The write start - Jennifer Hallissy 2010

The Path to Writing Readiness
On the Write Track

AT SOME POINT or another most parents have wondered why our precious children were given to us without so much as a handbook to guide us. Luckily, they do come equipped with a roadmap. It’s called child development.

As our children’s first teachers, we parents need to be as knowledgeable as we can be about child development. Although there is certainly room for individual variation, child development features some general patterns of skill acquisition. Foundational skills are mastered first, and subsequent stages of development are built upon these previously acquired skills. Each developmental stage is characterized by certain major milestones. Being aware of these reference points helps us to plot our course on the road to raising young writers.

The important landmarks children will encounter on the road to writing include scribbling, spelling words, writing stories, and learning the rules of writing.

Scribbles are children’s first steps toward writing. As toddling becomes walking and babbling becomes talking, so do scribbles become symbols.

After scribbling, the next steps for young writers include learning to form letters, putting letters together to spell familiar words, and then stringing words together to make sentences and tell stories. Finally, they are ready to learn some of the conventions of writing, such as proper spelling, orienting words on a line, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and story structure.

To help us identify where our kids are at, and to choose the most appropriate writing activities, I use these landmarks to describe four broad categories of young writers: Scribblers, Spellers, Storytellers, and Scholars.