The evidence presented here is from a three year research project funded by the Bedford Charity (Harpur Trust) in the UK (2007-2010).
Research into other interventions which success with reluctant writers is welcomed.
Email editorialteam@meshguides.org to discuss adding your research or case studies if you want to test the ideas further.
Questions which would make for an interesting follow-up study include the following:
- children's motivation for writing at home
- the frequency with which they engaged with different text types and
- modes of writing, ie electronically or by hand
Two sets of assessment criteria were used in the project to evaluate pupils' narrative writing. The first set were the Assessment of Pupil Progress (APP) criteria. These were generic writing criteria devised for national use in the UK. The second set, referred to as the Assessment of Narrative Writing (ANW), were devised by the lead researcher, Paul Gardner, and were based on key elements of narrative.
Whilst, in itself, mind mapping may be a useful tool for systematically recording ideas around a given subject, the finding that pupils in KS1 can take up to 6-8 months of 'rehearsal' before they are able to independently construct mind maps negates their use as a 'ready made' panacea for the planning of writing with this age group. In order to become competent in the use of mind mapping pupils in this age group required a considerable amount of teacher support and scaffolding.
Early in the research when teachers were asked to identify reluctant writers in their class a common feature was teachers' tendency to name only boys. The gendered identity of the reluctant writers was questioned with reference to research in gender studies which suggests girls tend to subvert teacher directed learning by means of covert behaviour. Even though girls were included in the final sample, boys outnumbered girls on a ratio of 2:1.
For adults, it is easy to forget that writing is a physical process. Several younger pupils in the study had difficulty containing their work on a single sheet of paper because their diagrams and writing tended to be too large. It was felt that this would improve over time as these pupils refined their fine-motor control and spatial awareness. One teacher noted;
'It made me realise how impediments such as poor fine-motor skills and spelling impact on writing.'
The following is drawn from the literature providing the foundations for the study. See Gardner( xx) for details. Writing involves the integration of complex mental operations such as memory, motor-control, creativity and language processing. Poor orthographic memory or an inability to correctly spell a new word in the pupil's developing vocabulary can significantly constrain writing because of the pupil's fear of making a mistake. As a result the writer resorts to a repertoire of familiar words.
This set of factors covers methods of teaching, teacher attitudes to writing and thinking about children as writers. One teacher, with wide experience of schools over many years, stated that children taught by the method of 'emergent writing' were generally more motivated to write than children in classrooms where secretarial or transcription skills are privileged over compositional ones, thereby leaving children with the view that writing is primarily concerned with the skills of handwriting, spelling and punctuation.
The project investigated possible factors that might influence a propensity towards a child's reluctance to write. Five factors were identified. A central feature is the child's feeling about writing and self view as a writer.
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