Studying Writing

Dyson, A. H. (2008, March). The pine cone wars: Studying writing in a community of children. Language Arts (85)4, pp. 305-315.

​This article discusses how children navigate written literacy practices within a time where approaches to instruction are becoming focused on a specific type of evaluation. The approach observed is how children have a sense of play when writing, transferring the idea of a playground game into their written worlds. Through the study, the author follows three children to gain access to the children’s world in the classroom. She theorizes that the play of children informs the curriculum. The textual representations, both in written text and in pictures, display their understandings of and connections to both the world outside them and print conventions not explicitly taught. Children are agents—they act using their own interpretations of the world and what can happen in it.


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