A lot of people are really worried about their learners’ abilities to become strong writers, and I completely understand. Writing is a lifelong skill that will be called upon regardless of one’s academic path.
Going to college? You’re going to need to write. Not going to college? You’re still going to need to write. Becoming an engineer? It’s going to require writing. Starting your own business? So much writing.
Even when we decouple academic goals from work-related ones (which I think we should do more often), writing comes up at the top of many lists of necessary skills. Want to propose a change in your community? Complain to your state’s senator? Participate in a fun D&D game? Give the speech at your best friend’s wedding? Eulogize your cat?
Writing is a Crucial Life Skill
Writing is everywhere — in the silly moments and the heavy ones, in the formal goals and the tiny slivers of just living life. We write all the time, and there’s not a person on this planet who wouldn’t benefit from having more control over their ideas and how they share them. It’s what it means to be human.
So, naturally, many people who recognize the importance of writing take it very seriously when it comes to their homeschooling responsibilities. Often, concerned homeschooling parents/guardians will ask me for my advice on how to provide the best formal writing instruction for their young children.
“Just let them read,” I often say.
Sometimes, this is met with a sigh of relief. This was in line with their instincts, but they wanted to make sure they weren’t messing up, leaving a big gap to fill later.
Other times, I can feel an internal (or, on a few occasions, see the actual) eye roll. You’re one of those.
I Am an Academic Homeschooler
I’m not wading into any debate about unschooling, and I have found many of the principles and ideas behind unschooling to be personally applicable to my own practices, but I’m not an unschooler.
While the two concepts aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, my primary identity is an academic homeschooler. As someone who personally flourished when given academic rigor and plenty of opportunities for guided instruction, I value it — a lot.
My goal for homeschooling is to prepare my own children for any possible future path they may choose to take, and that includes being ready for rigorous academic contexts.
Why, then, would I give what seems to some like a wishy-washy answer about how to provide writing instruction for the earliest years of learning?
Reading Skills ARE Writing Skills
I should probably drop the “just” when I give the advice to “just” read to them.
It suggests, somehow, that reading is happening in place of writing, that I’m saying writing skills can wait until the child is older.
What I should say is that reading skills are writing skills. They can’t be separated. Becoming a skilled and attentive reader is the best way to become a skilled and attentive writer.
When I say you should read to your young learners instead of giving them formal writing instruction, what I really mean is that there is no formal writing instruction that’s going to do a better job of teaching them what it means to write well than to read good books. There’s no set of worksheets about commas or labeling of parts of speech that’s going to do a better job at building a writer than reading actual texts.
If you’re reading to your young learner, you already are giving them writing instruction. I’m not telling you to skip it. I’m telling you to keep going.
The Research Behind Integrated Reading and Writing
Let’s take a closer look at what I mean when I say that reading skills and writing skills are one in the same.
In an article titled “The Social Construction of Intertextuality and Literary Understanding: The Impact of Interactive Read-Aloud on the Writing of Third Graders During Writing Workshops,” researcher Jennifer Manak explores how using “mentor texts” and explicit instruction in the connection between reading and writing during reading instruction impacted third graders writing abilities.
By pointing to specific choices made by the writer in picture books, teachers pulled away the veil between reading and writing, showing learners that everything they saw on the page represented a choice the writer made about how to communicate.
Those writers were then empowered to make choices in their own writing, and they did so by mimicking the choices they’d consciously noticed in the works they’d read.
Similarly, in “Bringing Together Reading and Writing: An Experimental Study of Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension in Low-Performing Urban Elementary Schools,” James L. Collins, et al. found that using “thinksheets” (worksheets with comprehension questions, graphic organizers to fill in, and specific questions about the author’s rhetorical choices that learners fill out while reading) showed better improvements in writing than traditional writing instruction.
Another Way to Say "Just Read to Them"
If you ask me how to best provide writing instruction for someone who is younger than around 4th or 5th grade, I may say “just have them read” or “just read to them.” Here’s what I’m also saying when I say that:
- Expose them to a variety of sentence structures, vocabulary words, and rhetorical choices in the midst of actual content that engages their interests.
- Illustrate that communicating ideas with the world is a worthwhile endeavor that deserves attention.
- Point out the choices the author has made to make a story make logical sense. This teaches organization.
- Let your reader hear you respond to punctuation marks by reading aloud in a way that demonstrates their use in context.
- Let your reader see punctuation marks, capitalization conventions, spelling conventions, paragraph breaks, chapter headings, transition phrases, coordinating conjunctions, prepositional phrases, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so much more on the page.
- Let your reader read aloud and get the rhythm of language in their minds and on their tongues.
Your young reader is internalizing scripts, learning turns of phrase and writing conventions that we wouldn’t even know how to provide direct instruction on if we wanted to. And we’re doing it all while our learners are engaged and often don’t even feel like they’re doing “school.”
What Does Early Writing Look Like?
When I say not to work on formal writing, I’m not talking about early literacy skills that teach the actual decoding of reading or handwriting skills that build the skills necessary to produce writing. Those often do require formal instruction for mastery.
But as far as writing instruction that looks like grammar drills or having to write particular types of sentences or paragraphs, I really believe that instruction will be best implemented once a learner has gotten a lot of exposure to reading.
That’s not to say that young writers aren’t writing. It’s just often not formal or formally evaluated. Here are some ways your preschool and early elementary learners probably “write” on a regular basis — even before they can write letters on a page:
- Drawing pictures to help tell a story
- Imaginative play with action figures or dolls that includes dialogue and plot
- Creating models out of clay to bring to life a picture in their mind
- Explaining something to you that they learned while watching a TV show
- Retelling a story they listened to in an audiobook
- Reciting poems or songs
- Asking you to caption a picture they drew or dictate a note for them
Every single one of these tasks is calling upon foundational writing skills. Learners are finding their place in the world as not only consumers of information but producers of it, and they’re learning that those roles are constantly in conversation.
Letting your learner explore these connections without a lot of external pressure to write “right” will provide them with rich resources to use once you do introduce formal writing instruction that includes more direct instruction on grammar, sentence structure, paragraph style, etc.
At this point, you can teach them writing as a way to harness what they already know about communicating effectively and channel it into a particular set of conventions for particular audiences. You’re giving them the tools to build on the work they’ve already done.
Signs of Writing Skill Transitions
As learners move out of the earliest writing stages and into a transition toward preparedness for more academic writing contexts, you’ll likely see the following:
- Writing that mimics favorite books
- Comic books or drawings that combine words and images
- Writing for fun (building stories, letters to friends)
- Writing for utility (chat in an online game, lists for packing)
- Writing to help meet other academic goals (taking notes on a video to do well on a quiz)
- Asking for help with punctuation because they want to get it “right”
- Experimenting with different sentence structures and vocabulary words (stretching their skills)