writing is the third step in teaching writing to children. Within the framework of guided writing, the teacher is continually providing feedback, redirection and expansion of ideas. Any area of writing can be addressed, but a good plan is to put similar needs together and address them at once. For example, perhaps your class is working on writing creative stories and you notice four children who are struggling with character development. These children will be grouped together for a guided writing session on character development. Perhaps there are five students who are not understanding how to construct an effective paragraph. Again, these students would be grouped together for a lesson. You may also choose to do guided writing independently as part of how you approach teaching writing to children. During a writer's workshop, I like to walk around the classroom and stop at my students desks. I have them read to me what they are working on and ask them what they might be struggling with. It is surprising what they realize they need help with, and it is not always what I thought they should work on, but the motivation to improve an aspect of writing is there so we do it. Guided writing is probably the most powerful technique in teaching writing to children. Watch this video to see it in action. Primary Framework - Guided Writing @ Yahoo! Video

Independent Writing

Students use ideas from shared writing to produce their own independent piece Reference to charts and other materials to revise and edit composition Teacher evaluation for growth

This is where the students effectively utilize written language for their own purposes or as assigned by the teacher. These writing pieces can be anything, from creative stories and reports to writing journals or letters to friends and family.

This part of teaching writing to children must always include a time to share. It is critical to provide validation of your young author's process and growth as a writer. This provides them not only recognition, but an opportunity to receive feedback. Teachers need to properly prepare their students for this step. While some children gravitate towards writing independently, many need more practice with shared and guided writing. If you have a student who struggles to write independently, you must go back and do more shared and guided writing.

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