Promoting writing skills in the early years of school

Summary

Writing is essential in many school subjects, so the early teaching of writing skills is vitally important for students’ chances of success at school. The aim of this review is to demonstrate how teachers and other early years practitioners can design and deliver teaching that promotes students’ writing development in a whole class or in smaller groups. The focus is on teaching that promotes students’ handwriting, spelling and the quality of their texts, in the phase after they have cracked the alphabetic code. The review builds upon systematically selecting and compiling studies that investigate teaching methods and practices in early writing education. The review is based on the following questions:

• What teaching methods and approaches produce good results in terms of writing development for students between the ages of 6 and 9?
• Which of these teaching methods are particularly important for students in need of more support than is usually provided in the classroom?

All students are entitled to support in the form of guidance and encouragement, but some students need more than this. The need for more support may apply to one or more subjects and for varying lengths of time. In the review, students who need support participated in whole-class or small-group instruction as part of, or in conjunction with, standard classroom teaching.

The review does not include studies that target specific student groups, for example students with special educational needs, such as autism, ADHD or dyslexia, or students who are not yet fully fluent in Swedish. Students with these challenges are included in the studies in the review if they participate in whole-class or small-group teaching.

Results of the review

Overall, the studies in the review demonstrate writing’s complexity and the importance of well-considered writing instruction that integrates and supports different aspects of students’ writing. For students in the early years of school, instruction in basic writing skills, such as handwriting and spelling, should be balanced with teaching how to write complete texts. Teaching should be characterised by a comprehensive approach in which the text’s purpose, the perspective of the recipient and linguistic expression all interact. This applies both to students who follow the expected progression of writing skills and to pupils who need support.

The review presents findings about teaching that promotes the development students’ writing in five categories:

• Conversations about text.
• Explicit instruction in writing strategies.
• Meaningful contexts.
• Explicit instruction in spelling.
• Varied instruction in handwriting.

We have used the ‘text triangle’ to categorise the studies included in the review. The text triangle is a writing model in which the text is central; it illustrates how a writer requires a range of skills to produce a text (Dysthe et al., 2011). The review shows that students’ writing skills benefit from teaching that integrates conversations about text, explicit writing strategies, writing in meaningful contexts, explicit instruction in spelling, and varied teaching of handwriting. For example, conversations about texts can be used as part of explicit instruction in strategies, which furthers students’ understanding of the strategies being focused on, texts’ characteristics and the perspectives of their recipients. Explicit instruction in spelling, handwriting and vocabulary should be placed in meaningful contexts that elucidate the purpose of the teaching and the writing.

Talking about texts creates understanding

Conversations about texts and playful dramatization are classroom tools that concretise and create understanding for how texts can be written and adapted to a context. Teachers can clarify key concepts that are linked to texts’ specific characteristics and purposes, using discussions that relate to texts and in which students have an active role. For example, conversations can highlight contrasts between texts to illuminate specific features, recipient perspectives and the author’s values and messages. Playful dramatization can be one means of concretising the reader’s perspective, the structure and logic of a text, and supporting the students’ understanding of how texts are written.

Instruction in writing strategies supports the writing process

Writing strategies support learners in their writing process, i.e. planning and drafting a text. In this review, writing strategies are mainly those that support students’ planning and organisation of a text by using various memory rules and graphic models. Self-regulated strategies are a type of writing strategy that aim to help students control their writing and maintain focus throughout the writing process. In the review, the meaning of the term ‘writing strategies’ is mainly based on a cognitive perspective of writing.

The results of the review show that writing strategy instruction that follows the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) approach has an impact on students’ writing skills. Writing strategy instruction using SRSD has six customisable stages in which students are explicitly taught writing strategies, gradually deepening their knowledge and use of them. Writing strategy instruction using SRSD improves students’ skills in writing good-quality narrative and non-fiction texts. This means that the purpose, structure, and organisation of the text are linked, and that linguistic expression relates to the purpose of the text. Combining writing strategy instruction with basic writing skills training and teaching in small groups provides particular benefit for students who need support.

Writing in meaningful contexts leads to a richer vocabulary

The results of the review show that writing skills benefit from writing that has a clear purpose. Instruction where text creation activities are used to frame basic writing skills boosts the quality of the text, sentence structure, spelling and handwriting skills. Students choosing their own topic to write about is positive.

Similarly, thematic and subject-integrated writing instruction can be an important context in which to develop students’ vocabulary and their use of concepts when they write. Explicit teaching of vocabulary, spelling and grammar, framed by stories and other texts, boosts students’ comprehension, spelling and written language. These results are also true for students who need support.

Explicit spelling instruction benefits spelling and vocabulary

Spelling instruction not only benefits students’ spelling skills, but also their linguistic expression through an increased vocabulary. Explicit spelling instruction has a greater effect on writing development than implicit spelling instruction, both for students whose writing progresses as predicted and for students who need support. However, implicit spelling instruction also contributes to students’ knowledge development, and explicit and implicit instruction can be usefully integrated. Explicit spelling instruction means that the teacher illustrates and explains the rules, principles and models of written language and spelling. In implicit spelling instruction, the starting point is more that students learn by making their own discoveries and conclusions about spelling. This may involve teaching in which students memorise spelling through reading, or by actively practicing the spelling of a number of selected words.

Morphology-based teaching can promote spelling skills and vocabulary. Teaching is characterised by students identifying, sorting and building words by combining suffixes, prefixes and stems. Digital learning tools can support morphology-based teaching.

Varied instruction in handwriting boosts writing development

Proficient handwriting means being able to write legibly and fluently, which means writing by hand quickly and correctly according to the standards for written language. In the review, the earliest handwriting instruction is characterised by students shaping letters in different ways and with different senses, using letter models where arrows, and the teacher, show how it should be done. Digital learning tools, in the form of a digital pen, can be used as a teaching aid to develop handwriting.

An automatic level of handwriting is achieved through the students’ being instructed in and practicing how to write the alphabet, to copy or produce words, sentences and entire texts, and specifically practicing how to write quickly and correctly. This type of teaching promotes both basic writing skills and skills at writing complete texts, especially for students whose writing skills are less advanced. Performance-based feedback can specifically encourage writing speed.

The review’s findings highlight handwriting instruction that integrates varied literacy activities in which multimodal forms of expression are vital.

Students who need support

The review shows that students who need support generally benefit from the teaching investigated in the studies. However, they may require intensified teaching, and explicit instruction is particularly important. More specific results can also be seen in the studies. Explicit writing strategy instruction that follows SRSD benefits story writing for students who need support. This teaching gradually advances the students’ knowledge and use of different writing strategies, supporting them in planning and drafting a text. It is positive if instruction in writing strategies takes place in small groups and is supplemented by skills training such as writing letters, selected words and sentences.

The results show that explicit instruction in spelling, comprehension and grammar is important for students who need support. Playful dramatization has particular potential as a means of concretising and creating understanding for a text’s presentation and the recipient’s perspective.

The review shows that all students need balanced writing instruction that addresses different aspects of writing texts. We would like to emphasise that instruction for pupils who need support should not only focus on basic skills training.

Strength of evidence

The findings of the review correspond to those of previous reviews that compiled research on the effect that the type of instruction has on students’ writing development. The research strongly emphasises the importance of explicit instruction in writing strategies, mainly using the SRSD approach, as well as explicit instruction in spelling and varied instruction in handwriting. This review also clearly highlights the importance of a balanced writing instruction that takes a comprehensive approach, in which the texts’ purpose, the recipient perspective and linguistic expression interact.

We want to encourage teachers, preferably teams of teachers, to use the teaching practices outlined in the review by adapting them to their specific classroom contexts. The results of this systematic review provide teachers and other practitioners with a basis for informed choices in their approaches to teaching and learning that will promote students’ writing skills. It is important to note that there are studies that were not included due to the review’s delimitations, but which may also provide perspectives on and valuable insights into teaching writing in the early years of school.

Selection of research

This systematic review summarises findings from 34 studies conducted in different countries. The literature searches were conducted in international and national scientific reference databases and were delimited to the period from 2013 onwards. The searches generated 8,048 unique hits.

Many of the included studies are intervention studies in which researchers investigate the effects of a particular type of instruction on students’ writing skills. The review also includes observational studies of a qualitative nature, where researchers have studied and analysed classroom practices to obtain greater understanding of how a particular type of teaching affects students’ writing development. The studies are all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and have been assessed as being of good scholarly quality.

The systematic review is available as summary, information sheet and full report (in Swedish).

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