ABSTRACT

Writing development and pedagogy is a high priority area, particularly with standardised testing showing declines in writing across time and through the years of schooling. However, to date there are relatively few texts for teachers and teacher educators which detail how best to enable the children to become confident, autonomous and agentic writers of the future.

Developing Writers Across the Primary and Secondary Years provides cumulative insights into how writing develops and how it can be taught across years of compulsory schooling. This edited collection is a timely and original contribution, addressing a significant literacy need for teachers of writing across three key stages of writing development, covering early (4-7 years old), primary (7-12 years old) and secondary years (12-16 years old) in Anglophone countries. Each section addresses two broader themes — becoming a writer with a child-oriented focus and writing pedagogy with a teacher-oriented focus.

Together, the book brings to bear rigorous research and deep professional understanding of the writing classroom. It offers a novel approach conceiving of writing development as a dynamic and multidimensional concept. Such an integrated interdisciplinary understanding enables pedagogical thinking and development to address more holistically the complex act of writing.

chapter 3|20 pages

Writing before school

The role of families in supporting children’s early writing development

chapter 5|16 pages

Teaching writing in digital times

Stories from the early years

chapter 6|19 pages

Developing textual competence

Primary students’ mastery of noun groups in two factual text types

chapter 7|18 pages

Apprenticing authors

Nurturing children’s identities as writers

chapter 8|23 pages

Developing confident writers

Fostering audience awareness in primary school writing classrooms

chapter 9|19 pages

Developing a pedagogy of empowerment

Enabling primary school writers to make meaningful linguistic choices

chapter 10|21 pages

Writing their futures

Students’ stories of development and difference

chapter 11|18 pages

Wordsmiths and sentence-shapers

Linguistic and metalinguistic development in secondary writers

chapter 13|19 pages

Articulating authorial intentions

Making meaningful connections between reading and writing in the secondary classroom