Learning+to+Write

Stages of Writing
Children begin to start their writing at an **Early Age**. It starts off as what appears to be scribble. “Sometimes numbers and some letter shapes may appear” (Hill, p283), and the child is conveying a message through these lines which he/she can read out from looking at it.

The next stage is known as **Early-Emergent writing**. This is where the child is able to distinguish the difference between letters and pictures to convey messages. "They often use drawings to support and enhance their writing" (Cloonan, Scull & Turpin, 1998, p44), and begin to use real letters to convey messages.
 * Emergent writing** comes next. Here children use more letters and shapes to convey their messages. They may “begin to represent sounds in words such as ‘lIk’ for like and ‘PPL’ for people” (Hill, p284). The writing will usually appear from left to right.

Children begin to learn the basic principles of writing in the **Early writing stage**. They begin to distinguish “the difference between capital and lower case letters... and spacing between words becomes consistent” (Hill, pp. 284-5). They should also be able to tell the difference between genres such as fiction and non-fiction.
 * Transitional writing** is the next stage where the quantity significantly increases. They will begin to "experiment with and use an increasing range of text types" (Cloonan et al, 1998, p46). Children become more confident at writing and are quite capable and punctuating.

Writing Process
The Writing Process is quite important for students to become proficient writers. It should be used whenever writing is being taught in class. It is essential for students to get in the habit of using this process. The Writing Process is a four to five step process that will produce the best possible piece of writing from the children. It should be noted that the Writing Process will not be completed in one day; it would be stretched over a period of a few days to a few weeks depending on the importance of the piece.

Planning Planning is undertaken before the writing begins. It must first be established whether the piece will be a recount of the child’s, a narrative, or a procedure (set of instructions). The purpose and audience are also important and should be well thought out. Finally, perhaps the most obvious part of the planning is coming up with ideas for the piece. Composing Composing is the first draft, where sentences and appropriate words are the focus point. As this is the initial draft, more emphasis is put on ideas, rather than punctuation, spelling and so on, which comes later. Revising This is where children "improve and enhance their texts" (Cloonan et al, 1998, p12). Children should read over their work to detect any problems. They may have to add information or cross out irrelevant information. They may also have to rewrite sentences as well as reorganising sentences. Recording/ Proofreading Here the piece is rewritten with the spelling, grammar and punctuation the focus points. Publishing It should be noted that this stage does not apply all the time, not all pieces will need to be published. However those that do, focus mainly on appearance of the piece. The legibility of the piece if hand written, how it will be laid out, what medium it will be completed on- computer or by hand.