Elementary writing

The development of early writing is very important because it pushes young writers to do more and to get them excited about writing. the current curriculum that follows the standard of ensuring the students focus on their penmanship and grammatical corrections as a development of writing, may possibly be what hinders the true potential of early writers^[1]. These young writers are the new authors, and story tellers of the upcoming generations, so the correct development of their writing at a young age is crucial. Many have seen and acknowledged the issue, and do agree that after much studies, research and statistics such as the collective information that The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) gave, which shows that during the time between 2009-2019 reading and comprehension test scores have decreased in grades 4, 8, and 12 in the United States, which, in turn we can infer, the curriculum that is being taught in school to early writers needs to change in order to maximize the potential of young writers, as well as destigmatize the distastefulness the younger generations have in their writing courses.

As we know, Artificial Intelligence plays a huge role as is seen as a short-cut for lots of young students and writers in the 21st century. In Rebecca Rolloff's article she talks about how we should teach young students the creative aspect of writing, rather than going into structural aspect of writing, which could still tie into the impact of AI^[2]. If the modern curriculum does not allow students to be creative in their writing, then it causes them to be more susceptible to using Artificial intelligence to write/construct their pieces for them, which takes away humanity from the writing world. If the curriculum is more of a strict instruction it is easier for young writers to just copy and paste the same format into an AI engine, which would hinder the growth of early writers.The main purpose of this movement is to help young generation of students because confident and well-skilled writers^[3], without the feeling that writing is too difficult to comprehend and to take away the notion that writing something you’re just “good at” as if it’s a trait that you get at birth.So, It is important to the future of the writing community that we prioritize the process of a progressive growth at writing, rather than expecting students and young writers to immediately know how to properly construct a well-written piece of writing.

In the past the general norm of teaching young children how to write was to show penmanship, and correct spelling, which is not the fundamental of writing development, students may go to go into the next grade unprepared to take on the challenges of the next level writing (Rohloff 2022) students could finish preschool and go into elementary school not ready and feeling overwhelmed because they are unsure what “counts” as writing. With this, students could lack the motivation and guided to becoming successful with their writing, feeling like your writing is considered “not good enough” for the grade that you are in is very discouraging, however, if the progression of early writers started in preschool then students would feel more confident when bigger challenges arise. In the early 20th century, teachers emphasized the importance of legibility and speed with writing, during the mid-century that’s when they sarted to focus on composition, however, they would use established literary models for structure and grammar, which can be useful to help see what writing is supposed to look like^[4], but it could also be kind of unmotivating because students may think their writing is not “good enough” if it isn’t as good the example. This new model however, emphasizes the early development of a young writer allowing them to focus on their creativity as a writer. For the most part, what we have seen in this new model of writing is starting at a young age, teach young writers the creative aspects of writing first, by this people recommend allowing young writers (those in pre-school to say 1st graders) to write about whatever it is that interests them, have it be about the game they are playing at home, let them talk about their day, or something of that nature^[2], this could actually get them excited about writing because they are writing something that isn't so structured and is more about their passions. What lots of people think would be the outcome of this is once young students get comfortable with writing, adding on the other aspects and fundamentals with writing could be more efficient, This Idea came up because lots of research has seen that some students would go from one grade to another still behind and unsure of what they are doing because the grade before wasn't enough preparation for the challenges that followed^[5]