Early Years Writing Analysis

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Analysis of Early Years Writing Academic essay The development of emergent writers is seen as a process in which they construct messages; represent ideas, feelings and information in print as a way of communication. They use a variety of different strategies to understand the writing process, which include: reading, spelling, speaking and listening. The combination of these strategies helps the emergent writer to become proficient in the various elements of the writing process and gain knowledge to become an advanced writer according to the Writing Development Continuum (Education Department of Western Australia [EDWA], 2003). Children use many processes to develop their writing skills. Early writers use writing as a means of communication,…show more content…
Wilkinson states that these assessment aspects arose from an ‘interaction between our perceptions of the written materials, teachers’ judgements and theoretical considerations’ (Wilkinson, A., Barnsley, G. P., Hanna, P., & Swan, M., 1980). It is here that Wilkinson’s model of children’s development in writing is particularly helpful as it shows that the child has developed their quality of thought in a cognitive capacity; the child shows an awareness of the world and an ability to describe, interpret, generalise and speculate on it (Winch et al, 2010). Other ways that teachers may help children to expand on their development are through the use of VELS speaking and listening standards. Where students are given opportunities to use spoken language appropriately in a variety of classroom contexts, ask and answer simple questions for information and clarification and to produce brief spoken texts that deal with familiar ideas and information (VCAA, 2006). The ability of a child to draw on cognitive thought and view the world around them relates to the Piagetian Theory of child development. Piaget’s concept of stages of cognitive or intellectual development suggests that all children will become operational at certain stages, and each child will progress stage by stage to…show more content…
Children are seen as emergent readers and writers, who bring to school with them a whole variety of skills and knowledge with which the teacher can work with. As language and literacy (or English) teachers, it is up to us to analyse and asses the needs of children according to; theories of development (Piaget, Vygotsky, Wilkinson, Luke & Freebody), developmental practices (socio-cultural), prior knowledge (grammar, punctuation, orthography, text-types), establish their skills base (reading [invented spelling], writing) to help determine what phase children are in according to their stage of development, what there ZPD’s are, and thus establish a teaching strategy to help scaffold their learning, giving them the skills to enter society as literate adults, as summed up by Gardner (Gardner & Brockman, 2000): ‘I want people at the end of their education to understand the world in ways that they couldn’t have understood it before their

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