by Diana Lazar.   

We all know that children love to draw and create artwork. We, the adults, lovingly display it on the refrigerator and ask for more. It’s passed on to grandparents and hung on office walls. Yet when young children try their hand at writing, parents sometimes look at it and discount it as scribble. But ask that child to “read” the writing and often he or she will launch into a lengthy story. How do teachers help students evolve from these initial stages of written expression toward becoming confident, capable writers?

Developmental Stages of Writing

Teachers of kindergarten and first grade students recognize this “scribble writing” as the first step toward authorship. The Kindergarten and first grade author is trying out letter sounds and patterns to create stories of their own. They must pass through a logical series of steps in order to make sense of the printed word and to emerge as authors. When looking at these emergent writers it is helpful to review the developmental stages of writing.

Stage One:   The writing resembles scribbles or improvised letters. Children at this stage do not have a sense of sound-symbol relationships and the letters do not correspond with the author’s intent. Often the story at this stage is told in pictures.

Stage Two:   Actual letters begin to emerge in the writing. Often times pictures are labeled or a list accompanies a drawing. There is a single idea represented in the writing.

Stage Three:  The author moves into expressing complete thoughts in a number of linked sentences. Words are spelled out phonetically and some book spelling appears in the form of sight words learned.

Stage Four:   The idea of story begins to emerge and a number of sentences are linked in thought. The story pattern has a beginning, middle, and end sequence. They often resemble a journal entry as they do not have the elaboration required to be called narrative, where the author’s purpose is to entertain an audience of others.

Stage Five:   This stage is characterized by clear beginning, middle, and end sequencing. A greater number of details emerge in the writing and there is a mix of conventional spelling and phonetic spelling. Still absent is the evidence of narrative writing as a vehicle to entertain an audience of others.

Stage Six:   These stories are well organized, contain a clear beginning, middle, and end, and have a greater sense of audience. The writer uses conventional spelling to convey the details of the story. Elaboration of the important ideas emerges at this point which lends some entertainment value to the store.

The Parallel Tracks that Lead to Writing

In virtually every kindergarten and first grade classroom, the emphasis in language arts instruction is on the sound-symbol relationship and print conventions. Children learn that these symbols we call letters represent sounds, and that combined they form words. They learn to recognize these letters and related sounds by tracking left to right, sounding out words. They also begin to see how written words represent ideas, memories, thoughts, feelings, and intentions. This is, of course, the raw material a future author (and reader) needs to have.

This is not, however, the only learning that must take place in order for youngsters to become authors. The often overlooked “parallel track” to empower young writers involves nurturing an awareness of the elements and characteristics of story and author’s craft. What is a narrative story? How do we come to know and relate to characters and their problems? How does a character solve story problems? How and why does an author describe story critical characters, settings, and objects? What are the predictable elements all stories share? These make up the conceptual foundation on which writing skills are built. As youngsters are read to, this awareness of story and craft can begin to be developed alongside the sound-symbol connections and print conventions. In this way, when the student has the language tools and developmental maturity to represent words on paper, they will also have a more holistic understanding of story on which to draw.

Process vs. Product

Process vs. product has long been debated in the education field. The constructivist theories support the idea that children must explore concepts and practice with them in order to make sense of their world. Before young children can begin to write an entertaining narrative they need to know what constitutes a narrative story. They need to have, not only direct instruction in the necessary sound-symbol skills, but the awareness of story elements and shape that will empower them to apply word skills to create narratives.

Often, feeling pressure for our youngest students to produce “a story”, this critical story awareness piece is overlooked, and students are pushed beyond their developmental capability, resulting in frustration and negativity. The focus is on product rather than process.

A more developmentally appropriate, kinder, gentler approach is one in which young authors listen to many narrative stories with the teacher pointing out the key characteristics, while at the same time practicing the sound-symbol skills. Teachers who trust the process know that they are providing instruction in such a way that the eventual writing they’ll see will be more confident, more expressive, and more powerful. The hard part is waiting to produce the “product”.   

What are the Story Awareness Skills Young Authors Need?

Our youngest authors can begin, with plenty of teacher guidance, to analyze stories for author’s craft techniques and story elements such as:

    * story pattern
    * summarization
    * story critical characters, settings, objects
    * elaboration
    * elements of suspense

The reading-writing connection is an ongoing process of exposing students to these specific elements that “real” authors consider. Children use their AUTHOR’S EYES to see stories from the perspective of author’s craft.

After building a foundation of awareness through reading experiences, actual story writing begins. The teacher models a skill with the whole class, articulating the thought processes of an author for all to hear. This allows children to experience, first hand, the writing process--the thoughts, the written words, editing and revising, and finally a completed segment of writing. Students then practice the modeled skill and, depending on their developmental level, come away with a greater awareness of story and/or produce a segment of writing.

Getting Ready to Write, a Kindergarten-1st Grade writing resource guide by Barbara Mariconda and Dea Auray, supports and encourages this process for kindergarten and first grade students. The resource begins with the developmental stages of writing, goes through a series of writing lessons designed along the parallel track of story awareness, which ultimately empowers emerging writers to understand and then create entertaining narratives.

Writing Awareness Skills for the Young Author

One of the first concepts young authors need to grasp leads to recognition of story pattern. The basic concept of “FIRST- NEXT- LAST” paves the way for an application to writing – recognizing the concept of “BEGINNING- MIDDLE- END” of story. Learning the shape a story takes is critical to ultimately writing a narrative piece. The Narrative Writing Diamond, as published in Getting Ready to Write, is a graphic picture or reminder of the shape a story takes.

The Simplified Narrative Writing DiamondThe top is a small section, the middle much larger, and the bottom is, again, a small part. So too with story, the beginning of a story is a small part of the whole, the middle of the story where the main event takes place, and finally the end of the story, also a smaller portion of the writing. By directly instructing students to notice story pattern they will begin to internalize the natural progression of story.

ELABORATIVE DETAIL is also a critical skill for young writers. As students explore literature with author’s eyes they notice the details an author uses to convey meaning and to allow the reader to experience the story right along with the main character. For instance: an author will use the five senses to stop and describe story critical elements. In other words, authors don’t just use adjectives indiscriminately, describing anything and everything. Instead, with teacher direction, students learn to identify story critical elements such as; character, setting, or object on which to focus descriptive energy in powerful ways.

Once students can identify the story critical characters, settings, and objects the teacher can ask specific, productive questions of the young authors encouraging them to use their five senses to describe elements of story. Questions such as: “What did you see? What did you hear? What types of smells did you recognize? What did this remind you of? What did it feel like? What did you taste?” help children visualize the character, setting, or object in a story they may write.

At first, developmentally, the student may be able to answer these types of questions orally. They can often tell you much more than they can write. In fact, children always know, understand, and experience more than they can effectively articulate. When a child struggles to express an idea, the teacher puts that idea into words. Therefore, teacher modeling empowers students by translating the child’s inner knowledge into powerful, evocative language.

When writing these responses during modeling the use of rich vocabulary will add depth and power to the writing. Teachers can offer a number of sentence starters to help the child get started. Instead of writing, I saw a red bird in the tree, the teacher interested in vocabulary building might suggest, Looking up I noticed a scarlet colored bird perched in the maple tree. Ultimately the child will begin to write his or her own powerful responses when developmentally ready.

Another skill area is the art of SUSPENSE. This is the ability of an author to project the main character’s wonder or worry into the mind of the reader. In other words, when the main character in a story wonders or worries, the reader wonders and worries as well. Kindergarten and first grade students learn suspense through the use of story questions, word referents, and riddles. A story question raises a concern in the readers’ mind. Joseph tiptoed into the house and listened carefully. Was that a noise in the attic? He wondered what it could possibly be. “Should I go up there?” he asked himself nervously. As readers, we’re wondering if Joseph is in fact alone--or is someone else there? This leads us to read on.

The youngest authors can also use word referents to add suspense to a story. A word referent is a word that refers to something without actually naming it. For example, a bear can be referred to as: a big furry animal, a ferocious beast, large woodland creature, or a wild honey stealer. This puts a question into the mind of the reader and again leads us to read on.

One way to introduce students to the concept of suspense is through the use of suspenseful riddles. The teacher reads a “riddle” and asks the students to figure out or guess the answer: I peeked inside the box and noticed a small round object. It was a bright white color with red stitching down either side of it. The sphere was smooth and fit perfectly in my hand. I could just imagine throwing it across the plate during the big game. It was a …

Of course, in addition to building suspense, this technique also builds vocabulary.

What Can You Expect from the Youngest Authors?

Children will move from recognition of skill, technique, and author’s craft to writing on their own when they are developmentally ready to handle the challenges of putting pencil to paper. It is our job as teachers of writing to lead these children along the parallel tracks of phonemic and story awareness, to inform and empower them as astute readers and capable writers. We can provide a powerful scaffold of concepts and skills upon which our youngest authors can eventually flourish as writers.

Diane Lazar has been a classroom teacher for over 15 years. She is currently a writing specialist in an elementary school in Fairfield County, CT. In addition to teaching writing in the classroom she has presented programs on writing to thousands of teachers at workshops and conferences across the United States. As a writer, she has published articles in professional journals such as, The School Administrator, and has collaborated on a number of books including Getting Ready to Write, a writing resource for teachers of kindergarten and grade one.