Topic: Writing
Jadi-Blake Clark
Liberty University
EDLC632
April 10, 2023
Every Child is a Writer: Understanding the Importance of Writing in Early
Childhood
This article breaks down the importance of elementary school students being
able to write and how writing affects other skills needed for future learning. Children
begin to want to write at very young ages. Toddler stages, children are making marks
and scribbling. They depend on adult reactions and responses in order to develop a
desire to write. Research on early writing instruction suggests that experimenting with
composing helps children develop phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and
print awareness, which are skills associated with future reading and writing proficiency.
(Hall, 2019) Research and theories show that students learn writing through processes
and interacting with adults, teachers, and peers. Teachers are expected to encourage
student writing by keeping them engaged, helping with writing topics, and teaching the
purposes of writing.
The author of this article is using research to discuss first, the importance of
writing in elementary education. Secondly, the author makes a point to provide
strategies on how teachers can foster and support the students writing and even the
benefits to writing. I think the author did a good job explaining in detail the importance
along with supporting research and strategies. She was clear and precise when
addressing the issues and skills students will need writing for their future success in the
classroom.
Throughout this article, the main focus is how we can foster our students
writing success and capabilities from young ages. It starts as early, as infants. Adults
can talk to infants, point out words in the environment, and read them books. Through
their toddler years and into preschool, we can create writing readiness using these
same strategies and supplying our children with materials to foster beginning stages of
writing.
In conclusion, our daily environment from the start can affect our readiness for
writing. For students to be successful, teachers and family must understand that writing
is a process and as a community, we work together to foster the ability for them
students to learn to write. Finally, modeling writing for authentic reasons, sharing the
pen, and inviting children to write for real-life purposes are influential ways of ensuring
that children develop the composition, handwriting, and spelling skills necessary to grow
into life-long writers. (Hall, 2019)
In my opinion, the author does well explain the writing process and the
importance of it for students success. She even explains the benefits along with
strategies to help support students writing. She also provided plenty of research to back
up her proposed thoughts in the article. I learned throughout reading this article that
there are a lot of different strategies to begin helping children with writing readiness
starting with birth. I believe the author provided details on why writing skills are so
important to help prepare students for future learning.
Changing How Writing Is Taught
The author of this article writes to discuss changing how writing is currently being
taught after expressing that today’s society lack important writing skills. The author’s
argument is that the strategies being implemented in the classroom are not effective
enough for students to learn writing the way they should. Writing is equally important to
students’ future success. Students who graduate from high school with weak writing
skills are at a disadvantage in college and the world of work. (Graham, 2019)
This article brings the idea to light that students are not receiving enough writing
instruction in the classroom. The issue with this is poor writing skills can limit
opportunities for students in the classroom as well as in real-life. Problems with writing
development are global and this author takes a dive into the issues as well as some
strategies to strengthen it. Studies show that the main problem is teachers not spending
enough on writing during an instructional day. Surveys sent to teachers say they spend
an average of less than an hour on writing in the classroom. Although they are using
evidence-based and instructional practices, the lack of time spent on the writing
instruction overpowers the way it is taught. The author believes these issues can be
correct by changing the ways we teach writing. He used research to support his claims
stating that school systems and educators who focus more on writing professional
developments and other services offered by professional organizations, along with
making the school schedules to allow adequate time for writing, typically improve writing
scores and skills.
In my opinion, this author feels strongly about this issue of writing instruction
needing to change. In his article, he provided a lot of research and teacher surveys to
support his claims. From his research he found that along with time, other issues are
lack of knowledge of how to actually teach writing, as well as lacking digital tools for
writing. Writing is an extremely complex skill (Hayes, 2012), and learning how to write
requires time and good instruction (Graham et al., 2012). I agree that writing is complex
and educators should be trained extensively on teaching writing to students. He also
argues that students primarily only have one audience when writing, that being their
teacher with no collaboration within their writing. This are components are highly
considerable in the writing process.
In conclusion, teachers do try to teach writing effectively in the classroom with
the little resources and knowledge they have. With more time and effort spent on writing
in the classroom, writing can be improved over time. Educators can take advantage of
professional developments to improve knowledge to be able to teach writing skills more
effectively. These changes are not going to change overnight. Improving writing globally
will take time, but is possible with the right knowledge and developments.
Hall, A. (2019).
References
Every Child is a Writer: Understanding the Importance of Writing in Early
Childhood. Institute for Child Success. https://www.instituteforchildsuccess.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/07/Every-Child-is-a-Writer-Understanding-the-Importance-of-
Writing-in-Early-Childhood-Writing.pdf
Graham, S. (2019). Changing How Writing Is Taught. Review of Research in Education, 43(1),
277–303. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X18821125
