Maori Literacy Reading and Writing | He Matai Matatupu

The Writing Process

The exploration of literacy that preschool children do is even more obvious in their early attempts to write. They explore the making of marks on paper, from scribble to letter-like forms, to some letter shapes, often part of their own name, to favourite letters and particular words and then they acquire more letters and more words, but all the time invented forms and invented words intrude into their productions as they explore possibilities. After entry to school children work quite hard to understand the conventions of the printer's code, the 'rules' of writing language down, mastering some of these quite early, and taking a surprisingly long time to understand the functions of others, for example, the space concept, or the importance of order, or the difference that orientation of letters makes to what they stand for. For example, Amanda's writing looks like a jumble of disoriented letters but the teacher who observed her rated it a good attempt at the observation task which records how well the child can hear the sounds in words.
In fact preschool children can respond to and learn about visual features or print, know some letters, write some words, make up pretend writing as letters to people, or dictate stories they want written, and all this before they have begun to consider how the words they say may be coded into print, and in particular how the sounds of speech are coded in print. The biggest hurdle to learn when this coding follows regular rules or patterns, and what are the alternate or irregular coding patterns that might be needed.
Without a feel for the conventions of print the child cannot bring what he knows about letters and words to on the writing task, and without some skill at hearing the sounds within words, he has no chance of learning letter-sound relationships. He may memorise some letter sequences of words he likes to write using visual information and a memory for the motor movements. But until he begins to notice that sounds in his speech can be written in consistent ways he has no way of attempting to write a word which he has not memorized.
So, there are many facets to the writing process just as there are to the reading process, and they can be described in much the same way. Writing involves messages expressed in language, and the writer must compose these. They flow directly from his own language competencies. Writing involves visual learning of letter features and letter forms, and patterns of letters in clusters or in words, and mingling these with what one knows about the conventions of the printer's code. Writing also involves the young writer in listening to his own speech to find out which sounds
he needs to write, and then finding the letters with which to record those sounds.
As the young writer works earnestly to get his message down on paper he is, like the reader, working up and down the various levels at which we can analyse language - message, sentence, word, letter cluster, or letter-sound. As a reader he may ignore some of the information in print, leaning upon the anchor points of the information he knows. In writing, however, there is no other way to write than letter by letter, one after the other; it is an analytical activity which takes words apart. He may omit letters, or use substitutes for the ones in orthodox spelling, but he is forced by the nature of the task to act analytically on print when he is writing.
Composing orally something that he wants to write, or wants a teacher to write for him, is not easy for all children and the quality of composition, in telling stories or relaying information, improves as children immerse themselves in the task (Paley, 1981).
There is, however, a tedious time when the child must work out for himself how the composition can be recorded, and what he, as the writer, has to do to get the story down on paper. Both the composition and the scribing sides of the task can be approached with success by the preschool child, or in the first year of school.
In summary, teachers aim to produce independent readers whose reading and writing improve whenever they read and write. In the independent student:

early strategies are secure and habituated
the child monitors his own reading or writing
he searches for cues in word sequences, in meaning, in letter sequences
he discovers new things for himself
he cross-checks one source of cues with another
he repeats as if to confirm his reading or writing
he self-corrects, assuming the initiative for making cues match, or getting words right
he solves new words by these means.

	page 1 - 2 The Writing Process The exploration of literacy that preschool children do is even more obvious in their early attempts to write. They explore the making of marks on paper, from scribble to letter-like forms, to some letter shapes, often part of their own name, to favourite letters and particular words and then they acquire more letters and more words, but all the time invented forms and invented words intrude into their productions as they explore possibilities. After entry to school children work quite hard to understand the conventions of the printer's code, the 'rules' of writing language down, mastering some of these quite early, and taking a surprisingly long time to understand the functions of others, for example, the space concept, or the importance of order, or the difference that orientation of letters makes to what they stand for. For example, Amanda's writing looks like a jumble of disoriented letters but the teacher who observed her rated it a good attempt at the observation task which records how well the child can hear the sounds in words. In fact preschool children can respond to and learn about visual features or print, know some letters, write some words, make up pretend writing as letters to people, or dictate stories they want written, and all this before they have begun to consider how the words they say may be coded into print, and in particular how the sounds of speech are coded in print. The biggest hurdle to learn when this coding follows regular rules or patterns, and what are the alternate or irregular coding patterns that might be needed. Without a feel for the conventions of print the child cannot bring what he knows about letters and words to on the writing task, and without some skill at hearing the sounds within words, he has no chance of learning letter-sound relationships. He may memorise some letter sequences of words he likes to write using visual information and a memory for the motor movements. But until he begins to notice that sounds in his speech can be written in consistent ways he has no way of attempting to write a word which he has not memorized. So, there are many facets to the writing process just as there are to the reading process, and they can be described in much the same way. Writing involves messages expressed in language, and the writer must compose these. They flow directly from his own language competencies. Writing involves visual learning of letter features and letter forms, and patterns of letters in clusters or in words, and mingling these with what one knows about the conventions of the printer's code. Writing also involves the young writer in listening to his own speech to find out which sounds he needs to write, and then finding the letters with which to record those sounds. As the young writer works earnestly to get his message down on paper he is, like the reader, working up and down the various levels at which we can analyse language - message, sentence, word, letter cluster, or letter-sound. As a reader he may ignore some of the information in print, leaning upon the anchor points of the information he knows. In writing, however, there is no other way to write than letter by letter, one after the other; it is an analytical activity which takes words apart. He may omit letters, or use substitutes for the ones in orthodox spelling, but he is forced by the nature of the task to act analytically on print when he is writing. Composing orally something that he wants to write, or wants a teacher to write for him, is not easy for all children and the quality of composition, in telling stories or relaying information, improves as children immerse themselves in the task (Paley, 1981). There is, however, a tedious time when the child must work out for himself how the composition can be recorded, and what he, as the writer, has to do to get the story down on paper. Both the composition and the scribing sides of the task can be approached with success by the preschool child, or in the first year of school. In summary, teachers aim to produce independent readers whose reading and writing improve whenever they read and write. In the independent student: early strategies are secure and habituated the child monitors his own reading or writing he searches for cues in word sequences, in meaning, in letter sequences he discovers new things for himself he cross-checks one source of cues with another he repeats as if to confirm his reading or writing he self-corrects, assuming the initiative for making cues match, or getting words right he solves new words by these means.
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