Children's Writing theorists

Stage 1: Preparation Stage

• Masters basic motor skills
• Learns basic spelling principles
• Graphemes/Phonemes

Stage 2: Consolidation Stage

• Writes in the same way it speaks
• Short, declarative sentences - includes mainly 'and' as conjunction
• Incomplete sentences.

Stage 3: Differentiation Stage

• Aware of difference between speaking and writing
• Recognises different writing styles available
• Lots of mistakes
• Use writing guides
• Write to reflect thoughts and feelings

Stage 4: Integration Stage

• Child develops personal style
• Understands that you can change your style according to audience and purpose

Stage 1: Scribbling Stage

• Random marks on a page
• Writing and scribbles accompanied by speaking

Stage 2: Mock Handwriting Stage

• Writing and drawings
• Wavy lines (understand lineation)
• Cursive writing

Stage 3: Mock Letters

• Letters are seperate graphemes

Stage 4: Conventional Letters

• Involves writing name as the first word
• Puts letters onto a page, is able to read it as words

Stage 5: Invented Spelling Stage

• Child spells in the way they understand it should be spelt
• Own way of spelling

Stage 6: Appropriate/Phonetic Spelling Stage

• Attatch spelling with sounds
• Phonetically

Stage 7: Correct Spelling Stage

• Able to spell most words

Chronological

• Rely on action words (verbs)
• Linking ideas using connectives
• Stories, diaries, instructions
• Considered to be easier.

Non-Chronological

• Considered more difficult
• Relies on making logical connections between ideas
• Shopping list, mind maps, poems, report writing, cards.

First Mode Developed: Expressive

• Resembles speech
• Uses 1st person

Second Mode Developed: Poetic

• Skills in crafting and shaping language - creative
• Phonological features - rhyme, rhythm and alliteration
• Descriptive devises - adjectives and similes

Last Mode Developed: Transactional

• Dissociated speech from writing
• Academic essays
• Impersonal style and tone
• Third person
• Formal sentence structures
• Graphological features used to signpost sections and ideas

Observaion/Comment

• Writer makes an observation (I saw a Tiger)
• Follows this with an evaluative comment (it was very large)
• Sometimes mixes the two together (I saw a very large tiger)

Recount

• Chronological sequence of events
• Recount of school trip
• Written subjectively (I)
• Orientation - Event - Orientation

Report

• Factual, objective description
• Tends to be non-chronological

Narrative

• Story genre
• Set pattern: Orientation-Complication-Resolution-Coda (Coda not always added)
• Structural complexity, few children will achieve whole structure early on

Stage 1: Precommunicative Stage

• Uses symbols from the alphabet but has no knowledge of letter-sound.
• Lack knowledge of entire alphabet
• Lack knowledge of distinction between upper and lower case letters
• Lack knowledge of left-to-right lineation

Stage 2: Semiphonetic Stage

• Understand letter-sound correspondence
• Uses single letters to represent words (U = you)

Stage 3: Phonetic Stage

• Letter/group of letters to represent every speech sound
• Some of their choices aren't standard English, still understood (kom for come, en for in)

Stage 4: Transitional Stage

• Begins to understand conventional alternative for representing sounds
• From phonology to visual representation
• Understamd sturctures of words
• Egul for eagle. Higheked for hiked.

Stage 5: Conventional Stage

• Knowledge of the English orthographic system and basic rules
• Understands prefixes, suffixes, silent consonants/vowels, alternative spellings, irregular spellings
• Generalisations of spellings and knowledge of exceptions to rules are usually correct