Teaching early writers: Teachers' responses to a young child's writing sample

Learning to write is integral to literacy learning, while success with literacy is reported to lead to success at school and in life generally. How teachers respond to children's early attempts at writing (often a mix of drawings and print) helps to form children's attitudes towards writing and the paths their experimentations follow. The aim of the study discussed in this paper was to examine early years' teachers' responses to a sample of writing from a young literacy learner in the early stages of the first year of school. Many of the decisions teachers make, are based on teachers', on the run analysis of, and responses to, children's work samples. A teacher survey (N=228) provided three different forms of data: demographic information, responses to questions using a 5 point Likert scale and open ended responses to a sample of early 'writing'. The findings suggest that some teachers are focusing on print conventions and accuracy when reviewing young children's writing samples, and seemingly undervaluing their drawings. This may unintentionally, be making learning to write at school unnecessarily difficult for some children.