Marilyn

Chapter 19- Writing in Primary School by Pietro Boscolo

Three dimensions/challenges for teaching writing:


 * Continuity- Looks the developmental stages for writing and the writing process. It's not linear.
 * Complexity- Writing involves cognition, linguistic aspects, interest, and motivation. The challenge raised by the author is //product vs process.// Traditionally teachers evaluated writing in terms of the final written piece, whereas now teachers may evaluate on the process of getting to the final written piece.
 * Social activity- Writing is a social activity as children write about their experiences at home and at school. The challenge raised by the author is that writing is not a solitary activity or process, but rather one that involves a lot of social experiences as children brainstorm and collaborate with peers and the teacher.

Learning to Write *This area has not had much research conducted.

__1. Emergent Writing__


 * Developmental continuum, experiences based on the child
 * Interest in this area began to develop in the late 1970s
 * Bissex (1980) was one of the first scholars in this area to argue that reading and writing are heavily connected
 * Various research studies proved that children across the world and who speak different languages still seem to develop in similar stages of writing (Kindle location 10036).
 * Sulzby (1986) 6 stages of writing: 1. Drawing 2. Scribbling 3. Letter-like forms 4. Well-learned units 5. Invented spelling 6. Conventional
 * Aram and Levin (2001, 2004) studied early literacy and the mother's role and found that there is a connection between emergent and formal literacy.

How should writing be taught? There are two views: Piaget perspective and the Vygotsky perspective:
 * The Piaget perspective involves cognition, construction of written language, a less concern or emphasis on the developmental stages of writing, competence, a print-rich environment, and the teacher acting as an observer.
 * <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">The Vygotsky perspective is more social. The teacher takes an active role in helping students learn how to write through scaffolding, helping children see that writing is meaningful and that it's connected to reading, and writing is shared through conferences or the publishing process.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Goal: Teachers need to understand the social complexity of writing.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">__2. Phonics or Whole language?__ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">*There is not a general agreement among scholars and teachers on how to teach decoding and encoding.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Phonics instruction is specific letter-sound symbol relationships. A strength is that it can help kids learn how to spell words well when writing. A weakness is to consider that some words are not spelled as they sound.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Whole language instruction focuses more on making reading and writing meaningful and purposeful. Children choose what to write and read during "workshop" time. Emphasis is given to using various strategies, such as context, when trying to figure out an unknown word (instead of just sounding out). A strength is that children learn multiple strategies to help them become independent writers and readers. Some RESEARCH has shown that children in this approach tend to be better writers and use more text structures. A weakness to consider is that some children in this type of program may not be able to spell well.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Most teachers find themselves following a balanced literacy program, which has aspects from both the phonics and whole language approaches.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">__3. Berninger & Swanson Study (1994)__ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Berninger thinks it's important for students to be able to handwrite well and spell well so those lower skills can be transferred to higher level composing. <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">*Other related tudies of Berninger follow this section in the text. <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">__﻿__
 * <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Reformulation of Hayes and Flower's (1980) translation model.
 * <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Rather than having one componet, Berninger and Swanson argues that translation has two componets: text generation and transcription
 * <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Text generation refers to moving ideas generated through planning and brainstroming into the working memory
 * <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">﻿Transcription is the process of getting one's ideas from working memory onto paper or onto the keyboard
 * <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">The more automatic transcription is, the more fluent one's thoughts are. There is more space in the working memory that can devote itself to composing skills.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">__Teaching the Writing Process__ <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Process Approach
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Process Approach (Rohman, 1965)- In this model, students work in small groups, have different materials and utensils available, problem-solve, choose topics on their own to write about, and the teacher gives feedback through conferences. Students may also get feedback from peers due to working in small groups.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Hillocks (1986) contrasts the process approach with three other modes: teacher-based, environmental, individualized.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Teacher-based: The teacher shows several features and qualities of good writing, assigns a topic, and evaluates the students.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Environmental: This approach is similar to the process approach but with more structured activities.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">The process approach is criticized for several reasons:
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Rigidity of writing process (Petraglia, 1999)
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Lack of attention to audience (Williams, 1998)
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Oversimplified view of teaching writing (Newkirk & Tobin, 1990)

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Cognitive Process
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Writing is a task that requires higher level thinking skills of planning, composing, revising, and editing. This may be difficult for novice writers to do. Teachers need to model the planning processes of writing to help students in this area.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD)
 * 1) <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Develop prior knowlegde
 * 2) <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Discuss
 * 3) <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Model
 * 4) <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Memorize
 * 5) <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Support/scaffold
 * 6) <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Independent practice

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Genre
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">4 main genres taught in school are description, narration, exposition, and argumentation.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">There are two ideals when teaching genre: Explicitly model and social constructivist.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">In the explicit model, teachers explicitly teach the genres and show students what each genre consists of (types of writing styles, etc.).
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">In the social constructivist model, it relates more to time, place, and setting. Students are not explicitly taught certain genres and expected to write within them.
 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">It's important to expose children to different genres. "...the genres teachers emphasize may become he genres children believe to be the most valued." Chapman (1995)