Early stages
Until recently, most three-and four-year-olds were described as being in a 'pre-writing stage'. They would not be introduced to letters, or ideas about letters, until they had achieved certain 'pre-writing skills'. These skills were usually partly linked to cognitive and language development, and partly linked to physical dexterity. Children were not given pens to hold if they could not thread beads or speak in a complete sentence.
Cathy Nutbrown, Sheffield University's senior lecturer in education and an expert on early literacy, describes this as the 'philosophy of no literacy in the nursery' in her book Recognising Early Literacy Development.
It is an approach that can cause crude errors of judgement. For example, a three-year-old at Woodlands Park Nursery Centre was recently assessed as below average in his 'pre-writing skills' by an outside professional, despite the fact that in nursery he could write his name as well as some other familiar words.
But Cathy Nutbrown also points out that early years practitioners took this view for sound reasons - because it protected children from over-formal teaching and it kept play and social interaction as the central purposes of early childhood education.
More recently, approaches have emphasised the idea that early writing is developing from the moment children make their first marks. This is usually called the 'emergent writing' approach, and the role of the practitioner is to provide:
* the materials for mark-making
* the contexts that make it meaningful
* examples of other people using writing
* careful observation and recognition of what children are doing when they make marks.
Mark-making
Most Foundation Stage settings for three-and four-year-olds have a mark-making or graphics area.
Resources In the area, children can always find pencils, felt tips, paper in different sizes, little books, envelopes and recycled cards. The children also need materials that will support their writing, like alphabet friezes, name cards and magnetic letters.
Organisation The area needs to be simply and attractively organised, to give children clear signals about what is expected. There should be a place for each type of paper, for the pens and pencils and the envelopes, just as there would be in a well-organised office. A pile of paper in the middle of a table and a box crammed with unsharpened pencils and run-out felt-tip pens will be discouraging.
Observations Periodic observations of what is happening in the graphics area will be revealing. Do all children use the area? Do they know how to use the area, or do they fly in and out, leaving chaos behind? Even very basic issues can be overlooked because they become habitual.
For example, an area in one of the rooms at Woodlands Park had a small table with four chairs. Four pieces of paper could not fit on the table at the same time. The children were constantly jostling each other and getting frustrated. Simply taking two chairs out of the area has increased the amount of time that individual children spend there, improved their concentration and enhanced their involvement in their learning.
Setting It is important to provide for mark-making throughout your setting: outside, in construction areas and workshops, and in the home corner. Many children know about writing because they see measurements being written down, pencil marks made on wood, figures jotted down and checked, and notes written on sewing and knitting patterns.
Experiences Children may know about writing because of modern technology, such as texting on mobile phones or seeing parking tickets issued after entries are keyed into a hand-held computer. We need to think about how we can provide materials for children that cover the whole range of their experiences of writing and making marks.
Big marks Children also need opportunities to make big marks. Supplying white boards and big sheets of paper with marker pens, and big pots of paint outside with brushes and rollers, are just some of the ways you can encourage this.
Meaningful contexts
Children do not just need the right materials to write and make marks, they also need the right reasons.
First, create and develop a 'writing-rich' environment. This means that writing is frequently used for important things. When a child is halfway through a construction with the blocks, but it is time to tidy up, the practitioner could suggest writing a label as a way of preserving the model.
Notes from children - everything from marks that look like scribbles, to correctly written names - need to be all around the setting, for real reasons. These notes will save models, remind adults of something that is to be repeated the next day, or build up weekly shopping lists for the snack area. Children will see things being written down, referred back to, and acted on.
Second, take part in writing with children. For this to happen, the adults will need to be active with suggestions like, 'Let's write that down together'. So when a child asks a difficult question, like 'How big is the sun?', adults can engage with this by saying, 'That's a good question, but I don't know the answer to it. We could write it down and find out later.
What shall we write? Who would know the answer? Who could we give this question to?'
Some contexts for children's writing include: greetings cards, postcards, forms, catalogue order pads, writing underneath drawings and paintings, making lists, taking phone messages, recording measurements or amounts needed, making tickets, painting street signs and banners, making books and issuing parking tickets.
It is important that adults interact with children, talk to them about what they are doing, help children to think through their ideas, and do the writing where asked or needed. Thinking about what could be written, or why, is just as important to children's learning as actually making the marks.
People using writing
Children need to see that writing is essential to the lives of the people around them.
Observations Writing observations of children's learning and taking notes are common features of Foundation Stage practice. Children's interest in this should be encouraged. Adults should discuss what they are doing with an enquiring child and have extra paper and pens at hand so that children can write their own observations too.
Messages When parents and carers need to leave messages, the children can be explicitly encouraged to see the message being written down.
Daily records In settings where staff fill in records about the child's day for parents, the child can be involved in the process. The practitioner can discuss what they plan to write with the child and ask for suggestions. The child can be encouraged to watch as the note is written, or join in with the writing. Practitioners can talk to children about how they complete the register and other forms, too.
Routines Children are often involved in all sorts of routines in settings, like mopping, tidying up and laying the table for lunch. Writing is another routine that young children can be encouraged to take part in.
Trips Trips out of the setting, to local shops, to the bank, travel agent, post office or GP surgery, will all provide more opportunities for children to see other people writing. Photographs or videos of these trips will enable children and adults to go back over the experience and talk together about what they saw.
These trips, and the subsequent discussion and reflection, will enable children to have richer play experiences back in their setting when an area is set up for role play. Children can be involved in making the signs and labels for their pretend post office, for example. The result of the trip, the discussion of the photos or video, and the children's involvement in creating the role play area, should be that children understand how to use the area, how and why people come into a Post Office and need to write.
Languages and scripts Writing in languages other than English by adults - whether staff or parents - should be valued and talked about in the same way. You could ask parents for notes, signs, newspapers and magazines, and food packets in different community languages. Children can have their attention drawn to the similarities, and differences, between scripts.
Observation and recognition
Recognition of children's early writing is crucial to creating a literacy-rich curriculum early in the Foundation Stage. Practitioners need to observe carefully when children are making marks for three reasons:
* To discuss what the marks mean with the children. This might involve feeding back to the child what we have observed: 'I noticed you did a big line up and I wondered what you were thinking about then.' Or it might involve questioning: 'Can you tell me what that says, under your picture?'
* To find out how children think writing works and help them with further ideas or information. For example, an Argentine research project called Literacy Before Schooling showed that young children often make bigger marks to stand for important words, like 'mummy'. Trying to engage with children's thinking gives them an important message - that you consider their understanding of writing to be serious, important and thoughtful.
* To find out if children have ideas about some of the conventions of writing. We might feed back to a child, 'I see you started on that side and went across the page, that's just what I do when I write.' It is important to remember that bilingual children might know about the direction of the language which is written at home, which might not be the same as English.
You need to recognise the children's knowledge.
When children read back their string of shapes, or scribbles, or mix of real and made-up letters, the practitioner can write down what they say and point out how they write each word in turn. I think it is important to ask children's permission to write on their work (an alternative would be to use another piece of paper or a Post-It note).
Where possible, you can compare your writing to the child's, recognising what the child knows. For example, 'I am going to start on the left of the paper, just like you do' or 'I'm going to use a "t" when I write "train", just like you did - look, these are the other letters. Can you hear the "n" at the end of "train"?'
Later stages
The Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage sets out clear principles for planning and working with children, from the age of three to the end of the reception year. It makes clear that throughout the whole phase, children should experience writing in meaningful contexts, including play.
This message has been further underlined in the series of conferences on effective reception practice, organised by the DfES with Ofsted.
Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult for teachers, nursery nurses and teaching assistants in reception classes to make sense of the different approaches set out in the many guidelines which cover the reception year.
Each document presents its own difficulties.
The Curriculum Guidance sets highly ambitious early learning goals for children's writing by the end of the reception year. But these are not backed up by specific guidance which is likely to lead to the children achieving these goals. There is much more detailed advice in publications from the National Literacy Strategy, for example Developing Early Writing.
Practitioners are likely to judge that many of the suggested activities and methods of classroom organisation go against the principles of the Foundation Stage and its approach to how children learn.
This is a dilemma that requires us, as professionals, to use the most effective teaching strategies and approaches for the particular groups of children we are working with. As I argued earlier, it makes no sense simply to deliver a curriculum. We have to think about the children who will be doing the learning, about how they learn, and about how we can link learning in school to their earlier experiences.
Phonics
Children's emergent writing makes use of their phonic knowledge, often starting with the letters from their own names and other letters that they may know about (like 'm' for mum, 'd' for dad, first letters of friends'
and siblings' names).
Children are helped to acquire this early phonic knowledge when adults talk about their names, or other important words, drawing attention to the letters and sounds.
Some children will expand their range of letter and phonic knowledge from this point through their interest in books and other forms of print. Many children will not. So during the reception year, most children will need direct teaching which ensures that they learn all the letters in the alphabet and their sounds quickly, and learn how to build words up that have regular sound patterns - for example, spelling 'mat', 'hat', 'cat' and so on.
Some of this teaching can be done in the context of reading and writing together with the adult. Some of it is done best in brief slots with direct instruction and practice.
Shared writing
In shared writing, the adult takes on most of the task of actually writing the words down, enabling the child or children to concentrate more on what they want to say. Writing is not just an arm, hand and finger exercise. It is about making meanings.
Being a writer means being able to think about what you want to say and to go back and revise your ideas. This is the role that the adult can model, checking back with children - 'Wasn't there something else that was important?' or 'Let's read back over that and check it makes sense.'
Developing Early Writing from the National Literacy Strategy rightly points out that to help children concentrate on these higher order processes in writing, the adult should not break up this type of thoughtful discussion too often with constant interruptions about letter sounds. However, practitioners also need to be aware that different children learn in different ways. Some children will learn their letters and letter sounds most effectively in the context of real, shared writing with an adult.
Guided writing
In guided writing, the practitioner provides direct instruction to enable a child to write something which would not be possible without the adult's help.
In a recent, successful project in New Zealand to improve the teaching of literacy in early childhood, called 'Picking Up the Pace', practitioners were encouraged to do this three or four times a week with four-year-old children.
In this approach, the practitioner provides information which is not yet securely known by the child, but which the child is capable of acting on.
The report on 'Picking Up the Pace' describes how a teacher helps a child called Paul to write his name with correct letter formation. The teacher first gently guides Paul's hand through P and A, and then asks him to complete the task: 'You write the first two letters, Paul. Start the /l/ here... that's right, pull down. Now a circle to make an /o/. Start here.
Pull round, down to the bottom, push round to the top to finish.' This is a description of making a 'P' and an 'a'.
This adult support is effective in two ways. First of all, it recognises that you cannot learn to write letters correctly just by looking at them carefully. Children often learn to write their names only through copying name cards. They may actually be learning ways of forming letters which it will be necessary, and very hard, for them to un-learn later on.
Second, the description of how the letters are written enables Paul to write them himself. The physical act of this writing, with the commentary, will become - with practice - a 'motor memory'. It will become so routine for Paul to write these letters that he will be able to think about what he wants to write. He will not have to focus his concentration entirely on remembering how to write letters.
For this approach to work, it is also important that all the practitioners use the same words to describe letter formation. This consistency is important across the whole Foundation Stage and beyond, as children transfer from one class to the next. Indeed, one of the key findings of the 'Picking Up the Pace' project was that few teachers in schools understood what nurseries did to help children with their early reading and writing.
And most staff in nurseries knew little about how their children would be taught next.