What does Early Writing Look Like?From the time your child can hold a pencil and put marks on a page, they have begun the process of early writing. It might not look like anything to you, but to your child it has meaning. Their first attempts at writing might just look like scribble or just marks on a page but it shows their early understanding of communicating in a written way. Children's first writing attempts are often modelled on what they have seen us do. Young children in play may pretend to write notes, shopping lists, write letters or cards, just as they have seen us do. This writing phase is often referred to as the pre-writing stage. As children become more aware of letters, their writing develops and begins to resemble real forms of writing. They may start to use letters that they know, often those in their names, and other marks or letters. At this stage they may also start to write as on a page - from top to bottom and left to right across the page, developing the beginnings of early writing skills. Initially the writing may look like a string of letters across a page, but it shows they are beginning to understand that writing contains real letters. It may look like a jumble of letters, but ask your child and those letters will tell you a story. Gradually as they begin to understand that letters make words their writing may now include spaces between strings of letters, making a word. Acknowledge all the attempts at writing your child makes and treat it as real writing. Build their confidence and encourage all writing. The next phase is writing toward independence. In this phase children begin to write with one to one correspondence - that is for a word they read a word is written. They begin to attempt to spell words and often the ones they can spell are the most commonly used words (sight Words) and they will gradually begin to use the sounds they know in spelling words. As they become developed in language writing, they will begin to include more of the language conventions such as punctuation and grammar, leading to independent writers. Independent writers can create worthwhile pieces of writing aimed at particular audiences and for particular purposes. Your role in your child's writing is to support and to give as many opportunities for writing as possible. The more opportunities for writing the better they will gain knowledge in writing letters, developing words and developing their strategies for spelling. Note in early writing it is often common for children to write in a mixture of upper and lower case letters as well as writing letters backwards but don't be concerned, the more practise and repeat writing they get will help correct this. Letter formation can be practised over and over with the KidsLearningisfun
Handwriting Lines or Handwriting Cards
which can be traced over, wiped off and used again and again.
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