Student Writing and New Literacies

Student #1

Student #2

For a couple of students in my placement, I posed the question, "what did you do at recess today?" I told them that I was going to have them finish the statement, "today at recess I did...." I first had them tell me what they did and then had them write it. Both students are in the "emergent spelling" stage of writing based on these samples.  The writing is accompanied by pictures that illustrates their interpretation of the games  that they played at recess. Having this picture with their writing helps us to know more about what they were trying to write about since they aren't at the stage where it is easy to do this.

Student #1 told me that he played "boys versus girls at recess." It was hard to get it all in the picture, but you can see that at the beginning of that student's writing he clearly wrote, "boys." I think that he intended to finish writing about what he did at recess. I have a feeling that he got distracted and bored at the activity in the classroom. Knowing this I think that student #1 is getting more into the "letter name-alphabetic spelling" stage.

Student #2 told me that at recess he "played." The writing that he provided shows that he is fairly good at forming letters, but seems to have simply copied what I wrote. (Today at recess I did...) When I asked him to write, he sat for a minute thinking of what to write and it seemed like he wanted to try to write that he played, but couldn't figure out how to spell or write it.

New Literacies Venn Diagram