Children s writing: The Highway Rat

Transcription

1 Teaching notes/context: Harry is aged 6:3 and in Year 1 at primary school. For homework, he has been set the task of writing about a story he enjoys, describing the plot and the main character. Harry s completed homework follows on the next page. On page 3 there is a table for students to complete. It is aimed at ENGB3 (A2 English Language AQA B) students and encourages them to consider and link the three assessment objectives on which they are being examined. These are: AO1 Select and apply a range of linguistic methods, to communicate relevant knowledge using appropriate terminology and coherent, accurate written expression. AO2 Demonstrate critical understanding of a range of concepts and issues relating to the construction and analysis of meanings in spoken and written language, using knowledge of linguistic approaches. AO3 Analyse and evaluate the influence of contextual factors on the production and reception of spoken and written language, showing knowledge of the key constituents of language. Additional context: The children have been asked to write about a book they enjoy. The Highway Rat is a picture book written by Julia Donaldson. As this is a piece of homework, the primary audience is the teacher and the primary purpose of the text is to practise literacy skills. However, Harry s mother is sitting next to him, and she gives Harry some support as he completes the homework. Harry chooses the book himself, she reads it to him and then they talk about the plot and character as he writes. Sometimes he asks her how to spell words Page 1 of 9

2 Thanks to Harry Battams (aged 6), for giving us permission to use this data Page 2 of 9

3 AO3: CONTEXT (8 MARKS) AO1: LINGUISTIC METHODS (24 MARKS) AO2: LANGUAGE CONCEPTS (16 MARKS) LEXIS LEXIS LEXIS SEMANTICS SEMANTICS SEMANTICS DISCOURSE DISCOURSE DISCOURSE Page 3 of 9

4 GRAMMAR GRAMMAR GRAMMAR GRAPHOLOGY GRAPHOLOGY GRAPHOLOGY Page 4 of 9

5 Teaching notes: AO3: CONTEXT (8 marks) AO1: LINGUISTIC METHODS (24 marks) AO2: LANGUAGE CONCEPTS (16 marks) LEXIS LEXIS LEXIS There is some vocabulary borrowed from the source text, e.g. Highway, rat, duck etc. Harry uses a range of lexis which would be associated with younger children s writing e.g. norty [sic], greedy, good. Harry may be imitating words (Skinner) he has heard/seen before in his home/school environment, and through literacy work. SEMANTICS SEMANTICS SEMANTICS Highway is an archaism in this context, but Harry uses it because it is in the source text. Harry uses a semantic field of storybook villainy ( steals, tricked, norty, greedy ) to describe the character s actions. DISCOURSE DISCOURSE DISCOURSE School children are encouraged to set their work out in a particular way. As Harry will be handing his work in, he knows he needs to put his name on the page. The title and inclusion of his name at the top of the homework suggests an awareness of discourse conventions relating to informative writing The structure of the response fits in to Rothery s (1984) observation/comment structure. The first section summarises the plot; the second section makes an evaluative comment about the rat Page 5 of 9

6 DISCOURSE Harry s review also shows an awareness of discourse markers, as it begins The story is about, and ends with the conjunction, but in the end. The use of the exclamatory sentence also shows an awareness of writing for a particular audience: with lots of gudees in it! Harry is being supported by his mother as he completes this task and some of the standard spellings may have been supplied by her. Some words, like nothink, may be phonetic or approximated spelling attempts to replicate how Harry pronounces the word. There is some inconsistency with the spelling of words: Cave is spelt both as cave and caiv, which is phonologically plausible (consider words like rain ). There are a number of phonetic or approximated spellings for more ambitious lexis, e.g gudees (goodies) and norty (naughty). There is evidence to suggest that he may be in the phonological segmentation stage (Peccei, 2006) and/or the phonetic spelling stage (Barclay, 1996) where he is attempting to capture the sound of the words i.e. nothink Page 6 of 9

7 Harry has been taught to read using the synthetics phonics approach and this is in evidence from some of the spelling strategies he uses. Tricky spellings like who may have been taught through Look and say techniques. There are also some words spelt correctly despite silent letters, e.g. who, suggesting evidence of his acquisition of the basic principles of the spelling system, with the consistent spelling of a range of high frequency words. He shows an awareness of inflectional endings like the plural s for gudees and past participle -ed in tricked. There is little or no evidence of proofreading in this work, i.e. Harry has not crossed words out or corrected spellings, with the exception of tricked, where it appears that an additional c has been squeezed in. Graves (1979) found that younger children do not do this. Harry is being supported by his mother. Arguably she is part of his Language Acquisition Support System (Bruner) and is scaffolding his response as the More Knowledgeable Other (Vygotsky). Moral messages relating to being kind and not being naughty will have been reiterated at home and at school. There is a very clear moral to Julia Donaldson s story, and Harry refers to this in his comment about the story, which suggests the moral has had an impact on him. Children s stories frequently have a moral suggesting their secondary purpose is to persuade/to teach. Rat learns his lesson in the story, so the story essentially has a happy ending. Parents are often more concerned with their children having good manners and being polite (see Gleason & Weintraub,1976, cited in Peccei, 2006) Page 7 of 9

8 GRAMMAR As Harry s mother is talking to him about the homework task as he completes it, it is possible that she has influenced how he has constructed sentences. Children s stories often anthropomorphise animals. Animal characters perhaps allow for more implausible storylines (a highwayman or woman might be more frightening for a 6 year old). In addition, we might not be comfortable talking/writing about naughty children, but in giving naughty characteristics to animal characters, we can discuss that behaviour in a safe way. GRAMMAR Harry uses simple, compound and complex sentences. He uses the relative pronoun who on two occasions, which is one of the earliest relative pronouns used in children s writing (Perera, 1984). Harry is able to demarcate sentences using full stops and an exclamation mark, although he is not yet aware of the need to separate clauses with commas. Arguably politeness is like social glue aiding social cohesion and cooperation: children need to learn to get along with one another and books like this one help them to understand them to understand the need to be kind to one another. GRAMMAR According to Kroll (1981), we would expect Harry aged 6 to be in the preparation stage (basic motor skills with some principles of spelling), moving towards the consolidation stage, when children s writing is similar to spoken language, and clauses are joined with the conjunction and. However, it is worth mentioning that we are only seeing a snapshot of Harry s ability; it is difficult to draw conclusions from one piece of work Page 8 of 9

9 GRAPHOLOGY At 6 years old, Harry is probably in the preparatory stage of writing developing (Kroll), when he is attempting to master his pen control and the motor skills required. There is evidence of finger spacing to separate words, a technique which Harry has been taught at school. Some of the letter shaping shows the preparatory work that may be going on in Harry s schools to move the children towards cursive script. GRAPHOLOGY Harry uses lined paper, though his writing is not always top-bottom aligned. Nevertheless, the ascenders and descenders on his letters are generally accurate, though there are some inconsistencies, such as the letter s on words like steals, gudees and is in the final line. Harry is aware of left-right directionality in writing, as is obvious from the positioning of the text. GRAPHOLOGY Pictures are very important in children s stories. They provide visual cues which help children understand the plot. They are also eye-catching and colourful, and enhance the child s reading experience. Children may find communicating through pictures easier than communicating through words. There is some evidence of selfcorrection in letter shaping, with the addition of the line to the d in greedy. He is also confident in letter direction. He shows awareness of upper and lower case, and uses capital letters for initial words in sentences, and for proper nouns ( Highway ), although he may be overregularising ( Duck ). He is not yet using a cursive (joined up) script. Harry has drawn a picture of the Highway Rat, which he has copied from the cover of the book. References: Peccei, J. (2006) Child Language: A resource book for students. Routledge. Abingdon. Perera, K. (1984) Children s Reading and Writing. Blackwell, Oxford Page 9 of 9