Prep (5&6 Year Olds) writing- What a journey!

Student Led Interactive Writing and small group Teacher Led Interactive Writing are the best scaffolding strategies for writing in my opinion. However, I can evidence this by the development of my Prep student’s (5&6 Year Olds in Australia) writing this year. These strategies are intrinsic to the Language Experience Approach. If you type Interactive Writing into the search box in this blog, you’ll be able to see the many posts I’ve written about this strategy this year.

 ‘Interactive writing involves the teacher and small groups of students jointly composing a large print text on a subject of interest to the students and sharing responsibility for the recording at various points in the writing. Teachers quickly record the words that students know how to write, and engage students in problem solving and recording the words that provide challenges and opportunities for new learning. This eases the transition to independent writing by: • making explicit how written language works • constructing words using orthographic and phonological knowledge • producing a text that can be read again.’ Sofweb

Taking this strategy to the next level – student led has also had an enormous impact, as the students have complete responsibility for the composition and organization of their text. They know how to prompt and use strategies normally used by the teacher. Handing over the responsibility always has its concerns; however, working in groups where cooperation is essential is important for young children. I have included pictures of today’s journal writing. I can see the transfer of  explicit teaching, which is something I’m  always on the look out for. Today in our focus discussion prior to writing, it struck me just how much these children now know. The children also guide our focus choice, and today one child asked if they could have the ‘apostrophe of ownership’ explained again. Wow!

 I have included only one page from each of these children. Some children wrote four pages of organised text while most wrote one or two pages. Editing has become  a natural part of the writing process and to the support the children they have a writing checklist that they use each time they write. This checklist was formed by the children after extensively looking at good writing samples.

I have included many samples here. These samples display the skill range in my grade and have been randomly chosen.

Cheers Nina ( Still writing reports)