4 Writing – Key Issues

a. Defining writing

Every day children see adults around them making marks on paper or writing, but, unlike talking, writing is not ‘picked up’ incidentally. Most children need careful teaching if they are to learn to write effectively.

As with reading, student teachers may start their training with a narrow idea of learning to write. They may see it as chiefly concerned with mastering the techniques of handwriting, spelling and punctuation. However, children also have to express ideas and communicate confidently with an audience. So here too, a proper balance is essential.

However, although student teachers usually agree that they enjoy reading, when asked about writing, they raise issues of time, effort and correctness. They tend to think of writing as an academic chore and do not consider a telephone message, a mobile text or a shopping list to be ‘writing’. We need to help them widen their conception of writing and of the parts it plays in children’s lives.

Thanks to new technology, most children are ‘writing’ before they are fully aware of the existence of print literacy. With 21st century technology all around them, few children will enter school without some experience of playing with a keyboard; many will already be accustomed to making images on the screen respond to their touch. Keyboard and screen will also be an integral part of student teachers’ lives. Like the children they are going to teach, they will find a variety of software motivating and stimulating.