Assisting the pupils in writing activities in a developmental way

How do teachers achieve the balance between authenticity and conventionality?

Focus on two objectives:1.    the development of the pupils’ own voice as a writer2.    learning to use the conventional writing strategies and text forms

Teaching abilities

• To design and build up meaningful writing activities together with the pupils (Wells, 2000)

• To guide the writing process in a developmentally appropriate and culturally valid way

• To plan the guided writing activities in the logbook

• To observe in an activity-oriented way using the observation model for the writing activities

Four questions

• Are the teachers able to design and to plan the writing activities for the themes in their classes?

• Are the teachers able to assist their pupils and which interventions do they use then?

• Are the teachers able to plan the writing activities for all the pupils in their logbooks?

• Do the teachers use the activity-oriented observation model for the writing activities?

Case-study

• three teachers of three classes (4 to 7/8-years-olds in the grades 1-4)

• data:

• interviews (before and after the theme period)

• video tapes

Assisting young writers

The teacher uses the next interventions: • Rousing the stories of the pupils

• Assisting to tell the stories

• Assisting to make the transfer from telling to writing

• Assisting to clarify the aim of the writing and the writing strategies

• Assisting the writing process by focusing on the content of the writing

• Assisting in reading back

• Assisting in reflecting and correcting by asking questions

• Assisting in revising the text

• Assessing both the writing process and the product together with the pupil in terms of authenticity and conventionality (Au et al, 1997)

Results

• The teachers are able to design and to plan

• The teachers also plan the writing activities in their logbook (content and textform)

• Concerning their assistance in the writing activities of their pupils it is clear that:

•All the three teachers find the first orienting phase (before writing) very important

•All the three teachers are able in rousing and examining the meanings their pupils attach to the writing activities

•All the three teachers are also able in receiving and confirming the utterances of the meanings of their pupils

•The teachers of grade 3 and grade 4 actually also assist their pupils during the writing in contrary of what they said in the interviews.

• The teachers of grade 3 and grade 4 also don’t use the activity-oriented

observation models for the writing activities.

Questions

• Next year we will look at the results of the pupils. Is it possible that good results (the pupils are strongly improved on writing texts) will encourage the teachers to appropriate the teaching abilities (assisting interventions) and the related activity-oriented observation instruments?

• In all the three groups we have seen ‘mathematical’ writing activities such as schematisations. Do these activities stimulate ‘literal’ writing activities? Is it that in a group where using symbols is a part of the culture the results of both mathematics and literacy are being stimulated?