Writing child study - Employment

word choice when he writes. He uses a wide
vocabulary and not just commonly used words like
words he would find on a word wall in his classroom.
For an example, he used the word excited and spelled
it correctly. From all my observations of his spelling, I
would place him in the independent speller category on
Oglan’s sliding scale. In his writing interview when
asked what he does when he doesn’t know how to spell
a word he says he looks at the word wall to see if it
was on there.
Sentence Level
Something I observed from Nadjibs writing is that he
neglects to use punctuation and capital letters. When
we were on the revision phase of the writing process I
asked him if he knew how to make a complete
sentence or what the elements that make a sentence
are. He told me that a sentence needs a capital letter
and a period. I also noticed that he doesn’t have very
strong cohesion between sentences and in result; his
story lacks a meaningful whole text. An example is:
The mouse go find the loin. The mouse is going to
run from the owl.
He also fails to include pronouns such as it, he, she,
and we. This is shown from several stories he wrote
with me including his story about going to the park and
the story about the lion and the mouse.
Whole Text Level
In Nadjib’s story about his family at the park, he had
two sentences at the end that didn’t make any sense to
the rest of the story. These are:
My Dad das exercises We play out side and play
with the leves
I asked him when he was all finished if there was
anything in his story that he didn’t think should be in
there and he said no. I also asked him if he had ever
been through the writing process he told me that he
hadn’t. He didn’t even know what it was. After giving
him a printed version of the writing process and
crossing off the steps as we went through, we got to the
revising part and it said “take out unnecessary work.”
When hearing this and looking at his story he decided
that the last two lines of his story were unnecessary
and didn’t go with the rest of it.
The last thing he did to tell me he was an independent
speller was used functional spellings without stopping to
think about it for a long time which in result, demonstrated
self-confidence and comfort while using these spellings.
An example if a spelling strategy he displayed while using
these functional spellings was transpositional. Oglan says
traspotitional strategies are when, “Words are spelled wrong
using all of the correct letters, but the letters are in the
wrong order” (2000, p. 34). I included the word watches in
transpositional because when he says watches, he says
incorrectly as washes. So from the way he says it washis is
actually spellings it exactly as it sounds.
According to Oglan, the spelling as it sounds means
“Students rely on the sounds they hear that are close to the
actual sound” (2000, p. 34). This would explain why he
spelled one, won. Simply because that’s how it sounds
when you say it.
Sentence Level
Since he knows what elements to use to form a complete
sentence but doesn’t use those elements when writing, this
makes me think he doesn’t know how or when to use them.
I believe this could be from a variety of different factors.
One could be that he doesn’t know how to make his brain
think of everything at once, or how to multitask when
writing. Another thing could be that he doesn’t understand
when you take a breath or break when you’re speaking, you
should add a comma or period. This is a very tricky thing to
grasp for beginning writers.
Turbill & Bean state, “Sentences in and across paragraphs
are knitted together into a meaningful whole text by the use
of these ties” (2006, p. 19). My example of his sentences
from the story we made from The Lion and the Mouse
shows how his sentences aren’t tied together and in result,
the story becomes quite confusing and loses meaning.
Another thing he does when writing is fails to include
pronouns. He always restates the noun instead of referring
to it as a pronoun and as Turbill & Bean (2006) state, failure
to do this results in losing meaning at the whole text level
(p. 19).
Whole Text Level
First of all, I have come to the conclusion that Nadjib is a
visual learner. In chapter 7 of Ray he explains a story of a
student named Levi who sketched a picture at the bottom of
his sheet of paper and then went on to write the poem. He
says, “He was also still very reliant on his drawing to help
him frame his thinking before writing. This was something
we had nudged many of the children away from because we
felt they were ready to let their writing lead their thinking
more” (2004, p. 129). This idea also pertains to Nadjib’s
way of thinking. After I gave him a printout of the writing
process and had him cross off the steps as he went it began
to help him see a purpose and rational behind everything we
were doing. It helped motivate him to look critically at his
work to see what he can change like when he decided to