At this early stage of writing development, it is accepted that a student’s oral language ability will exceed their writing ability. It is therefore expected that a student’s writing may be more limited than what they produce orally. First Writing Activities incorporates opportunities for students to hear and experience various written forms followed by oral rehearsal before commencing the written task. Pictorial and/or visual support has also been incorporated to support each of the text structures included in the resource.
This program is designed to work alongside an oral language program incorporating news-telling and story-telling activities. Programs such as, PLD’s Developing News Telling and Narrative Skills and Picture Book Retelling provide support for developing a strong oral language program. Over time editing skills can be introduced and encouraged for students operating at the early phase of writing development or above. Remember that to learn to write, students need to practice writing, so let them write!

For the junior primary years.

• Designed by speech pathologists for students in the junior primary.
• A large range of writing genres are designed to move students from ‘role-play’ writing into early phonetic writing and finally into writing with emerging conventional spelling.
• Short pictorially supported writing tasks that involve an adult providing an oral model, along with opportunities for students to orally rehearse the sentence(s).
• Three levels of templates are designed to cater for the range evident in junior primary classes (i.e. the delayed, age appropriate and advanced students).
• Literacy, language and motor assessment points at the base of each template.

This publication is mentioned within the ‘Whole School Literacy Strategy’ booklet on pages 11 and 13.