Writing as a Stage, Process and Trait by Janet Simon

Writing as a Stage, Process and Trait

One may see writing as just putting one's thoughts on paper whether organized or in no coherent order. As a matter of fact, this was my exact thought until I was introduced to Writing as a  Stage, Process and Trait.



Writing as a Stage

This encompasses the foundation skills of writing with consideration of Chall's Stages of Development. It has 4 stages and begins with the Emergent Stage which looks at the years from Pre-school to Kindergarten where children may scribble, trace draw and represent letter-like forms. In this stage, the teacher is expected to focus on fine motor skills especially how students hold the pencil, students writing within the lines, activities geared towards developing speech, teach students to write from left to write, introduce basic punctuation marks to students, teach phonics instruction (letter sound connection and alphabetic principle), increase exposure to high frequency words (words that appear very often. For example and, at, of, as, the ), provide opportunities for students to explain themselves whether through orally explaining ideas, drawings, role plays and pictures and finally students should be exposed to shared reading, big book reading and storytelling.

The second stage is the Early Stage where students write random letters or strings of letters, write via invented spelling (may use phonetic principle as a guide), graduate to correct spelling of words, elaborate on their ideas, they should be afforded the opportunity to tell their own stories, more reading should be encouraged, writing on the lines and placing space between their words should also be encouraged, they should try to spell words based on analogy and word families, the teacher should afford them the opportunity to add more structure to their thinking, they should learn to make comparisons and finally, the teacher should expose them to different form of writing (exposition, story, poems, fable).

The third stage is the Transitional Stage. In this stage, students are honing spelling skills and should be spelling words correctly through the use of a variety of strategies especially when spelling difficult words. Students should be writing in more genres and have greater control over capitalization and punctuation. Students should also be develop their ideas and produce an organized, structured piece of writing.

The fourth stage is the Fluent Stage where writers spell correctly using conventional spelling, they have greater control of their ideas and organization, they have the ability to critique their writing and that of others while using their own voice when writing.


Writing as a Process

This looks at the various steps taken to produce a finished piece of writing (The Writing Process). This has five (5) stages. 

The first step is Pre-writing where students generate and explore ideas (brainstorming), use drawing as a rehearsal activity talk out their compositions, use graphic organizers, writing prompts, pictures and research to gain a concrete idea of what they wish to write about.

The second step is Drafting where students compile their ideas in a structured manner, depending on the grade (lower grades) or if the child has a learning disorder such as dyslexia or dysgraphia, the students can dictate their rough drafts , the teacher could mark the students paper to ensure that they write on every line and encourage students to write without considering spelling and other mechanical issues.

The third step is Revising where students are "Reviewing and Refining Ideas". To achieve this, they may participate in writing groups with other students. In doing so, the teacher should focus on the positive while encouraging them to focus on what could be Added, Removed, Moved and Substituted. In doing so I was introduced to the ARMS Strategy.

The fourth step is Editing where students focus on the Conventions of Writing which entails Word Choice, Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation. This can be  can be termed as 'C.U.P.S' which is a strategy that represents Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation and Spelling.

The fifth and final step is Publishing where students are sharing their work. they focus on preparing the final copy and may use a word processor for the purpose of integrating technology. Upon completion, the finished piece can be shared to the whole class, over social media (Blog, Group Chat, School Website) or any other chosen audience.

Writing as a Trait

There are six traits in total. The first trait is Ideas. this trait looks at the overall message and meaning of a piece of writing. It focuses on interests, supporting details, significant events, characters and pictures. The second trait is Organization which looks at the structure of the piece of writing. This encompasses placing words, events and pictures in sequential order. The third trait is Voice which focuses on the writer's passion. It highlights the writer's confidence, change in emotions, sincere thoughts and expressive drawings which may be used to accompany the piece of writing. The fourth trait is Word Choice which involves parts of speech used to convey meaning and how original thinking can be applied to convey the writer's thoughts and emotions. The fifth is Sentence Fluency which looks at phrasing sentences of varying lengths using traditional words to connect sentences, repeating sound and creating patterns. This trait also involves the usage of grammar that makes groups of words which makes a sentence should sound.The sixth is Conventions which focuses on making writing correct and understandable. It further looks at the C.U.P.S Strategy mentioned earlier.


Upon going through the three (3) aspects of writing, we were given the opportunity to demonstrate the strategies where my group got conventions. It was a bit confusing as we had to focus on Conventions but also focusing on the other areas of Writing as a Process. Eventually after presenting we realized that the strategy we focused on was the C.U.P.S Strategy. I must say that the presentations were really entertaining and educational as i was exposed to other strategies such as Sound In Correction (SIC) and some songs and activities which could be utilized for each trait. An example would be the Ideas song which Is sang to the popular tune 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' while the corresponding activity was 'Am Making Dinner' where students would take turns giving the names of ingredients for dinner in alphabetical order which promotes/ portrays brainstorming. The final Activity which we did in groups of three was to demonstrate a short activity which would bring out the strategies which we learnt within the chapter, using three objectives from the Language Arts curriculum given by the teacher. This activity too turned out to be rather entertaining but once more educational as I learned about other strategies and rather creative methods of demonstration.