Lexical standards for expository writing at Grade 3:The transition from early literacy to academic literacy

Abstract

This article reports on an investigation of vocabulary thresholds in Grade 3 children's writing samples across four quality standards scored by way of a trait-based rubric. The students attend a publically funded school jurisdiction of choice within a large urban setting and are average achievers on provincially mandated student learning assessments of reading and writing in Grade 3. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the first draft writing (N=222) in response to an expository prompt. A quota sampling strategy was used to create a learner corpus comprised of 20 papers for each of the four quality standards. Online lexical profiling tools were used to generate indices of lexical variability. Distinct differences in vocabulary use were noted between quality standards, in particular the ability to access low frequency words among the samples judged of excellent quality. Pedagogical implications emerge for classroom practitioners to address the language learning needs of linguistically vulnerable youngsters.

Affordances of writing in digital media in and out of school – Comparing Norwegian 5th graders’ practices in 2005 and 2017

“…Likewise, some students lag behind when a difficulty emerges in relating transcription to discursive content, the ability to write about something (see e.g. Roessingh et al, 2016). This explains why stimulating 5th-grade students' motivation for extensive, elaborate, and thoughtful writing is so important.…”

Handwriting at Grade 3: More Than a Matter of ‘Neatness’

“…Young learners are by and large only mobilizing words they have in their oral repertoire in narrative contexts. As they shift to expository modes of writing, young students are increasingly experimenting with more academic-like word choices, and for those who take these risks, various strategic approaches to spelling words just beyond their controlespecially applying phonics knowledge, is evident (Roessingh & Elgie, 2015;Roessingh, Douglas, & Wojtalewicz, 2016).…”