Beginning Writing Behavior in Preschool Children
Recognizing and Promoting Literacy Skills in Emergent Writers
Feb 3, 2009
Young children pass through six stages when learning to write (Sulzby & Teale, 1985). Though the first five stages are unconventional in appearance, they constitute a natural progression that occurs as children gain an understanding of what written language is and how it is used. A the earliest preschool ages, parents will see these types of writing:
Drawings
Children just beginning to explore written literacy tell their stories through pictures, often talking their way through the story while they draw.
Wavy Scribbles
At this stage, children who make wave-like lines in their attempt to replicate their perception of handwriting. There are no letters or breaks to simulate words; rather, the lines are a continuous set of waves across the page.
Letter-Like Scribbles
Children make forms that resemble letters, with familiar shapes such as circles, triangles, and squares present. The letters are not grouped to resemble words, and may be randomly placed, rather than written in lines.
Random Letters
Once children begin to recognize letters, they soon use them in their writing. At this stage, letter like forms are replaced with actual letters, usually consonants, though they may be backwards or upside-down. Letters are still not grouped into words, but they may be written in lines or letter strings.
Patterned Letters or Letter Strings
As development continues, children begin to interject their letter strings with recognizable patterns of letters. Occasional simple words or their names may appear within the letter strings or random groupings of letters, and some may show simple letter-sound relationships.
Conventional Writing
At the final stage, children begin to connect the letters on the page with the sounds of the words they are trying to write. While many misspellings or backward letters may occur, the writing is now readable to others.
Strategies to Promote Emergent Writing
Young children can become writers, learning to compose and retell their thoughts in any of the six stages described above. Use the following strategies to encourage writing development:
- Provide a variety of writing materials, such as markers, crayons, paints, chalk, etc. as well as different types of paper, a chalkboard, or other interesting places to write.
- Model the writing process by thinking aloud about shopping lists, letters to friends, or other daily writing tasks.
- Play games where the child can emulate roles in which real writing is used, such as restaurant, school, doctor’s office, veterinarian, etc.
- Practice the Language Experience Approach. After a trip to the zoo, a walk to the park, an afternoon baking cookies, or other experience, encourage children to write about it in their own way first, and to share their writing with others. Also, ask them to dictate sentences about the experience, which the parent writes down conventionally. Occasionally use the dictated stories to point out the one-to-one correspondence of words, left-to-right tracking, or other early reading behaviors.
- Read aloud to children often each day.
When asked to read what they’ve written, children in the pre-conventional stages will often use familiar story language, such as “Once upon a time” to infuse their story with the structure they know “real” writing is supposed to have. By encouraging children to write before they know what letters, words or sentences are, parents help children make an early connection between oral and written language as they better prepare them for formal reading and writing instruction in school.
Further Reading
Bennet-Armistead, V. Susan & others. Beyond Bedtime Stories: A Parent’s Guide to Promoting Reading, Writing, and Other Literacy Skills from Birth to 5. New York: Scholastic, 2007.
Sulzby, E., & Teale, W. “Writing Development in Early Childhood.” Educational Horizons, Fall, 1985, 8-12.
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