Computer room lesson 9th/12th Dec - children's writing

It's worth getting a quick overview of this although I wouldn't recommend you tackle a writing question. This is good practice for working fast and effectively to tackle something new.

• Children start by writing squiggles, not separated into words (pre-phonemic stage)
• They then start to produce letter shapes, some invented and some mirrored or overly ornate or truncated versions of standard letters - often not split into words (did you know that in the early stages of the development writing  in history, words were often written consecutively without spaces or punctuation - think about how words in speech flow together) (semi-phonetic stage)
• The write with invented/phonetic spellings at first, refining this as they develop - they should not be corrected at the earliest stages - communication should be rewarded (phonetic stage)
• They start to learn some of the key patterns and even split digraphs (e.g. magic e) (transitional stage)
• They start to spell most words (within their experience or supported by key words provided) correctly (conventional stage)
• They start to develop awareness of punctuation as their writing and reading improve 
• They start to use conventions of the different forms with support e.g. writing frames
• They start to become aware of the differences between speech and writing and different levels of formality.

Here's a site with some theory on it in an accessible way - the spelling of preparatory is wrong but it's otherwise good for a short blast of theory.

Now have an explore of this site. Here you will find a corpus (collection) of children's writing. You can pick two comparable children or projects from different ages and look at how writing develops as children progress through the education system. Make notes and link to the theory from the previous site. Pay special attention to the kind of non-standard language uses you find. Write down examples and try and explain what they do and don't know about language.

Try and identify some of the following spelling (virtuous?) error types:

• Insertion - adding extra letters 
• Omission - leaving out letters
• Substitution - substituting one letter for another
• Transposition - reversing the order of letters in words
• Phonetic spelling - spelling words according to the standard phonemes that graphemes make
• Over/undergeneralising of spelling rules - applying or not applying rules in inappropriate contexts or one specific context
• Salient (key) sounds - only including the key sounds

Post your findings to your blog by the end of the lesson.