Voices of Practitioners
Content and Mechanics:
Understanding First Grade Writers
Stacia M. Stribling and Susan M. Kraus
Susan Kraus, a veteran first grade teacher, and Stacia Stribling, a university-based teacher researcher and former teacher at Susan’s school, collaborated on a project on children’s writing development. The project took place over a school year as Susan taught the class of 23 first graders and Stacia co-taught one day a week for the entire year. This project is an excellent example of the kind of support that a university teacher and researcher can provide in a teacher research project. Susan benefited from an additional teacher and an “outside” colleague who brought a different set of eyes and ears to Susan’s classroom and their shared research. This makes good developmental sense for the children and good teaching sense for the teacher researcher. Stacia benefited also by enjoying a close teaching and research partnership that led to a publication.
—Daniel Meier
Stacia M. Stribling, MA, is an instructor of educational transformation in the Master’s in New Professional Studies–Teaching program at George Mason University Graduate School of Education, in Manassas, Virginia. In the past she has taught first and second grades. Stacia can be reached at sslawins@gmu.edu.
Susan M. Kraus, MA, is a first grade teacher at Grace Miller Elementary School in Bealeton, Virginia. Susan has taught for 21 years in Fauquier County, with experience in both third grade and special education. She can be reached at skraus@fcps1.org.
As we began to write up our teacher research, we reflected on where to begin. Putting pen to paper, or in our technological world, fingers to keyboard, is an extremely complicated task. We stared at the computer screen for what seemed like an eternity, typing a couple of words, only to delete them. Finally we considered, How do we want to start? What is the flow going to be? What is the best way to organize all of the information? Should we start with our research topic or start with information about ourselves? How much detail should we include? Do we want to tell the entire story or only summarize the highlights? These questions and more raced through our minds. Planning, organizing, and reflecting are all part of the writing process.
Now imagine nurturing this process with a group of 23 six-year-olds. First grade teachers are asked to do this every year, but how successful are we? We believe that the only way we can successfully facilitate children’s writing development is by seeing the process through their eyes. Our teacher research project enabled us to closely examine our students’ writing as it developed and to learn more about how they made sense of their writing.
Since the 1980s, literacy researchers and practitioners have highlighted the complexity of the writing process, recognizing that children travel through stages of development as they gain an understanding of the processes of reading and writing (Graves 1983; Calkins 1986). Tools such as the Early Literacy Continuum help assess these stages of writing development (Matteson & Freeman 2005). This continuum helps classroom teachers focus their observations and anecdotal records and ultimately use this information to guide their writing instruction.
Writing development is not necessarily linear, even in young children (Flower & Hayes 1980). Effective writers do not always follow a strict succession, from planning the ideas to translating the ideas into written words to reviewing the product. Goss and Stapor (2001) propose a helix model of writing development that accounts for children’s recursive steps as they are learning to move forward. Meier (2000) describes the combination of developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive teaching:
In this way, literacy as enacted with children does not always follow a stage or step-like progression from simple to complex, from the introductory to the sophisticated, from beginning to end. Rather, the teaching-learning movement often inverts itself, as the process becomes dynamic and back-and-forth and learning, experience and development swirl together like food colors in water. (p. 26)
Both content and mechanics are important skills to address with beginning writers (Avery 1993).
owever, it is important that teachers begin by nurturing children’s desire and attempts to communicate through writing, regardless of writing ability. Writers first need to have a genuine purpose for writing and become comfortable in taking a risk before learning all of the conventional rules of writing (Routman 1991). Teachers need to provide “specific, constructive feedback so the children know what is working well and what needs improvement” (Culham 2005, 15). This feedback should focus on all the components of writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. Calkins (1986) suggests that “editing has a very real place in the writer’s craft” (p. 204) and recommends setting aside time for both content conferences and editing opportunities. Researchers and practitioners highlight the importance of teaching the conventions of writing in context (Graves 1983; Routman 1991). For example, children practice punctuation as they write a thank-you letter following a field trip.
Researchers also suggest that teachers create a community of writers within the classroom. In a community of writers, children actively share with each other and the teacher. They feel comfortable enough to critique as well as support one another. This sense of community enables dialogue among children and teachers and helps develop writers who “are willing to take risks and try new things” (Parsons 2005, 13).
Developing our questions
For us, one of the most stressful facets of teaching writing to first-graders is assessing their work. Our theoretical backgrounds and teaching experiences lead us to believe that the mastery of writing skills occurs at a different point for each child. This pedagogical lens encourages us to value the knowledge each student brings to the writing process as we carefully support individual growth along the developmental continuum. Unfortunately that support is easy to describe in theoretical terms yet quite difficult to enact in a real classroom setting, especially when teachers have to address state standards that seem to disregard the developmental process. We sometimes find ourselves not having the time to let the children grow at their own pace.
As we reflected on these struggles, we realized we had somehow lost sight of what was important to us as teachers: building relationships with children that allow us to listen to them, share responsibility for learning with them, and use their insights and needs to guide our instruction. We decided to reconnect with those values through our writing instruction and focus our research on the writing process. In September we asked what happens when first-graders set their own writing goals. By January our focus had shifted to looking more specifically at the ways in which the children reflect on their writing progress. In early spring, after looking at our interventions and data collected, we realized that throughout the year we had focused on how to improve the content of the children’s writing.
Our story goes beyond the pages on which the children wrote, into the community of learners we created. During this process we all shared the roles of “teacher” and “learner.” Collaboration helped the children improve the content of their writing. We knew that by the end of the school year, they would be expected to follow many conventional rules of capitalization and punctuation. The state identifies 12 standards for first-graders’ writing competency; eight focus on the mechanics of writing, and only four address writing content. Yet we worried that overemphasizing mechanics would hinder the creative process of developing interesting content. Knowing that both content and mechanics are important parts of the writing process, we struggled with which comes first. Why does traditional teaching place mechanics before content? Can’t children write wonderfully complex stories without the stories having to “look right”? And ultimately, how do we balance these issues to keep children excited about writing while at the same time scaffolding their growth as competent writers? We decided to explore the following research questions:
- How can we effectively emphasize story content in our writing instruction?
- When we do emphasize content, what emerges within our students’ writing?
- What does this journey look like for the students and for us as teachers?
It was important to examine our roles in this journey because we recognized that we felt anxiety about teaching writing partly because we were not confident in ourselves as writers. We hoped the teacher research project would strengthen our own writing and in turn allow us to strengthen the children’s writing skills (Frank, Carpenter, & Smith 2003).
Design of the study
Before the school year began, Stacia started a journal of ideas and thoughts, beginning to outline strategies we could consider. Some of these initial “action” ideas included focusing children on writing content by using story webs and other tools that help develop storylines and using samples of other first grade writing as models for their own work. We debated using examples of writing as models for the students; we wondered if this would undermine the children’s need to develop at their own rate. At the same time, we recognized that setting high expectations usually yields greater results. We often find that children are more capable than we may think. Fearing that we might be heading in the wrong direction with this strategy, we decided to focus on tools to help the children find their own voices as authors.
We began the year by giving the children different tools for brainstorming writing ideas. Writing webs help children develop and organize information about characters in a story. But this type of web lends itself more to writing descriptions and not so much to writing stories. So we transitioned to brainstorming tools that would help in story development. Children used story logs to map out the beginning, middle, and end of stories and picture prompts to work through the development of problem and solution scenarios. Once the children had a firm grasp of story structure, we introduced different writing techniques to scaffold their attention to story content. Wanting to nurture them as authentic authors, we exposed them to various genres and styles used by “real” authors, such as poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The children analyzed the techniques of some of their favorite authors. We discussed the use of descriptive and informative writing and talked about how children as authors can use personal experiences as story ideas.
Throughout this focus on writing genres and techniques, we continued to encourage the children to be reflective. They chose stories for publishing in a classroom book and explained in writing why they chose those particular pieces. We asked them to talk and write about their feelings regarding the reading of and the creation of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. During this time we worked hard to develop a collaborative atmosphere. We encouraged the children to share their writing with each other and with us, not merely to evaluate accuracy but to celebrate their ideas and accomplishments as authors.
In October we interviewed the children to determine their feelings about writing. We asked the following questions:
- Why do you write?
- What do you like about writing?
- What don’t you like about writing?
- What do you like to write about?
- How do you know if something is well written?
- What’s the most important thing a writer needs to remember?
From the first four questions, we were hoping to gain some insight into the children’s perceived strengths and needs in order to use that information to inform our instruction. We included the last two questions to give us information about whether the students perceived writing as the process of accurate spelling and punctuation.
Soon after the interviews, we planned a lesson with two purposes: to get the children to begin focusing on the content of their writing and to set the stage for goal development and self-assessment. First, the children read their journals and the stories in their writing folders, looking for techniques they used to write their best pieces. Once they had time to reflect on their work, they shared ideas about quality writing and brainstormed some more with a partner. Finally, we brought the whole group back together to create a list of their discoveries about quality writing. We used the ideas to create the Writing Review Sheet, a tool for helping the children assess their own writing.
Data collection and analysis
Our data collection methods included
- teacher journals,
- teacher conferences,
- observations and transcripts of children’s conversations,
- children’s writing samples, and
- interview responses and written reflections of the writing process by the children.
In teacher journals we recorded the first-graders’ actions, comments, conversations, and thoughts as well as our reactions to and interpretations of these events. Susan kept records of the children’s exact words and actions. She also took notes during whole class conversations, re-creating the script as it unfolded. Stacia spent afternoons writing in her own journal her daily thoughts, including ideas and understandings we had developed together through our conversations. Her extensive writing explored the big picture of what was happening in the classroom and the theoretical ways in which we both were making sense of children’s writing. As a full-time teacher, Susan did not have the luxury of time to reflect and write extensive journal entries. However, she recorded valuable daily descriptions of children’s words and actions, multitasking her responsibilities as teacher and data collector. When put together, these two different approaches to journaling provided a rich narrative of what we experienced during the year and how our thinking unfolded along the way.
One of the strengths of this collaboration was our weekly dialogue about what we were experiencing in the classroom. After the language arts block, the children went to lunch and then out to the playground for 20 minutes of free play. We used this time to debrief about the lesson, sharing pieces that each of us experienced and helping each other interpret the meaning of the actions and words of the children and ourselves. We also collected or photocopied most of the students’ stories, written reflections about writing, and their Writing Review Sheets.
To clearly identify our research findings, we reread our journals to understand the process and highlight patterns that emerged. We reviewed writing samples, looking at the children’s development over time as well as comparing the development across the class to get a better sense of the general trends and note interesting details.
Findings and discussion
When interviewed, most of the children said they write because they “like to,” but a few indicated they did it only because they “had to.” Most children reported liking the process of writing itself: “You can make up your own idea,” “I like making sentences,” and “I like it because it has a lot of detail—I like the details.” Eight children indicated they liked drawing illustrations. Many children said they liked to write about their personal experiences with pets, friends, and family events. Their frustrations with writing focused on spelling issues and getting words “right.” Some children also talked about their hands getting tired. We appreciated Jasmine’s honesty when she complained, “Like when we say we’re done, and the teacher says we’re not. Then we have to do some more and the bell hasn’t rung yet. That’s what I don’t like.” (See “Interview Questions and Children’s Responses,” at the end of the article.)
Four patterns emerged from our analysis of the data:
- A disconnect between what the school system wanted children to focus on in their writing and what was natural to them as writers.
- Our own difficulty focusing on the content of writing as we found ourselves unconsciously commenting on the way the children’s writing looked.
- Defining the inconsistencies we saw in children’s attention to mechanics—as their stories gained variety and depth of content, their attention to mechanics decreased.
- The struggle children had making complex writing ideas “look right,” because they lacked an understanding of complex writing structures.
A disconnect
In the interviews the children identified mechanics as the main characteristic of good writing. This supported our assumption that their previous writing instruction in the classroom and at home, through interactions with parents and siblings, had encouraged them to focus on mechanics. All but 3 of the 23 children talked about identifying good writing by how it looks. They mentioned words spelled correctly, capital letters, punctuation, and good pictures. When asked how they know a story is a good piece of writing, Cody said, “Because you spelled it right.” Christina told us, “You could look at the words and think how they’re written and what the letters look like.” Meredith mentioned the importance of “floating letters not touching the bottom line.” While we were not surprised by the responses, we recognized that we ourselves were contributing to this emphasis on having the writing look right. We knew our focus had to shift toward content if we were to make a difference in the children’s thinking.
Later in the year, after we had begun to help the first-graders set their own goals for writing, they identified the story content as the earmark of good writing. Michael indicated that “using your imagination” made a good story. Jasmine agreed, saying “being creative” was an important element of writing. Many children referred to how a story makes you feel: Veronica said a good story “makes me laugh,” while Bradley pointed to the other end of the spectrum and indicated that some good stories “make us cry.” It was not until the end of the conversations that anyone mentioned punctuation and capitalization.
What was most intriguing about these class conversations is that in our initial interviews the children overwhelmingly agreed that you could tell that something is well written by how it looks (that is, by neat handwriting, capitals, periods, and other mechanical conventions). Their answers reflected what they had been told was important. However, after using their own writing to identify what makes something good writing, the children focused on content (that is, what it does for them aesthetically, how it makes them feel, how creative they were, and so on). Although the contexts for these two prompts were different, the children’s views of good writing changed when they developed criteria based on their own writing. They shared with us what they as writers/readers deemed important.
Our struggles to focus on content
Even though we were committed to talking to the children about their writing from a content perspective, we often found ourselves commenting on the way their writing looked—whether it had proper punctuation and capitalization. These comments appeared not only in our observational notes but also in our conversations with the children. In the first week of October, Stacia wrote in her journal:
While I was praising [Jackson] for the tremendous work he had done, I found myself focusing somewhat on the appearance of his writing—neat, no capital letters where they weren’t necessary, writing on the line, beautiful handwriting, etc. What is wrong with me? No wonder most of the children said during the interview that appearance and mechanics were the most important aspects of good writing! We foster that even when we think that other aspects are more important, such as content.
Because it was easier to identify and fix errors in writing conventions, we spent more time on this area than on content. Proper punctuation is concrete rather than an abstract concept, so we found ourselves migrating toward this area even when we had consciously decided not to. We kept getting trapped.
However, it was also the children’s reaction to the questions about mechanics on the Writing Review Sheet that pushed us toward this focus. The children were quite generous with their self-ratings (even when they neglected to use punctuation), not even looking at the piece of writing to guide their assessment. Instead, many of the students followed Jackson’s lead; his approach was to look up at the ceiling and question aloud if he used periods and capital letters appropriately. After a few seconds of apparently waiting for an answer from above, he proclaimed that he had indeed used them appropriately.
While the Writing Review Sheet included questions about mechanics, we consciously included prompts that addressed content as well, forcing ourselves to focus on children’s responses to the questions. Some questions, answered on a scale of “Yes,” “No,” and “Getting there,” were “Did I provide enough information for the reader to visualize my story?” “Did I use descriptive writing?” “Did the story come to a logical conclusion?” We also included open-ended questions, seeking to uncover their writing process: “I like my story because ____ ,” “I got my story idea from ____ ,” “What makes this a good story?” These questions and prompts were useful for getting the children to focus on content. However, it took effort on our part to adequately discuss content and not overshadow it by noting writing conventions.
Defining the inconsistencies in children’s attention to mechanics
As we read each child’s journal from beginning to end, a definite pattern began to emerge: as stories gained variety and depth of content, attention to mechanics decreased. In other words, when the children began to explore with their writing or began to connect the writing styles found in books with what they were writing in their journals, punctuation skills they had previously mastered suddenly disappeared. This phenomenon occurred at different rates, depending on the children’s individual development.
During our study of authors and particular writing approaches and techniques, quite a few children enthusiastically wrote stories that mimicked the books we had been reading. For example, they wrote mysteries, divided their stories into chapters, and built suspense into the end of each chapter. Some also wrote “series” stories in which the same character experienced different, humorous adventures in each installment. However, at this point Susan noted in her journal, “Most of the children are totally forgetting the mechanics and capitals. Their stories are flowing out and the periods aren’t coming along naturally.”
The following examples show how the children began to focus on the content of their stories.
Bryce
Bryce moved to our school district and joined our class in February. He had a solid grasp of sentence structure, often writing nonfiction stories that reported general information or events occurring in his life. Bryce’s “George Washington Story” is an example of his early writing in our class. He used simple sentence structure, beginning with the noun or telling part of the sentence and followed by the verb or action part of the sentence.
Bryce’s “George Washington Story”
Long ago George Washington lede the fight to free us from England. He was are first preudent. He was non [known] as are father of our cotrionte [country].
After carefully examining the mystery genre through reading, Bryce began to write more fiction, using elements such as suspense and problem/solution to make his stories more action packed. In “The Mystery Kids,” instead of using punctuation to separate his thoughts, Bryce used and to connect the action. This may illustrate his stream of consciousness as he focused on content.
Bryce’s “The Mystery Kids”
One day there were three littel kids that found misterys [mysteries] everyday and one mistery was spooky and they got trap[ped] in a honted house and mumys started to come out of the walls and were gona hert the kids but one of the kids now [knew] cerotey [karate] and killed the mumeys and the kids were ok and the next morning they got out of the honted house and they found more clues and that was the end of the day.
Bryce’s shift to content brought with it a lack of attention to mechanics. His earlier journal entries showed that he knew where punctuation belongs, but as he branched out with ideas, this knowledge took a back seat. It is almost as if he had to put this knowledge aside as he began to experiment with new techniques.
Meredith
Meredith was a diligent worker who took writing very seriously. In September she had a solid grasp of sentence structure and enjoyed writing stories about herself that were filled with a lot of details. Even so, she used simple sentence structures—naming part followed by action part. She wrote “My Tonsils are out” in November.
Meredith’s “My Tonsils are out”
I got my tonsils taken owt. They let me ceep the mask that put me to sleep. My dad went in with me. He look like a chef.
After we had discussed with the children how they, as authors, could use personal experiences as story ideas, Meredith caught on to our content focus rather quickly and began to incorporate more “story language” into her journal writing. In December she was using descriptive language and dialogue in her stories, but the introduction of these new elements coincided with a decrease in her attention to mechanics (see Meredith’s “A Cold Christmas Eve”).
Meredith’s “A Cold Christmas Eve”
One could [cold] christmas eve santa and his elf.s wr [were] fleen [filling] the sled with presents lots and lots uv presents eevn no [though] santa is fat and chubby thos reindeer uv his thay can cree [carry] him ok santa sid one uv the elf wus comeing out the door elf ast [asked] santa can I go with you so santa sid yes mreey christmos.
Jackson
Jackson was another child who illustrated knowledge of punctuation and capitalization. In his “My Dog,” written in October, he used simple sentence structure, much like Meredith did in “My Tonsils are out.” All his sentences began with a noun followed by the action, and all started with a capital letter and ended appropriately with a period.
Jackson’s “My Dog”
My dog can not sim [swim]. We trid to mak him sim in lak ridl [Lake Brittle]. He ran uwa, and he omost got lost. We fant [found] him. Naw he dousit go to lak ritl [Lake Brittle].
Unlike Meredith, Jackson seemed reluctant to take risks, such as incorporating description and using different genres of writing. He lacked confidence in his abilities and constantly looked to us for guidance and approval. As a result, he did not begin to incorporate elements like character name, detail, and description until much later in the school year
Jackson wrote “The Rhinoceros” (below) in response to a picture prompt we gave the children. Here, he no longer used punctuation and capital letters appropriately. He did, however, incorporate description and dialogue into a captivating story. He also used story language in phrases such as “He shrugged his shoulders.” Like the other children, Jackson set aside his knowledge of mechanics when he experimented with content.
Jackson’s “The Rhinoceros”
Oun nite a grol [girl] wus sleeping her name wus stasy she wus 16 yes. Old she hrd [heard] suthing baging [banging] a gest [against] the haws [house] so. She wint. ovr to her win dow she so [saw] a rinceris [rhinoceros]. she fatide [fainted] she hit her a lrm [alarm] clock it rug [rung] her parinse came. to her the parinse got a fan she wock [woke] up the nect day. She sed to her parinse that she sow a rinosuris a ftr [after] brefit [breakfast]. She wint awt side rit standing at the posh [porch] wus a big big rinsris she sed you can be my pet. But frst let my asck my parns frst uv ol wut is your name. He shrugd his sholl drs [shoulders] thin I will name you timmy my parns sed yes yippee
While we were excited about the increasing depth of the children’s stories, we were troubled by the disregard for the writing conventions we had been teaching. We were torn between celebrating children’s passion for writing compelling stories and worrying about their inability to consistently use proper mechanics. We had felt this same tension in past years, but it was not until analyzing this group’s writing that we were able to understand why these two pieces of the writing puzzle did not fit as neatly as we had hoped. It is evident from these examples that the children could not hold these two concepts—interesting storyline and proper writing conventions—in their minds at the same time. There appeared to be a cognitive overload.
It is important to note that many of the children resumed use of proper punctuation and capitalization as the year progressed. Their reincorporation of writing conventions was not necessarily due to redrafting, as we rarely asked them to revise. (We found that it was difficult for first-graders to rewrite. If there was no space to fit the words, the children struggled to add information to the middle of a story, and the physical act of rewriting the piece made their hand muscles tire quickly.) Once the children became comfortable with content exploration, they began to reincorporate the mechanical skills previously learned.
Expressing complex ideas
After discovering children’s inconsistent attention to mechanics, we went back to our journals to find further evidence to support this finding. We found that some students recognized this discrepancy themselves. In mid-January, while watching the children at work, Stacia made the following observation in her journal: “Krystal, who was sitting across from [Jasmine], said, ‘I get so connected with the writing that I forget about the periods. I don’t do periods because my ideas come so fast.’”
As the children began to recognize that story writing comes from a flow of ideas, they put their energy into expressing those ideas and could not seem to keep up with the mechanics. It became more important to get everything down before they forgot rather than to make everything look correct. In addition, as stories began to flow as they would in conversation, the children used more complex sentence structures. Sometimes they used more advanced punctuation or grammar—techniques that, according to the curriculum, would not be introduced until the children were much older. Stacia wrote in March:
Angelina used a technique that we have never discussed but that she must have picked up from books she has read, and that is summarizing at the end. I pointed out that this was an effective method for helping the reader, especially when the text contained a lot of action or facts. [Angelina had been writing about her weekend, mentioning all of the exciting activities she did: staying in a fancy hotel, sleeping in a closet, going to a funeral, learning how to doggie-paddle, etc. At the end of her story, she listed all of these as a recap.] I explained the use of commas when writing lists. I’m not sure if she’ll remember this, but it was a great teaching moment. It’s important to note that instead of commas, Angelina used asterisks to separate the items in her list. She was creating her own writing rule; she knew there had to be some distinction, but since she had not been taught the method, she created her own.
Other children also created their own conventions for writing as the need arose. Because they wrote in the same style as they spoke, their sentences often contained clauses. In a journal entry, Stacia wrote,
The punctuation that Bradley used included separating his writing into phrases rather than sentences. It’s as if he recognizes the pauses but can’t distinguish between a slight pause (comma or clause) and a complete pause (period). It does get more complicated when the children are able to think/write complex thoughts and sentence structures but have not yet been exposed to complex mechanics.
During a collaborative session, we helped Pierce with his punctuation. Similar to Bryce’s work that we shared earlier (“The Mystery Kids”), Pierce had used and to connect his thoughts rather than separating sentences with a punctuation mark. While Pierce was editing his work, Bradley asked, “Why can’t we write the way we talk?” He recognized that when he and his peers tell stories to others, they freely use the word and to let the listener know that more information is coming. All of a sudden, he realized that written discourse does not necessarily mesh with spoken discourse.
Perhaps one explanation for the children’s regression in use of writing conventions was the complexity of their sentence structures. However, we were not sure how to remedy this. It did not seem feasible to teach more complex sentence structure and mechanics to beginning writers. Nor did it seem appropriate to not let them express themselves freely. Perhaps we just must accept this as part of the process and be aware that as children gain variety and depth in content, their attention to mechanics will decrease. We realize that we can no longer become frustrated with these backwards steps; rather, we must begin to recognize them as integral to children’s ongoing development as writers.
[SIDEBAR] Susan’s Reflections
I was once asked, “Why take the time to do research without needing to do it for a course?” My reply was, “We knew there was more to teaching writing than what we were doing, so we set out to discover more about what happens when children try to write.” Stacia and I knew what the children needed to do in order to be called good writers. We also knew that we needed to examine the effectiveness of our teaching of writing.
Becoming a teacher who looks at her practice critically evolved over time, starting with the research classes I took about 12 years ago. In the past I taught material because it was required by the county or state curriculum, without questioning whether it was the best practice or examining if it was the best way to get the material across. In education, the outcome is often what matters, not the journey to the outcome. In teacher research, the journey or process is equally important and can lead to many discoveries about a child and the learning process. Once I became a teacher researcher, I began to continually question my practice, which led us to this project.
One of the discoveries I made as a result of this research is that even when a veteran teacher becomes aware of how to improve an aspect of her teaching, changing practice is not easy. This is especially true when addressing a teaching behavior that has become automatic—a default mode—like correcting punctuation errors. I still struggle with the content versus mechanics issue in children’s writing on a daily basis, trying to find the right balance. When a child writes a story with good content, I catch myself pointing out where a sentence needs a period, capital letter, or spelling correction. The next day the story is more basic, with the mechanics in place. It is a fine line to walk, knowing when to add writing conventions and when to let the child explore and grow creatively. The teacher needs to know the children really well and find an optimum time to teach writing conventions that won’t discourage the writing process. I am convinced that the most important idea is not squelching content growth for the sake of mechanics.
Having Stacia as a collaborative partner made the experience a better learning process for me. Our collaborative research led to many discussions and much learning. Both Stacia and I have conducted classroom research without a collaborative partner in the room. It is more challenging to work alone because there is no one with whom to share the immediate questions and “Aha!” moments, although the rewards of a noncollaborative research project can be just as interesting.
Teacher researchers are reflective practitioners who don’t just teach the children a certain way because “that’s the way it has always been done.” They examine how the children are learning and try to figure out a better way to teach the concepts so the children can grow into productive thinkers and learners. It takes time and effort; the days are filled with teaching and data collection, but the benefits make it worthwhile. The findings from this teacher research project hold true for my classroom today. My coworkers are trying some of the ideas and materials with their children and are meeting with great success. [END SIDEBAR]
[SIDEBAR] Stacia’s Reflections
Embarking on this project with Susan was so important to me. Not only did it allow me an opportunity to get back in the trenches and work with first-graders again, but it gave me a chance to explore an issue that has always been a challenge for me: teaching children how to write. I think I found teaching writing difficult because of my own struggles as a writer. When asked to do a writing assignment (from my elementary years through college), I was filled with fear. I would write something and throw it out there for evaluation with my eyes closed and fingers crossed, hoping that it would be well received.
The conventions of writing came easily to me. I could memorize grammar rules and effortlessly apply them to my writing, but I was forever guessing about the quality of my content. If I received feedback that my writing was good, I was unsure about what exactly made it good. Similarly, I could not identify the
elements that made a piece of writing “not so good.” I knew I did not want my first grade students to have this same experience. I wanted them to feel confident in their knowledge of writing―its purpose, power, and multiple forms. Through this research project, I found that not only did the children gain confidence in their writing knowledge but I too learned more about the writing process and continued my own development as a writer.
A reflection on this research experience would not be complete without mentioning my collaboration with Susan. This partnership gave me the courage to critically explore the writing process and take risks as a teacher, researcher, and writer. Susan’s perspective on what the children were experiencing helped inform my own perspective. Together we were able to construct a new understanding of first grade writers. [END SIDEBAR]
Conclusions, new questions, and implications
As teachers, we learned a tremendous amount about teaching and learning that impacts our current interactions with children and will continue to do so into the future. We faced our anxiety about writing instruction and discovered the importance of accepting the nonlinear fashion in which the first-graders grew as writers. In retrospect, this progression is similar to our own development as teacher researchers and writers. An integral part of teacher research is reflecting on our practice and writing about our experiences. At times an abundance of ideas, feelings, thoughts, questions, and plans ran through our minds, and we struggled to adequately express them in writing in an organized way. In fact, while composing this article, there were days when we wrote meticulous sentences that had no passion, days when thoughts seemed to flow yet red and green spell-check marks riddled the page, and days when everything just seemed to come together. It is impossible to think that we can have all of the pieces (content and mechanics) in place all the time, so how can we expect this of children?
Some educators view writing as a linear progression of knowledge: children master mechanics before delving into the heart of writing—the ideas. This view implies that mechanics instruction should precede content instruction. We challenge this linear model in favor of a more complex approach that encourages young writers to explore content at the same time they are making sense of mechanics. It is through this “disorder” that children are challenged to make meaning of writing—exploring its purpose, its audience, and its enjoyment in a more natural progression.
So, how do teachers engage children in an exploration of content? While many of the specific writing activities we used (Writing Review Sheets, brainstorming tools, story logs, and others) were helpful, our successes went much deeper. We created a collaborative classroom atmosphere in which children could safely take risks with their writing and we could take risks with our teaching.
By asking the students to define good writing, we give them ownership in the process and we relearned the importance of social interactions. Just as the children benefited from writing discussions, we teachers benefited from joining these conversations. In addition, we shared our vulnerability with the children; they knew we were continuously improving our teaching as well as our own writing skills. Authors, therefore, became human to them; we repeatedly assured them that we did not always have the answers but that, together, we all could construct our knowledge of the writing process. Finally, we consciously worked at focusing our instruction on content. This struggle illustrates how teaching is a dynamic process that requires us to be reflective practitioners who continually create, analyze, and reevaluate the experiences we create for the children in our classrooms.
In this spirit of continuous improvement, our research inspired new questions for us to explore in the future. We feel we did not have enough time to fully explore the role of reflection in the children’s learning. Metacognitive skills were apparent, but we were unable to fully understand how the children came to reflection and what part it played in their development. We would like to further examine this. Another topic that surfaced during this research was the use of illustrations. During our initial interviews, many children cited good pictures as being an important component of good writing. This is particularly intriguing since, in our experience, it seems like the further along children are in literacy development, the fewer pictures they encounter in books and the less importance teachers place on drawing pictures to accompany written stories. We wonder what would happen if we were to give children more time to illustrate their stories. How might this affect their writing development?
Our research suggests that the writing process is recursive in nature, defying a lockstep view of the acquisition of writing skills and knowledge, which makes it difficult to ascertain exactly where a child is functioning at any given time. Standardized assessments might indicate that a child does not grasp the concepts of capitalization and punctuation, when in fact the child has put aside that knowledge to grapple with effective ways of developing interesting writing content. Learning to write and to write well is a complex process. Teachers need to be sensitive to children’s needs as the young writers try to balance and gain ownership over both form and content.
References
Avery, C. 1993. ... And with a light touch: Learning about reading, writing, and teaching with first graders. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Calkins, L.M. 1986. The art of teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Culham, R. 2005. 6 + 1 traits of writing: The complete guide for the primary grades. New York: Scholastic.
Flower, L.S., & J.R. Hayes. 1980. The dynamics of composing: Making plans and juggling constraints. In Cognitive processes in writing, eds. L.W. Gregg & E.R. Steinberg, 31–50. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Frank, C.R., M. Carpenter, &, K. Smith. 2003. Mapping our stories: Teachers’ reflections on themselves as writers. Language Arts 80 (3): 185–95.
Goss, R.E., & K.S. Stapor. 2001. Through the eyes of the child. In Transforming teacher education, eds.
H.T. Sockett, E.K. DeMulder, P.C. LePage, & D.R. Wood, 105–14. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
Graves, D.H. 1983. Teachers and children at work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Lapp, D., J. Flood, K. Moore, & M. Nichols. 2005. Teaching literacy in first grade. New York: Guilford.
Matteson, D.M., & D.K. Freeman. 2005. Assessing and teaching beginning writers. Katonah, NY: Owen.
Meier, D.R. 2000. Scribble scrabble: Learning to read and write. New York: Teachers College Press.
Parsons, S. 2005. First grade writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Routman, R. 1991. Invitations: Changing as teachers and learners K–12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Interview Questions and Children’s Responses
Why Do You Write?
- Because I like writing stories.
- Just to write.
- Because I like it.
- Because I like to.
- Don’t know.
- I like to.
- I like to.
- Don’t know.
- For a story; to let your brain grow.
- It’s fun.
- I like to write.
- I like to write―it’s probably my favorite indoor thing to do.
- Because we have to―our teacher says we can write what we want.
- When we draw a picture, we need to write.
- Because I have to.
- Because I want to.
- Maybe you would like to write.
- I like to.
What Do You Like about Writing?
- Writing good things, and funny things.
- You can make up your own idea.
- Drawing pictures.
- It’s fun when you make a picture.
- Making sentences.
- Sounding it out.
- You get to write so much things―the best is I get to use my pencil a lot.
- It’s fun―you get to draw pictures.
- Making letters.
- It helps you learn―takes your mind off being bored.
- You grow to be a better reader.
- The detail, color.
- I like it because it has a lot of detail and stories you can make it―I like the details.
- Coloring and drawing fun stuff.
- Draw a story.
- My hamster; drawing a alligator.
- It’s fun―we get to draw pictures.
- Drawing pictures.
- All the stuff that I like to think of.
What Don’t You Like about Writing?
- Planets.
- It’s a lot of work; my hand gets tired.
- When my hand gets tired
- I don’t like to color.
- Nothing.
- When it’s very hard―like because it’s a hard word for me to spell.
- Nothing.
- Because you have to write words―whole words and stuff.
- Nothing.
- Nothing.
- Sometimes you get words wrong and sometimes you can’t tell the sentence because you don’t know the word.
- Writing words.
- Nothing―I like everything.
- When we have to do it for the time―like when we say we’re done and the teacher says we’re not, then we have to do some more and the bell hasn’t rung yet―that’s what I don’t like.
- Nothing.
- My hamster isn’t funny.
- I don’t like it when I have to spell words that they’re not correct.
- I like everything.
- You’re not able to write what you want to write.
What Do You Like to Write About?
- • Fish.
- Anything.
- My cats.
- My friends and other things.
- Everything.
- My big entire family.
- Like I’m going to get a new pet.
- Me and my brother getting into fights.
- Soccer.
- Clouds or clowns, my family.
- Feathers―I like feathers―and fish because I want to be a scuba diver when I grow up.
- Fish―going fishing with my grandpa.
- My sisters, my mom and dad.
- Playing with my friends and riding bikes.
- Godzilla.
- Animals, me, my brother, and stuff.
- Going to my Grammy’s house.
- My friends, my school, and all the other stuff that I do.
How Do You Know Something Is Well Written?
- • Because it’s spelled right.
- You could like, look at the word and think how the words are written, and how the letters look.
- When I check if I have a period and my letters are uppercase.
- I read it.
- Don’t know.
- Mom never told me that, because of the picture and how you find out.
- I just look at it to see if it’s well written, to see if I made a mistake or something―It feels good inside.
- How good it looks.
- There’s a picture.
- Because it sounds good, sounds nice.
- Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s not true, that’s what makes it a good story.
- Don’t know.
- If something was floating, that wasn’t well written, because it was rushed―the letters aren’t touching the bottom line.
- Because you sound it out sometimes if there’s a tricky letter that I don’t know―that’s why the teacher comes to check it, and she writes it down the correct way.
- Don’t know.
- Don’t know.
- I can just look at it.
- If somebody tells me it is.
- I feel good.
What’s the Most Important Thing a Writer Needs to Remember?
- • How to spell.
- To put a period at the end.
- First, a period―then after that you need an uppercase, and then a period at the end.
- Working hard.
- Periods.
- What the word is.
- To write your sentence―if you forgot, you can go back to the beginning and say the words.
- The pictures.
- To space up on the line.
- To write the letters correct where the left and right; the d goes one way and the b goes the other way.
- Periods, putting spaces between your words so it doesn’t look liked one whole sentence is one big word.
- Put a period and a capital letter.
- Mostly to remember how to make sure that he doesn’t make too many mistakes to make sure his letters aren’t floating―that’s the most important thing.
- To always remember to write a capital letter at the first word and lowercase all the way and the period.
- Put a period at the end, a capital letter when you start before.
- My dinosaur picture.
- A capital and a period.
- Put a period at the end of a sentence and put a capital letter at the first part.
- To put a period and a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence.
Copyright © 2007 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at www.journal.naeyc.org/about/permissions.asp
