ABSTRACT
In working with young writers I am keen to encourage the development of each author's individual voice. All children have their own experiences and all have their own way of expressing those experiences. In addition, at any given point in their writing development each will have acquired skills in the various aspects of the writing process to differing degrees. Thus one child may be most proficient in questions of textual organisation while another may use a wide-ranging vocabulary and another may excel at spelling. Children make advances in different areas at different times and it cannot be taken for granted that any individual's level of attainment (as judged against National Curriculum or other norms) in one area will imply a similar level of attainment in other areas. It has for some years been my conviction that children have the best opportunity to use all their skills to the best of their ability in a regime which emphasises the supreme importance of the meanings which they are attempting to convey and develop, and where formal skills and strategies are seen as the servants of meaning.
