Children's Writing Stages

– What are the purposes and functions of writing?
– How do our writing skills develop?
– How do we personalise these?
– How do we adapt our writing for different registers?

What do children need to know to be able to write?
• Controlling a writing implement
• Combining words and sentences together
• Controlling register and discourse structure
• Manipulating language
• Recognising audience

To be able to write, you must be able to:

• Vocabulary and associated meanings of words and phrases.
• Sentences to create meaning.
• Graphemes that relate to phonemes and other devices to create prosodic effects (punctuation choices).
• Social conventions within texts.
• Cohesive structures
• Layout of texts and use of graphology
• Variations in language to suit Purpose, Audience and Register.

Writing Stages
• How do children progress in writing?

Writing stages
• Drawing
• Letter-like forms (emergent writing)
• Copied letters
• Name and strings of letters
• Words
• Sentences
• Text


Kroll’s Four Phases

Stage 1 - Preparatory
• Up to 6 years old
• When the child learns the physical skills required to write and the basics principles of the spelling system

Stage 2 - Consolidation
• Ages 6-8
• When children write as they speak
• They use short DECLARATIVE SENTENCES
• Sentences are grammatically incomplete
• They use simple CONJUNCTIONS e.g. and, then, so

Stage 3 - Differentiation
• Age 8 – mid teens
• They become more aware of differences between speech and writing
• More confident use of grammatical structures
• More complex sentences including SUBORDINATE CLAUSES and more sophisticated connectives
• Begin to adapt writing to audience and purpose

Stage 4 - Integration
• Age – mid teens and upwards
• Personal style is more developed
• Writing adapted confidently to different situations