This case study focuses on six 8-9 year old children from one primary school classroom in southern England. It explores the children’s perspectives on writing, and addresses the gap in existing research around written feedback to support writing. Much of the research in this area has been carried out with students in secondary, further, and higher education, and often concentrates on what teachers do rather than how children respond. The evidence is particularly limited on how primary school children respond to their teachers’ comments. The teacher gave separate written feedback, firstly on the compositional aspects (content and ideas) and then on transcriptional elements (technical skills) of the children’s writing over two four-week phases. They then returned to their usual style of feedback for a final four-week phase. Individual interviews with three of the children, in which their writing books acted as a focus, explored how they used their teacher’s comments on different elements of writing. A greater understanding of children’s perspectives and the writing environment in which they were working was provided through group interviews with all six children. Findings show that the children enjoyed writing their own stories and found topics set in school less interesting. They sometimes felt constrained by the school writing process. However, they felt that writing was important, requiring hard work and persistence. The children highlighted the importance of their relationship with their teacher, which appeared to have a direct influence on their writing confidence. There was a consensus that reminders and corrections for spelling and punctuation were the most helpful types of written feedback. Although children rarely edited their work in response to these comments, there is some evidence that repeated reminders supported children in consolidating their secretarial and organisational skills. When encouraged to use specific sentence constructions, children attempted to include these in their writing, whilst prompts to include more detail led to children adding in extra material. Despite reporting that feedback is more helpful for transcriptional skills, children appeared to be better motivated to develop their ideas. These insights will help teachers to consider how written feedback might be better tailored, and the benefits of paying greater attention to children’s own ideas.
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/769w-rt02
Falkner, Rachael Ann
Supervisors: Briggs, Mary; Percival, James; Wright, Susannah
School of Education, Humanities and Languages
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