Writing child study - Employment

General Observed Writing Behaviors: Consider Turbill and Bean Chapters 3-4, how would you describe the
child’s knowledge and engagement with writing? What does the child think writing is (e.g.: as production? As a
process? A combination?).
Observations/examples
Interpretations
From observing Nadjib and the answers I got from
his writing interview, I would have to say his
revisiting approaches to writing instruction are a
combination of all three: writing as a production,
writing as creativity, and writing as a process. I can
see different parts of his writing that match each
revisiting approach. The coding of his interview also
strengthens my argument by him scoring a 7 on both
mechanical and process focuses.
Recommendations
I can see that Nadjib engages with writing as a combination of
all three revisiting approaches of writing as a production,
writing as creativity, and writing as a process. Turbill & Bean
state, “Another characteristic of writing as production is that
students need to be given a topic and ideas for writing” (2006,
p. 23). Whenever I try to get him to write he never knows
what to write about. He will sit there and sit there until I give
him some sort of idea or topic. I can tell that he is used to
having teachers give him a simple topic or writing prompt
when he writes.
My reasoning to think he writes as a creativity is because as
Turbill & Bean explain, “Creative writing approaches focus
mostly on imaginative or fictional writing to the exclusion of
nonfiction, expository, and other kinds of writing” (2006, p.
27). I can try my hardest to get him to write something other
than fiction but it simply will not happen. He gets really
fidgety and can’t concentrate which ends up in both of us
frustrated. He also fails at understanding how to incorporate
spelling, grammar, and punctuation into his writing. This is
another aspect of writing as creativity, as Turbill & Bean state
in Chapter 3.
The results in coding his writing interview also indicate that
he is split between a mechanical focus and a process focus. He
scored a 7 on mechanical focus meaning he sees the” ability to
spell the most frequently used words in English” (Turbill &
Bean, p. 23) because he says his dad writes down words he
doesn’t know how to spell or he looks at the word wall. This
points some of his revisiting approach as writing as
production. He also scored a 7 on process focus indicating he
is focused on meaning. Turbill & Bean also propose that
writing as a process means “Their ideas come from their many
experiences of life around them” (2006, p. 27). This is
strongly related to how he only wants to write stories about his
family and it’s very difficult for me to get him to write about
anything else.
I think to get Nadjib to start thinking about writing more on the terms of the writing process I need to help him
become more familiar with it. I printed off a copy of the writing process for him so he can physically see it as we went
through the process checking off each step as we go. Chapter 4 of Turbill & Bean confirm my reasoning behind this
by saying “Effective writers need to have an understanding of the process of writing, including an understanding of
why it is important to learn to spell, punctuate, and understand appropriate use of grammatical features” (2006, p. 39).
If he sees an end or a purpose for writing instead of always just writing something to make the teacher happy, I think
it will really help him put more thoughtfulness into his writing.