The third theme to be explored in the ELI series is on Children’s writing. What do we mean by “children’s writing”? We are not referring to children’s mastery of the script – of learning to write aksharas, or words, or to copy-write sentences. We are not referring to their ability to spell correctly or to write neatly. In this booklet, we explore ideas related to teaching children to write in order to express and communicate meaning in a way that is relevant and meaningful for them. The challenge is to work in a way such that children identify themselves as life-long writers, writing not just for the purposes of formal schooling, but also to communicate, express and reflect in their day-to-day lives.

Let’s look at a few key topics within this theme, that this resource book engages with.

What are children writing in school? The standard system of assessment in the Indian school system is heavily biased towards the written form. Thus, many hours are spent from a child’s early years in learning how to perfect the script, and later on, on how to use this knowledge to write answers, essays, compositions, and the like  In her blog piece, What do Children Write in Class?, Diksha Kharbanda describes her observations of children’s writing in a government school in Telangana where most of the writing tasks given to children concern themselves with copy-writing and rote-learning. Most Indian children learn to write in this manner, and as adults, I am sure that many of us remember what it means “to write” in this manner. This approach turns writing into a detached and burdensome process for learners, who often discontinue it once it is no longer needed for the requirements of their formal education.  

There are also however stories of hope, as we see in Divi Singh’s blog piece Developing Writing Skills in Primary Students. Divi, a teacher at a private school in Bangalore, uses differentiated instructions to make her writing instruction relevant and accessible to different  students in her classroom. She uses a range of strategies such as creating a strong connection between children’s exposure to literature and writing, holding literary discussions, exposure to different genres of writing exercises and so on, . to enhance her students’ interest in writing. As a result, many students in Divi’s classes are writing at will, and creating written texts that are closer to their lives, interests and needs.

A simplistic comparison of Divi’s classroom to that described by Diksha would be dangerous. These classrooms are drawn from two extreme ends of the spectrum of school types in India. The classroom described by Diksha is located in an under-resourced government school, where teachers are under-trained and over-worked. While, Divi teaches at a private school attended by students from upper-middle class families. Our intent, therefore, is not to compare, as much as raise awareness and start conversations around how  teachers could find support and motivation in shifting their writing curricula to more meaning-based forms. Ideally, curricular reform and teacher education could be important sites for taking on such work. In the absence of work at those levels, focused efforts need to be made with teachers and teacher educators in order to help develop a nuanced understanding of children’s writing; along with supporting and empowering them to work creatively within systemic constraints.

Emergent  writing. The idea that a child begins to write only when she has learnt the letters correctly and neatly, and spells words accurately, ignores the crucial phase of learning when a child scribbles, draws, and invents spellings in an attempt to represent the physical and social world around her. This developmental aspect of children learning to write is mostly ignored in our understanding and practices. According to the emergent literacy framework ( Strickland 1990; Strickland & Morrow 1989), framework, early attempts of the child to express themselves in the written form—be that drawing or scribbling or inventing spellings on her own, counts as attempts at writing. There are many developmental phases that can be observed in a child’s journey through emergent writing. In their blog piece, Children’s Writing: How does it Emerge and Why is this Significant?, Sneha Subramaniam and Sajitha S. introduce us to eight phases of emergent writing that were identified in children’s writing during the longitudinal research Literacy Research in Indian Languages (LiRIL)[1] in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The unnatural emphasis on precision, correct forms, spellings, and so on,. snatches away from the child a natural joy that she may feel in exploring the written world, closely connecting her exploration to her experiences. Even though children have not learnt to write formally, they are constantly engaging with and expressing through drawing and talking. Jane Sahi in her blog piece, Children Making Sense of Writing, discusses the close relationship between children’s drawing and writing during the emergent writing phase. Jane’s blog reflects the lovely pieces that can be created by children is they are given the space and support to go through this process of exploration in a safe, accepting and inquisitive environment.

Writing and talk. Writing builds itself on a foundation of good talk. Children bring with themselves a readiness to talk about a variety of topics related to stories they know, experiences they’ve had, and their  questions and thoughts. Not only is it important to create spaces for children to talk, but the teacher should also be conscious of building linkages between the child’s talk, reading and writing. Shubhra Chatterji, founder of Vikramshila Education Society, Kolkata, , shares experiences of creating a culture of rich, authentic and critical talk in her blog piece titled Children’s Talk and Authentic Writing.

Elaborating further on this idea in her blog piece, ‘Narrative Development in Young Children: Links between Oral and Written Storytelling’, Shailaja Menon writes about the importance of nurturing children’s skills at oral narratives. Children’s ability to write strong narratives builds on their understanding of  oral narratives. When children get a sense of narratives, they begin understanding a sense of time, space, sequence, cause and effect, and so on, in the structure of narratives. These understandings naturally reflect and spill over into their writing also

Writing Assessments. We conclude this theme with a blog piece on assessment.  Traditionally, writing assessment has been limited to the correction of spellings, handwriting and grammar. This form of assessment leaves a gap in the kind of feedback that children need in order to strengthen their writing for the purpose of effective communication and meaning-making. Students themselves should also be encouraged to share their writings with each other, and to provide healthy feedback to one another. Being able to look carefully at one’s own writing, as well as the writing of their peers, helps create a classroom of both strong readers as well as strong and reflective writes. 

The 6+1 trait approach developed by Ruth Culham (2003) is one of the methods by which children’s writing can be qualitatively assessed. This approach takes a broader view on assessment, moving beyond just simply looking at spellings and grammar. The LiRIL research team adapted the 6+1 traits approach to make it more suitable for assessment of children’s writing in the Indian context. In her blog piece, Assessing Children’s Writing: The Traits Approach, Shailaja Menon describes this approach as used in LiRIL study.

Way ahead. Most of our classrooms face the reality of a high pupil teacher ratio, with the presence of multiple learning levels in one group. Added to these are the constraints of syllabus completion within a fixed duration culminating into a standardized system of assessment that largely evaluates students’ grammatical knowledge, spelling, and compositional skills, along with the capability to correctly read and literally comprehend  grade-level textbook.  This reality is often disheartening and unsupportive for a teacher hoping to create space for more meaningful pedagogy.  In truth, the reclaiming of pedagogy is not a teachers’ decision alone. It’s a decision requiring wide-spread systemic shifts in the way we look at reading and writing. In the absence of this, we stand the risk of doing great injustice to our children by ruining their chances of ever developing any love for writing; and we  also do injustice to our teachers who wish to teach well.

The intent of this introduction has been to help us see children’s writing as composed of several complex aspects that go beyond the teaching and learning of form. We hope that these blog pieces along with the annotated resources we have put up add to the beginnings of dialogues and discussions around the significant issues of children’s writing in early language classrooms.

References

Strickland, D. S. (1990). Emergent Literacy: How Young Children Learn to Read and Write. Educational Leadership, 47(6), 18-23.

Strickland, D. S., & Morrow, L. M. (1989). Young Children's Early Writing Development (Emerging Readers and Writers). The Reading Teacher, 42(6), 426-27.

[1] The Literacy Research in Indian Languages (LiRIL) project was designed to provide a much-needed mapping of practices, issues and challenges that arise in the teaching and learning of early reading and writing. It was conducted in two socioeconomically underprivileged sites, Yadgir (Karnataka) and Wada (Maharashtra). A cohort of over 700 government school students was tracked over three years (from Grades 1-3) as they learned to read and write in Marathi and Kannada. (Menon et. al, 2017)