Skriftspråkande i förskoleklass och årskurs 1.

Based on a study of writing activities in two Swedish pre-school classes (in Swedish: förskoleklass), the purpose is to examine the content and form of teaching with a view to assessing four important aspects in children’s learning in the first year of school. The four aspects are as follows: 1) practice to help children crack the code of writing, i.e. focus on letters and on how to connect the letters to different sounds, grammatical rules, conventions and text patterns, 2) practice to support meaning-making in/through writing, i.e. using the children’s experiences and insight to give meaning and importance to texts, 3) practice to support text use, i.e. that the children are participants and co-creators of texts with a view to use of the texts and 4) practice to support critical text comprehension with regard to type and content of teaching in which the children critically examine texts, their function and purpose. Based on these four categories for data analysis, the study focuses on the breadth and range of writing activities as well as on the extent to which focus is on the children’s creativity.

The study shows that teaching practice regarding the children’s writing activities is aimed to help children crack the code of writing. The exercises are not related to functional reading and writing, and are not based on the experiences and insight of the children. Another result of the study is that play is not used to stimulate the pupils’ interest in reading and writing. Structured play with words is a recurring activity, however there are few examples of the children learning actively by introducing reading symbols in their play activities or by creating play situations in which the children are given the opportunity to experiment actively with letters and numbers in their own way. The study concludes that in the two pre-school class there is limited knowledge about children’s development of reading and writing skills.

The study is based on two pre-school classes from two Swedish primary and lower secondary schools. The two schools are characterised as typical Swedish primary and lower secondary schools in the sense that they do not represent a special pedagogical or idealogical profile. Data was collected through video footage, field work, formal as well as informal interviews and analysis of teaching material. The data analysis was inspired by Luke & Freebody (1997) ”The Four Literacy Resources Model”. The analysis focuses on different teaching practices linked to development of writing skills in children. It is assumed that a plurality of mutually interconnected practices is necessary in relation to developing writing skills in children. Data was analysed in relation to whether four important practices exist in the two pre-school classes.

Skoog, M. (2012). Skriftspråkande i förskolklas och årskurs 1. Ph.d.-afhandling. Örebro universitet.