Impact of daily writing on the acquisition of literacy skills in early childhood students

Writing impacts students in far reaching ways and helps them to excel across the board.

Problem Statement

The journey of maximizing student outcomes is one that school districts across America embark on each day. The end result is certain to make all who participate, from the administrators and teachers to the parents and students, extremely proud; however, the method of how to effectively and consistently empower all students to perform at their greatest potential is yet to be discovered. The following relevant terms and their meanings will be addressed in this paper: executive function skill, phonological awareness, phoneme, literacy, and graphophonemic. Executive function skills are used to describe one’s ability to regulate his/her actions while processing instructions. Phonological awareness describes a student’s ability to recognize the sound structures of words and the individual parts of words. Phoneme is a term used to describe the smallest unit of sound in spoken language. Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, and create communication. Graphophonemic is a term used to describe the recognition of letters and their sound-symbol relationships.

From the first words spoken to the first steps taken, children progress at astounding rates. Knowledge about how children learn and what enhances such learning is an area worthy of investigation (Schachter, 2017). Specifically, the study of literacy at the early childhood level has sparked the attention of policy makers, educators, and parents. Historically writing has always been a content area taught in higher grade levels. More recently, preschoolers have also been encouraged to write. Yet there are only a few studies on what is gained from learning how to write and how writing can enhance other content areas (Levin & Aram, 2013). This study researched the impact of writing on literacy in prekindergarten students.

The process of educators equipping students with the necessary literacy and writing skills to maximize their academic success was one that was met with many obstacles. These obstacles included the low socioeconomic status of a majority of the students studied; a lack of caregiver support; low phonological awareness skills, a lack of executive function skills; and school overcrowding. Addressing and finding solutions to each of these issues was critical to the success of all students.

Low socioeconomic status affected much more than one’s financial status. The socioeconomic status of a child’s family had a bearing on most, if not all, aspects of the children’s lives that were studied. Where and how the child lives and attends school was one of the biggest areas of impact. Most schools in areas where the residents are of a low socioeconomic status were low performing schools. With no other viable option, many low socioeconomic families were forced to attend schools that were not equipped to effectively serve student needs, further perpetuating the problem. Another area that was affected was the child’s health and nutrition. Children from low socioeconomic households may not have access to nutritious foods and adequate healthcare. These factors made it extremely difficult to come to school and perform at the greatest potential each day. Finally, many of the families of these households lacked the ability or motivation to provide in home literacy experiences, which are key in promoting literacy growth.

Lack of caregiver support was a huge problem in the school studied. Students were present in school for a significant time of the week days. Still, in home caregivers continued to be extreme determinants of students’ academic progress. A caregiver’s power to impact a child’s life can never be overestimated. Various cultural and ethnic differences existed between a student’s home and school. While the school may have placed an emphasis on reading and writing, certain homes may not have seen these areas as ones needing intense focus. Many parents simply did not seem to be motivated to provide the extra attention needed to assist students both in and out of the school setting. Finally, some caregivers reportedly lacked the resources needed to support their child’s learning.

Phonological awareness skills were vital to the acquisition of literacy skills. Many students were starting school with little to no knowledge of the alphabet and little to no ability to identify letters. Students were also entering prekindergarten with little to no knowledge of phonemes. These deficiencies also resulted in poor fluency and vocabulary skills.

Executive function skills were also critical to the success of students and must be nurtured from prekindergarten onward. When students were unable to self-regulate, there needed to be a system in place to provide adequate behavior management support. As a result of this deficit many students were lacking gross motor skills. Students were also lacking fine motor skills, resulting in a loss of the ability to form what is heard into written communication.

School overcrowding was perhaps the most apparent issue to the naked eye. Schools, particularly those in low socioeconomic areas were notorious for having overcrowded classrooms and overworked teachers. This often resulted in a lack of resources as the resources present were stretched amongst more students than intended. This resulted in a strain on school budgets and ultimately students not having the materials needed to learn. There were also difficulties with behavior and class management due to the overcrowding. Finally, there was a lack of support services for those students who are shown to need them and when the services are granted they are not given in a timely fashion.

Research Focus

The research focused on the need for specialized executive function skills in order to improve the literacy levels of prekindergarten students. This area related to the professional context of the study in that it identified the foundational issue that occurred at many low socioeconomic schools. Students, as well as educators, were struggling with behaviors and their hindrance when it came to learning. These executive function skills not only allowed students to sit and attend to a lesson for the necessary amount of time to gain the intended skills, but they also equipped students with the tools needed to perform the physical process of writing. It was the formation of executive function skills that allowed children to function successfully in a traditional classroom setting where they were be asked to sit and listen for periods of time before being allowed the freedom to explore and discover while learning. This aspect of learning has gained a significant amount of interest recently, one reason being due to its relation to brain development (Willoughby, Blair, Worth & Greenberg, 2012). Children’s executive function skills seem to have some relation to writing and early reading skills, supporting the thought that those with stronger executive function skills are likely to have better developed reading skills, which also tends to promote early writing skills (Zhang et al., 2017).

Research Questions

The study was focused on one main inquiry: What was the impact of first name writing and journaling on the literacy levels of prekindergarten students?

Literature Review

Early childhood education is an area of academia that continues to gain significant interest. The benefits of maximizing learning during the critical timeframe of numerous and the specifics of the impact are not all known. Still, researchers agree that early childhood education is important enough to warrant careful study and consideration. Knowledge about how children learn and what enhances such learning is an area worthy of investigation (Schachter, 2017). This study looked at not only how children learn literacy related topics, but also how teachers view their learning. The current action research will extend this study by examining whether the views of the teacher regarding a student’s literacy knowledge impact the students’ writing skills. The current study will examine whether or not a teacher’s belief that a child knows a particular letter (can verbally identify the letter and sound) will impact the child’s ability to write the letter.

Historically writing has always been a content area taught in higher grade levels. More recently, preschoolers have also been encouraged to write. Yet there are only a few studies on what is gained from learning how to write and how writing can enhance other content areas (Levin & Aram, 2013). Like several other content areas, writing progresses on a continuum. This process is considered by most to be a naturally occurring one, emerging for each child in their own special way (Levin & Aram, 2013). This reasoning is directly linked to the understudying of the very critical content area of writing. This particular study examines three intervention models to increase literacy knowledge. Unfortunately, recent statistics report that only one third of American schoolchildren are currently performing at a proficient level in literacy (Levin & Aram, 2013). “Although prekindergarten children’s ability to write their name was associated with reading and writing outcomes, few studies have examined children’s early writing” (Levin & Aram, 2013, p. 2). The connections between writing and literacy advancements are evident. A more complete look at the interconnections and rationales behind these connections is overdue and the main motivation of the current study.

The study of education in early childhood has sparked the interest of a diverse group of scholars, gaining more popularity in the recent years. There has been a recent increase in the attention given to the importance of early childhood academics. With this renewed emphasis comes a need for a fresh consideration of how children learn and what opportunities are given to students in early childhood classrooms (Pelatti, Piasta, Justice & O’Connell, 2014). As an early childhood educator, it is imperative that new innovations and strategies are employed in classrooms to ensure maximum results for students during these very critical, initiating steps in academia. Educators must consider the connections that exist between various subject areas and how to maximize the benefits that come as a result. In prekindergarten literacy is a critical focus area, whereas writing in prekindergarten is less studied. Still the connection remains; a connection that educators must tap into in order to assist students with learning.

Phonological awareness describes a student’s ability to recognize the sound structures of words and the individual parts of words. It concerns the sounds and oral associations of letters as opposed to the written symbols and sounds that are more associated with phonics. This skill is gained and strengthened through the rich experiences provided inside of the early childhood classroom. Phonological awareness is certainly a critical precursor to reading (Pelatti et al., 2014). As children gain a strong foundation of alphabet knowledge by learning to identify letters and their associated sounds, the phonological awareness strand of literacy support strengthens. Phonological awareness encompasses various facets of early literacy skills. The Pelatti study looked at the experiences at one preschool and found that children spent on average about 18 minutes of instructional time in the literacy domain. The current action research will examine the specific impact and correlation between time spent and levels of achievement in literacy.

Phonics can be seen as taking phonemic awareness a step further by building upon the sounds of letters and creating a foundation for reading and writing. As described above, while phonemic awareness is mostly oral, phonics takes these oral connections and associates them with print through reading and writing. This additional step is vital to the success of prekindergarten students as they proceed onward to kindergarten and beyond. One particular study suggested that children’s executive function skill at the beginning of the semester was predictive of their later invented spelling skills through children’s letter-sound knowledge (Zhang, Bingham & Quinn, 2017). As with phonemic awareness, invented spelling mediation has an impact on student learning. The link to reading is evident, as is the moderate to high correlation with writing and executive function skills (Zhang, Bingham & Quinn, 2017). The current action research seeks to look more specifically at the executive function skills as they pertain to a student’s ability to form and write letters of the alphabet and the impact that this has on letter-sound knowledge.

Writing is deemed to be an emergent skill, one that naturally emerges in children (Levin & Aram, 2013). This thought process may be the rationale behind the fact that writing, particularly early childhood writing, is an understudied area, often taking a backseat to reading and mathematics (O’Leary, 2017). The O’Leary study implicated a need for greater attention to language and literacy in general, but especially a need for an increase in early writing supports. Still, writing in early childhood has some correlation to other critical literacy skills, and is still seen as an important form of communication. Thus, early childhood educators must be well versed in the components of writing to be effective in passing this skill on to their students. The current action research seeks to find the appropriate time frame specified for literacy focus that will also yield the best literacy outcome results.

Executive function involves a child’s ability to regulate his/her actions while processing instructions provided by a teacher, parent, therapist, etc. It is the formation of this skill that allows children to function successfully in a traditional classroom setting where they may be asked to sit and listen for periods of time before being allowed the freedom to explore and discover while learning. This aspect of learning has gained a significant amount of interest recently, one reason being due to its relation to brain development (Willoughby, Blair, Worth & Greenberg, 2012). This particular study looked the particular areas of executive function and their impact on learning. The study revealed that literacy levels of low income children are often widely known, but the executive function abilities often are not as clear. Children’s executive function skills seem to have some relation to writing and early reading skills, supporting the thought that those with stronger executive function skills are likely to have better developed reading skills, which also tends to promote early writing skills (Zhang et al., 2017). The current action research seeks to identify more clearly the executive function skills of students and the implications that they have on literacy levels.

Not to be forgotten is the impact that a caregiver has on a student’s academic success. Teachers are powerful influencers in their students’ lives. This power however, is often limited when there is a lack of cooperation and support from the student’s home environment. Therefore, it is imperative that students also have support from parents and home in addition to what is given by teachers at school. Parents can provide graphophonemic support by enhancing students’ knowledge of formation of letters as well as their sounds. This can be done during various activities, such as fun writing and dramatic play interactions. Parent and home-based support can also be provided through print as parents assist with letter formation. Research shows that demands for precision, encouragement, and consistency from parents during writing activities are great indicators of future academic success (Aram & Besser-Biron, 2016). This study further reveals that children with the strongest literacy skills are also the children with the most parental support.

The goal is for all parties to work together to ensure that all students have the best support for their academic growth. Thus the current action research seeks to examine the best strategies for parents to employ when supporting students at home.

While some believe that writing is a naturally occurring phenomenon (Levin & Aram, 2013), educators and parents must be equipped with the tools to assist with the promotion of this very important skill by providing executive function, as well as other supports. Most would agree that writing develops on a continuum, demanding that educators become informed about this process and how to help improve student outcomes. Research reveals that parental writing support can aid some aspects of children’s literacy development, even if the support that parents provide generally does not coincide with best practices in the field, for example helping children connect letters with their sounds (Skibbe, Bindman, Hindman, Aram & Morrison, 2013). The current action research seeks to examine the connections between weekly parental writing support in the form of name writing and increased literacy abilities in prekindergarten students.

Parents, as well intentioned as they may be, tend to provide supports at are low level at best. Research shows that the support provided by most parents lacks connection to best practices. For example, one study revealed that parents frequently accepted errors, rather than demanding corrections (Bindman, Skibbe, Hindman, Aram & Morrison, 2014). The current action research seeks to provide parents with best practices and measure the implications on early childhood literacy.

Motor skills encompass a student’s ability to physically interact with the world around him. For many these skills are naturally occurring, not requiring any special attention. However, more and more research is leaning towards the need for motor skills to be refined, particularly in early childhood education (Cameron, Brock, Murrah, Bell, Worzalla, Grissmer & Morrison, 2012). Gross motor skills involve more large movements and should also be considered when preparing young children for academic success. Cognitive components and methods of instruction must be considered carefully for maximum results. The importance of early childhood motor skills, which contribute to writing cannot be overstated and educators must adhere to guidelines encouraging the development of these skills (O’Leary, 2017).

Fine motor skills involve the usage of small muscles, such as those in the fingers, to complete a task, such as writing. Fine motor skills can be assessed by looking at visual, cognitive, and manual dexterity, as well as spatial organization (Cameron et al., 2012). Thus, as we look at the process of writing it is important to understand that several mental, as well as physical functions are at work. As this process is at work and when children write, they often ask questions that can help them construct knowledge about the written system (Aram & Besser-Biron, 2016). The Cameron study revealed that executive function and fine motor skills are beneficial in their own distinct ways. The current action research seeks to explore the mental and physical necessities needed for literary success in prekindergarten.

Helping students to become strong, literacy minded individuals takes hard work. The undertaking requires the efforts of passionate educators, as well as dedicated caregivers for maximum results to be realized. Perhaps most importantly, this task also requires the cooperation of an engaged, motivated student who desires to learn and grow. As students embark on the journey to academic achievement and school readiness, they must be surrounded with support systems that will help them along the way.

Intervention Plan

Early childhood education is an exciting area of academia. It truly is where formal education begins and where the foundation is built for whatever it is that children are to become. The importance of literacy cannot be overstated and early childhood educators are endowed with a tremendous duty to ensure that all children are able to read and receive information provided to them as well write and create information to be shared with others. The study and mastery of literacy related concepts provides the foundational knowledge necessary for students to excel across all subject area domains.

Possible Intervention Plans

Interventions must be employed in order to ensure that this valuable skill is being learned. The researcher of the current action research decided to explore the implementation of three possible intervention plans. The first one centered around the importance of fine motor strength. Most children enter prekindergarten with very little fine motor strength, as demonstrated by their inability to hold and control a pencil, marker, crayon, etc. while attempting to write or draw. In order to combat this, students were given daily time to work with Play Doh and/or molding clay. Students were given the assignment to make the letter of the week first and then were allowed to make anything that they wished with their Play-Doh or clay. Each moment spent bending and molding was a moment that contributed to the fine motor strength needed in order for a student to become a successful writer.

The second possible intervention centered around daily name writing. Prekindergarten classrooms are mandated to have each student’s name in at least seven places around the classroom so that they are constantly given opportunities to recognize and spell their name. Children love to hear the names and are extremely motivated to write their names when given the opportunity. The current action research sought to provide children with the daily opportunity to write their first names are the beginning of the school day. Students had their names affixed to the tables where they sat and were given a piece of paper with the dates of a week on each side. Students practiced locating the correct day of the week and then writing their name independently, utilizing the visual support of the name tag only. Writing is considered an emergent skill and thus students were encouraged to write daily and walk through the stages of writing naturally.

The third possible intervention was a daily writing activity done in small group settings. The current action research sought to expose children to an interactive writing activity daily that incorporated the letter of the week. Students were given dry erase boards and markers and allowed to engage with a story projected on the white board while following prompts of when and what to record on their boards. This intervention intermingled the concepts of letter identification and sounds with writing.

The researcher decided to use the second intervention plan in order to measure the impact of daily writing on prekindergarten students’ literacy skills. This intervention plan provided the subjects with the additional benefit of name spelling and writing, which is linked to overall student engagement. The second intervention plan also provided more opportunity for consistency and accessibility for all students each day in the classroom.

Subjects

The present study included twenty-two children, between the ages of four and five years

old, who were all enrolled in a full day prekindergarten classroom. The classroom was located in a free standing, public school within Desoto Independent School District, a middle class suburban city located outside of Dallas, Texas. Ninety-Five and a half percent of the students were African American, and four and a half percent were Hispanic. Fifty-four and a half percent of the students were female and forty-five and a half percent of the students are male. Three students had noticeable speech delays, one being a significant stutter. One student was moved from another classroom due to behavior concerns. Two students were going through the Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) process to see if a more self-contained classroom may be more appropriate. One student was documented as homeless due an unstable home environment. The children's parents all consented to the study and pseudonyms will be used for the purpose of this study. Ninety-five percent of the students were on free or reduced lunch and from low to middle class, single parent households. Thirty percent of the parents' highest degree achieved was a bachelor's degree and seventy percent of their highest degree attained was a high school diploma. The researcher in this study was also an active participant and the lead classroom instructor. The researcher was an African American female teacher with 3 years of teaching experience, two of which were in early childhood. Her highest level of education achieved was a doctorate degree. The researcher had one hundred and fifty professional development hours in early childhood education and specific experience working with special education, as well as general education students. The researcher did not have a consistent, permanent teacher’s

assistant during the duration of this study. At times there would be a substitute or no one at all. The researcher was out from work due to sickness for one week. At this time a substitute was in the classroom and the name writing activity did not take place daily. The daily writing activity promptly resumed upon the return of the researcher to the classroom.

Intervention Plan

The current action research focused on the second possible intervention, daily name

writing. Students were provided with sign in sheets upon the completion of their breakfast and the cleaning of their tables. Students also had visual supports, provided throughout the

classroom as well as at the table where they sat, of their names in the form of a name tag. The lead researcher was responsible for implementing the intervention daily. The writing stage of each student was determined on a pre-test and post-test manner based on the writing stages identified in the Prekindergarten Guidelines. The expected outcome was that all students would show an increase in their letter and sounds identification, as well as their writing abilities. The methodology was chosen to maximize the natural writing progression that occurs when students are given the opportunity to write and are motivated to do so.

Writing is a process that often begins with scribbles and progresses to strings of letters, then to actual words and before you know it full sentences. The activity of writing letters allowed children to further incorporate the identification of the letters as well as the sounds that they make, which was the intended outcome of the current action research. The progression of writing was measured using a pre-test and post-test framework for each student and was assessed based on the writing stages identified in the Prekindergarten Guidelines. Letter and sound identification as also assessed during pre-test and post-test small group activities.

Findings

The intervention employed proved to impact the literacy skills of prekindergarten

students positively. The intervention was utilized daily for eleven weeks, from August 27, 2018 until November 16, 2018, accounting for one week when the researcher was out sick and one week that students were out of school for the Thanksgiving break. Students were given a pre-test assessment of their writing skills during the first week by being asked to sign their names using a visual prompt and their developmental writing stage was recorded. Students were also given a pre-test assessment of their ability to identify letters in the alphabet. During the twelfth week students were given the same assessments to measure their writing stages and letter identification skills.

The eleven-week intervention period yielded an average letter identification increase of about twenty-one percent as a class average. Over the eleven-week intervention period, the researcher provided the students with daily name writing opportunities. The researcher also assessed each student during the first and final week of the study period using the same assessment, which asked the students to identify the letters of the alphabet when they were shown the letters, both on the computer and in the form of flash cards.

Analysis of the data shows that there was a positive impact of the intervention on the literacy skills of the prekindergarten students in the study. There were gains among all students, which implies a successful intervention plan. The developmental writing stages of many students also progressed over the intervention plan. Overall, there was an average improvement point of twenty-one percent when looking at data from before the intervention was employed and afterwards.

Implications

The researcher experienced improvement in overall percentage scores from the pre-test to the post-test evaluation of letter identification among the prekindergarten students assessed. The identified stakeholders in the research study were the students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Each of the stakeholders were impacted in their own unique way.

The implication for the students was that they learned and gained more letter knowledge, which is the foundation of overall literacy knowledge. Literacy is critical and is a subject that enables students to learn to read and write, two areas that are interconnected to each content area. When students are more knowledgeable and more confident about learning, they are more likely to be successful in the years to come. Additionally, the researcher believes that a longer amount of time is very likely to yield an even greater positive impact.

Parents were impacted by being able to see a measurable difference in their children’s learning, which in turn motivated parents to work with and provide support for their children at home. Parents were also more knowledgeable about what it was that their children actually knew as a result of this study and therefore were more equipped to help their children.

Teachers were impacted by the study in that the importance of daily writing has been made more evident. The improvement across the board of letter identification with the intervention plan employed in this study is significant enough to warrant an increased focus on daily writing in the prekindergarten classroom. Administrators were also impacted by the study due to the proof that daily writing does assist in the bettering of literacy levels as a whole. This ultimately leads to an increase in students’ overall performance, which results in better performing schools and school districts. The researcher concluded that the intervention was successful enough to continue.

Self-Critical Limitations

Although the daily writing intervention was successful and yielded an increase in literacy skills, there were a number of limitations that could have led to the study not being as successful as originally intended. The first limitation was the fact that the prekindergarten classroom studied was without a permanent teacher’s assistant for the entirety of the study. Prekindergarten classrooms are normally staffed with one teacher and at least one assistant. This scenario allows for lower teacher to student ratios, enabling teachers to provide students with more specialized instruction. Without this very important piece in the classroom, the researcher was limited in the reach that the intervention could have.

The second limitation was the fact that the researcher was out sick for a week during the intervention plan period. The researcher had a sinus infection that kept her out of school and resulted in various substitutes taking charge of the class. During this time the daily name writing intervention was not employed consistently. This resulted in the intervention plan possibly not being as impactful as it would have been had there not been any gaps in the intervention.

Lack of parental involvement was also a limitation. The intervention plan initially did not indicate the results that were shown at the end of the study. As a result, parents were unaware of the impact that daily writing can have and thus were disinterested. Many of the parents in the study worked outside of the home and had limited time to help their children with school work at home. Fortunately, once results of increased writing and literacy skills became more evident parents became more excited and eager to assist.

The classroom studied had several students with behavioral concerns. These concerns impeded the overall progress of the class at times and certainly provided a challenge to the full implementation of the intervention plan. At times the researcher was limited in the amount of time available to assist students with name writing and other literacy related activities.

The fifth limitation involved two students who often arrived at school late during the morning intervention plan name writing time. While these students were still allowed to write their names daily, however, they were not given the same amount of time to do so as their peers. The students arriving late also were writing their names while their classmates had already finished and moved on to the next activity, with resulted in distractions and a lessening of the impact of the intervention plan overall.

References

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