Children’s Plans for Writing: Characteristics and Impact on Writing Performance

Abstract

2Planning plays an important role in the production of children's written texts. Yet little is 3 known about why children plan and the plans they create when they are not explicitly 4 instructed in planning activities. The current study explores the plans that elementary school 5 children create before writing a text. We compared performance of children educated in 6Catalan and in English (UK) to capture contextual differences and examined whether the 7 plans children produced were related to their language and reading skills. We captured 8 developmental differences by examining performance in Years 1, 3 and 5. Children of all 9 ages in elementary school produced plans before writing either by producing a draft of the 10 text or generating content and structure in the form of organisers. The types of plan produced 11 changed with age and was influenced by the children's educational context. These plans were 12 not associated with either the length or the quality of the children's written text. Nor were 13 language, reading and transcription skills associated with the plans produced. However, plans 14 differed significantly across educational contexts. The results indicate that school instruction 15 is important for the production of plans and , at this stage in development, children's self 16 generated plans do not impact on the texts produced. 17

A Preliminary Investigation Into the Role of Planning in Early Writing Development

“…The results of this study provide additional evidence that advance planning plays a significant role in CBM-WE performance as early as Grade 2 and that the role of advance planning is not completely shared by transcription. This finding is similar to some other studies of elementary students (Llaurado & Dockrell, 2019;Puranik et al, 2019), but in contrast to studies suggesting that planning is a higherlevel EF that does not develop until later (Drijbooms et al, 2015;Limpo et al, 2014). Given the lack of consensus and the inconsistent developmental arc we described in the introduction, we hypothesize that our result is due to capturing the right constructs in the right developmental stage.…”

“…The role of planning for young writers has been conditional on a variety of factors, including the representation of planning and its relation to transcription. Llaurado and Dockrell (2019) found that planning influenced writing length, fluency, and quality in a sample of Years 1, 3, and 5 students. Planning was scored based on structure (1–3 points) and content (0–3 points).…”

“…For example, curriculum-based measurement in written expression (CBM-WE) captures aspects of transcription and text generation (Kim et al, 2017). However, the role of planning for early elementary student development and its influence on writing assessment is less conclusive (Altemeier et al, 2006; Drijbooms et al, 2015; Llaurado & Dockrell, 2019; Puranik et al, 2019).…”

Scoping the field of literacy research: how might a range of research be valuable to primary teachers?

“…It is noteworthy that the vast majority of studies in this group focus on reading not writing, and that all studies reviewed confined their interest to the reading and writing of print text rather than multiple modes or media. The three studies that focus on writing trace the relative competence of children of different ages in writing certain text types (Tolchinsky, 2019;Stavans et al, 2019) and in planning for writing (Llaurado and Dockrell, 2019). In recent years, as explored earlier, some countries have expanded their literacy curricula to include skills associated with making and using multimodal and/or digital texts.…”

What students with intellectual disabilities know about writing planning

“…These few studies increase the need for a greater research effort to find out what the written communication problems of students with intellectual disabilities are in order to implement specific interventions tailored to their needs. However, the difficulty of analysing and fully understanding the global process of written composition and the relevance given to reflecting on writing (Hayes, 1996 ) made this research focus on the cognitive process of planning, considered as a central component of written expression (Llaurado & Dockrell, 2019 ; McCutchen, 2006 ).…”