SUMMARY:
Writing skills begin at a very early age. Typically, preschool children display multiple levels of ability upon arriving to preschool. The article suggests that children develop early writing skills by levels. The levels of development include the following: drawing and scribbling, letters and letter-like forms, salient and beginning sounds and beginning and ending sounds. During the drawing and scribbling level of development, children typically draw their writings and can distinguish no difference between the two. For a child at this level, the article suggests to persuade them into making their drawing look like that of a book by simply adding words under the picture to describe the picture. The appropriate goal for a child
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During the letters and letter-like forms level, students begin to write letter-like forms, or shapes. The article suggests having students write the names of items while labeling them or simply brainstorming a list of words that have the same initial letter. The goal of this is for the child to learn to make a connection between print and sound. During the salient and beginning sounds level, children begin to relate the sounds they hear to spoken language. The demonstrated activity for this level is to provide play activities incorporating the labeling of structures the children built earlier in the day during the playtime. The goal for a child at this level is to write beginning and ending sounds in words. Beginning and ending sounds is the last level of development for preschool children, however, is the most important of them all. This leads to the connection of individual sounds in words and they begin to recognize the initial and final letters of words. The article suggests for the child to generate sentences and to write down the sounds they hear in the process. The goal for this level of development is to include the medial vowel and write complete words. Incorporating children’s writing skills provides a gateway for teachers to help develop