Developing Writing

[Guest]

as aschool we are focuing on writing

i treach a mixed age eyfs, y1 and y2

i am trying to make sure writing activities and resources are available throught the indoor and outdoor continuous provision

it was suggested to use ros wilsons big write and intorduce writing journals everyday what do other people think???

[AnonyMouse_3307]

There are many different aspects to writing. These are the ones i can think of but probably there are others:

 

Understanding that speech is made up of different sounds

 

understanding that writing represents speech

 

understanding that writing remains constant and will always say the same thing

 

Physical skills using gross and fine motor movements to manipulate a writing tool.

 

knowledge of the relevant phoneme grapheme symbol system to segment oral speech and match the parts to a grapheme.

 

Capacity to shape these graphemes using an agreed style with economy of movement

 

understanding of genre - what style for what purpose

 

having and idea - something to say that you want to preserve

 

Constructing your writing so others can understand your ideas

 

Grammatical rules of the language you are using

 

Spelling rules of the language you are using.

 

 

I have found that when there was huge surge in "Big Writing" in my LA, the reception classes have ultimately dropped out as the children did not have the skills needed to engage in a one size fits all approach to developing writing skills, because they did not look to see if the solution actually matched the developmental stage the children were at.

 

Asking very young children to write a daily "journal" is pointless if they cannot yet use a pencil. It becomes a chore and will most likely turn them off writing instead.

 

Better to look critically at your provision for the EYFS children I believe than try to use a panacea approach that becomes too rigid to meet different needs.

 

 

For your older children then the strategies may work, as indeed they do, but are they targetting your identified gaps in skills otherwise they won't. "Doing" more writing does not make a child a better writer unless there is specific precision teaching that builds on their skill set.

 

Cx

[Guest]

Laminated cards and white board markers works really well for us in a mixed age group room! (2-4yr olds)

These can be used indoors and outdoors and also adapted for topics etc...

Edited December 19, 2011 by Guest

[Guest]

thankyou for that- i have just printed off some sheets which would work well being laminated and placed around the areas

 

i think the writing journal will need thought about may be we could change it to mark making book??

[Guest]

you can do lots

 

 

outside

 

painting with paintbrushes

squirty bottles

chalk boards

large paper

 

mark making in sand etc

 

 

Inside

 

wreiting area with different writing resources

provocations e.g class puppets gone missing making posters etc

role play set up linked to a topic and incorporate writing in there

[Guest]

how about a class book about the learning each week, where children can do their own amrk making