The Write Start (3 page)
So now, let’s get started. Your mission from here on out is to nurture your young writer until they know this to be true: if you think it, you can write it.
The Path to Writing Readiness
A
T SOME POINT
or another most parents have wondered why our precious children were given to us without so much as a handbook to guide us. Luckily, they do come equipped with a roadmap. It’s called child development.
As our children’s first teachers, we parents need to be as knowledgeable as we can be about child development. Although there is certainly room for individual variation, child development features some general patterns of skill acquisition. Foundational skills are mastered first, and subsequent stages of development are built upon these previously acquired skills. Each developmental stage is characterized by certain major milestones. Being aware of these reference points helps us to plot our course on the road to raising young writers.
The important landmarks children will encounter on the road to writing include scribbling, spelling words, writing stories, and learning the rules of writing.
Scribbles are children’s first steps toward writing. As toddling becomes walking and babbling becomes talking, so do scribbles become symbols.
After scribbling, the next steps for young writers include learning to form letters, putting letters together to spell familiar words, and then stringing words together to make sentences and tell stories. Finally, they are ready to learn some of the conventions of writing, such as proper spelling, orienting words on a line, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and story structure.
To help us identify where our kids are at, and to choose the most appropriate writing activities, I use these landmarks to describe four broad categories of young writers: Scribblers, Spellers, Storytellers, and Scholars.
Scribblers
Scribbling is essentially Writing Readiness 101 for little kids. While creating each messy masterpiece, young children are actually developing and refining the foundational skills that support writing success.
Although it may look random, much is going on during scribbling. As they scribble, children are mastering the motoric challenges of holding and controlling a writing tool. They are experiencing the cause and effect between their movement and their marks, and they are beginning to coordinate their eyes with their hands. They are learning to regulate the speed, force, and direction of their strokes. And they are starting to connect strokes to make shapes, pictures, and symbols that they can use to tell a simple story.
There are even distinct stages that emerge within the scribbling stage. What makes one scribble different from another, you ask? The emergence of recognizable strokes, for example, is one way to quantify scribbling progress. Usually vertical scribbles emerge first, then horizontal, and then circular scribbles.
You can also look for open versus closed strokes. Open strokes are the strokes that go on forever, or back and forth, without a distinct beginning or end (you know those circles that become endless spirals?). Closed strokes have a beginning and an end. They are the starting point for making the shapes that will later turn into drawings and the symbols that will become the letters of the alphabet.
Spellers
Spellers are hard at work learning, practicing, and mastering letter formation. What an important stage! I can’t stress enough how critical it is for children to learn the most efficient way to make each letter during this stage. Otherwise they tend to reinvent the wheel each time they make a letter, drawing it instead of writing it automatically. This almost always leads to bad habits that are tough to break later on.
But, fear not! With a little know-how (see the next chapter, “
All the Write Moves
”), it’s as easy as can be to show emerging writers the best way to form each letter. And rest assured, the same techniques are also useful for helping children relearn letter formation if they have already begun making any letters incorrectly.
After Spellers learn to write letters, they start to string them together to form their first written words. What an accomplishment! Cherish and celebrate these first words, awkward invented spellings and all. It is very exciting for children in this stage when they start to put the pieces of the writing puzzle together for the first time. Share in the enthusiasm; this is where a love of writing is born.
Storytellers
If Spellers are excited by first words, Storytellers are simply ecstatic over their first stories. What could be better? This is the stage where all the hard work really begins to pay off. Finally, their skills are starting to catch up to their ideas. They have now mastered the mechanics of writing well enough to be able to “talk on the page.” Storytellers are beginning to think like real writers: “What do I want to say?” and “How can I say it?” They get the first taste of the power of writing to tell a tale, transport a reader, create a new world, express emotion, craft a character. Once children begin to write stories, there’s no going back. They’re hooked.
Scholars
Scholars are writers who have also become readers. As such, they are highly motivated to make their writing resemble the kind of writing they are used to reading. Enter the rules of writing: size and spacing of letters, orientation on a line, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, sentence structure. Bring them on. Young Scholars are ready to learn the right ways to write.
And they are ready to write
a lot
, in little and big ways, all day long. So prepare yourself (and stock up on paper) because once kids crack the writing code, they tend to be unstoppable.
The Proactive Parent
Now that you know what your
kids
should be doing in each stage, what should
you
be doing to help? Well, here are some of my best tips for supporting young writers in each stage, gleaned from both professional and personal experience.
Supporting Your Scribbler
As you have probably already guessed, I am going to wholeheartedly encourage you to let scribbling happen (almost) whenever and wherever possible (except, of course, on the walls and furniture. Or on younger siblings.). When the opportunity presents itself, you can join in the scribbling too. Sit across from your child and scribble away on your own masterpiece. When you do that, you are teaching by modeling, which means you don’t have to instruct. Just have fun yourself, and your child will get the picture. But be careful to stick to scribbling. When we start drawing representational stuff, like flowers, houses, or trains, and writing letters and words, our Scribblers want to follow suit. Since they aren’t ready for this yet, they tend to get frustrated and discouraged. They may even lose interest in scribbling and abandon the activity altogether. And what a shame it is when that happens, because they really were having so much fun (
and
working on their foundational skills at the same time). So resist the temptation to rush your Scribbler on to the next stage prematurely. Instead, enjoy letting your inner child bask in the glory of scribbling together with your youngster with reckless abandon.
Remember, also, that a variety of enticing (admittedly, occasionally messy) mediums and methods appeal to young Scribblers. Let them scribble in sand, shaving cream, and finger paint, with sidewalk chalk and tub crayons, while lying on the floor propped up on their elbows or standing at an easel. Hey, with an assiduous Scribbler, anything goes.
Now lest you puzzle over why I don’t think it’s important to introduce Scribblers to letters, let me assure you that I do. Just not when they’re scribbling. Scribblers can work on all the foundational skills that support writing, but they need to work on each component on its own. So certainly expose your Scribbler to alphabet manipulatives, toys, and puzzles, and point out print in books. Just don’t expect them to write the letters that they recognize just yet; their scribbles are telling you they need a little more skill-building time before they’re ready to write.
Supporting Your Speller
When scribbles begin to morph into lines, shapes, and drawings, you know you will soon have a Speller on your hands. What does your Speller need from you most? During this stage, consider yourself to be a consultant. Offer your expertise on the subject of letter formation or spelling when asked. (Be prepared to be bombarded with countless “How do you make a . . .?” and “How do you spell . . . ?” queries.) And when
you
feel the need for a consultation of your own (to answer your countless “Am I doing this right?” type of questions), refer to the next chapter, which could be alternately titled “Survival Guide for Parents of Spellers.”
Supporting Your Storyteller
Every story needs a reader. So, naturally, every Storyteller longs for a captive audience. And who better than an adoring parent to pore over every turn of a phrase, each new tale, or the big magnum opus?
Storytellers are learning to use writing to communicate their ideas. They need parents who are receptive to their stories, no matter whether they are silly or sensible. Try not to critique. Instead, laugh at the funny parts, cry at the sad parts (sniffle, sniffle), and gasp at the surprising parts. There may be plenty of those things that make you go, “Hmmm,” but that’s all part of the fun. Read on.
Supporting Your Scholar
Scholars can be compared to young athletes, learning the rules of the game. And in this scenario, you should regard yourself as the coach. Help get them psyched for practicing those spelling words or looking up a new word in the dictionary. Gear them up with some cool writing equipment. Help them come up with a game plan for writing that essay or book report (introduction, body, conclusion, hike!). If writing becomes frustrating at any point, call a time out, give a pep talk, talk about strategy, and help them regroup. When it comes time for young Scholars to tackle the transition to cursive writing, go back to basic training (revisiting some of the learn-to-write advice in the next chapter, this time from a script perspective) and help them drill their new writing moves. Keep a watchful eye from the sidelines, and celebrate their writing-related victories with them.
Ready or Not?
So how do you know when your child is ready to move from scribbling to actual writing? Good question. Writing readiness is an important determining factor when it comes to steering kids toward writing success. If a child is still working to master foundational skills, stay there until they’re ready to move on. And keep in mind the three most important areas where children need to “get it,” before they get down to the business of learning to write.
Get a Clue
A clue about hand preference, that is. In order to be ready to write, children need a strong inclination toward a more skillful, or dominant, hand. This is the hand that is best at executing precise movements. It becomes the go-to hand for any task requiring coordination and control.
If you are unsure as to whether your child has a preferred hand, observe your child eating. Without any prompting on your part, just check out which hand he or she uses to pick up food, both with and without an eating utensil. If your child favors one hand when feeding himself or herself, chances are your child has developed a preference.
Next, watch which hand your child is inclined to use when coloring. If your child sticks with the same hand that he or she chooses to eat with, that’s good news. If your child switches back and forth between hands when coloring, he or she may not yet have a clear picture of who’s the boss.
Activities such as throwing and catching a ball or cutting with scissors are not ideal for assessing handedness in young children. Kids occasionally approach these tasks with their nondominant hand, which is typically the more powerful hand, at first, switching to their dominant hand, which is more skillful, later on, when the tasks demand better aim or more precise control.
If children seem unclear as to which hand to choose, it is important that we don’t do the choosing for them. What we can do, however, is give them plenty of opportunities to engage in bilateral activities that require them to figure out which hand is better at what tasks. Tasks such as mixing batter with one hand (while holding the mixing bowl with the other), spreading butter with a butter knife (while holding the bread steady), or pouring water from a small pitcher (while stabilizing the cup) give children a chance to decide how each hand functions best.
Get a Grip
Some grasps work (and some really, really don’t). The rule of thumb is: don’t write until it’s right!
When I look at how children hold their pencils, I see grasps that fall into three basic categories: immature, efficient, and inefficient.
The grasp that very young children use the first time they pick up a writing tool is usually a
power grasp
. They grab a crayon in a fisted hand, with thumb up and the rest of their fingers wrapped tightly around the shaft of the crayon. All the little muscles in their hands work together to squeeze the crayon in place so that it doesn’t move. To make marks, they move their entire arm as a unit, dragging the immobilized crayon back and forth across the page. (Often their other arm, legs, hips, and even their tongue move in unison, going along for the ride.) This difficulty dissociating movements of the hand from movements of the rest of the body is exhausting. No wonder their attention span for this exciting new work is fleeting, at best.
In an attempt to gain more control, most young children soon transition to a
pronated grasp
. With this grasp, all five fingers are still wrapped around the crayon, but now the thumb and fingertips are pointed down toward the paper. Like the power grasp, everything is locked tightly into place. Again, the whole arm has to move in its entirety in order to get the job done.