Start em young

“Context in Children’s Writing” by Sally Hudson discusses a study that was done in which children discussed the context of their own work.  The children were asked to look at writing they had done at school and at home and judge it on five criteria: ownership, setting, audience, purpose, and genre.  In the study children’s desire to write varied based on if it was something they chose to do or if they were required to do it. Asking children to think critically about their work is a valuable skill that should be tough at a younger age. In addition students can learn more about grammar punctuation and organization by editing their own papers, as opposed to worksheets and tests. Asking children to start thinking about the public nature of writing from a young age will help them develop skills in audience recognition.  While this was just a simple study done on elementary students I can see the benefits of this research in the classroom. If more children we asked to critically think about their work from a young age they would be better prepared for higher education.