Reading and Writing
What do we do when we write?
Writing and Reading are different yet they are reciprocal. Skill in one affects our skill in the other. Reading is gaining and understanding information someone else has composed.
Writing is expressing information so someone else can understand.
TWO MAIN ASPECTS OF WRITING
When writing we draw on many skills.
First we are authors- we need to have something to say. The AUTHORIAL part of the process is the most important part. We draw on our knowledge of a topic , the structure of the chosen genre and the necessary grammar.
Secondly we are editors or secretaries we need to make what we say follow the rules of hand writing, punctuation and spelling.
This is called SECRETARIAL skills.
AUTHORIAL - Vocabulary, text structure, and grammar
Being an author is the creative part of the process, yet we also use the knowledge of structure and grammar.
What do I want to write about?
What do I want to say about this topic?
What do I already know about it?
What do I need to learn about it?
What genre will I use?
What is the best structure for my purpose?
Text Structure
This is about genre and how the different genres are structured.
Here I will break down the structure of 3 genres or text types- Recount, Narrative, Information text:-
RECOUNT
First this happened
Then this
Then this
NARRATIVE
Beginning – Introduce characters and situation.
Middle – Explain the problem.
End – The solution to the problem.
INFORMATION TEXT
A general comment about the topic
Subtitle 1
Subtitle 2
Subtitle3
Conclusion
Vocabulary
When we know something about the topic, we are writing about, it is much easier to compose our paragraphs. We draw on our knowledge of the topic and the vocabulary we have at hand.
Before I expect a child to write a text we brainstorm the words they know about the topic.
We create a bank of words that they already know from their experiences and then they learn to write them automatically.
We create sentences based on the child’s knowledge of the topic which are typed and then read.
All the time increasing the child’s confidence and their knowledge of sounds and letters and words.
They develop writing skills and reading skills at the same time.
Grammar - Drawing on our knowledge of how English works.
As native speakers we learn grammar through speaking the language , we develop a deep understanding of how the language works because it just sounds right, we may not be able to explain rules yet we know how it works.
We form sentences orally in our heads and then try to write them- this is difficult as there are many factors affecting how well we write the sentence.
Let’s look at the sentence
I caught a huge fish with my favourite rod and fresh bait.
If we are familiar with the structure of language we know that ..
I – is a pronoun for the person fishing and telling the story.
caught– is a verb and less knowledgeable readers might want to say catched.
huge, favourite, fresh– tell us something about the nouns fish , rod and bait respectively. They are adjectives.
People learning to speak English practise repeating grammatically correct sentences. Children who are brought up speaking English have an intrinsic understanding of how it all works. However children with language delay either in understanding or expressing language have a disadvantage with both reading and writing.
I will often type the child’s sentence for them – as they are developing their authorial skills in isolation to the secretarial skills which are often so much harder for children I work with.
SECRETARIAL -drawing on handwriting, spelling and punctuation
The three main secretarial skills are ..
Handwriting
Spelling
Punctuation
Handwriting
It is important even in this day of computers that we can write and understand the letters of our language. We learn the shapes of the letters – a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z – and how to physically form them on paper or on a board with textas or chalk.
Then we are expected to write each letter in a way others can read them. Letters are very rarely written individually they are written together with each other to form words- to write words we need to have letter sound knowledge.
Spelling- Starts with letter sound knowledge
One of the building blocks of writing is letter/ sound knowledge.
We start learning the most common sounds for each letter.
However there are 44 phonemes in the English language made up of combinations of the 26 letters.
The most common sounds associated with the letters such as the short vowel sounds can help us read predictable words like – cat, mop, bet, cup, dig,
Then it gets difficult.
Vowels a,e,i,o,u are associated with different sounds – a for example has 5 common sounds.
Sound 1 – ‘a’ as in apple – short vowel sound
Sound 2 – ‘a’ as in snake – long vowel sound
Sound 3 – ‘a’ as in father – broad sound
Sound 4 – ‘a’ as in ball – o sound
Sound 5 – ‘a’ as in many – e sound
– e is associated to 9 different sounds
– i is associated to 6 different sounds
– o is associated to 7 sounds
and – u is associated to 9 sounds.
And that doesn’t take into account the combined sounds (diagraphs) such as au, ee, ai, etc
On top of that we discover that consonants are not consistent, c for example makes two sounds in cent and cot. When a consonant is paired with another letter then there are many more options.
These are consonant diagraphs – (meaning two letters to make one sound) sh, ch, th, wh, and ch makes 3 sounds – ch in cheese and ch in anchor and ch in chef.
Then we have to get a grip around tri graphs/ or quadgraphs e.g. igh, dge, tch, ough, augh,eigh,.
For a someone learning English there are many rules to remember.
And if someone has a memory issue then this is even more difficult for them.
Before I expect a child to write a text I will brainstorm with them the words that they are likely to need in the text. – see fishing example.
We may play with the phonics of known words..
e.g. fish, wish, dish
Punctuation
This is one of the hardest aspects of writing for us to understand and use correctly. (I am very often using incorrect punctuation)
The first rule children learn is
Capital at the beginning of a sentence and a full stop at the end.
Then we have talking marks ” ”
And commas ,,,,,
and the question mark ???
I believe that we learn punctuation as we need it in our compositions.
It needs to be relevant.
Speaking, listening, reading and writing are reciprocal and competence in one will effect the competence in the other skills.