Scribble-Writing: The example of scribble-writing was very simple. This is where my son is currently performing with his writing skills. The child might be trying to draw the ground and three animals or people. Before I would assume what it is, I would ask “tell me about it” or something similar to allow the child to produce spoken language about their writing. The chapter in the book, “learning to write” talks about taking the early attempts seriously to encourage their writing development. Their reading comprehension is emerging. They probably cannot read on their own but are able to make sense of stories and retell information from stories that are read to them.

Picture-Writing: The example of picture writing was interesting to me. The teacher wrote what the child had expressed about the picture which was “I played with my race car”. The picture had some shapes that resembled shapes that we use in our written language. When I have worked with children who are writing in this stage, they have often pointed to their nonsense letters and followed along while explaining the picture. To them, it is writing. I would encourage them by allowing them to explain their picture and use positive reinforcement for all attempts. They could hang it on the wall or put it in an envelope to bring home to their parents. Again, I would take their attempts seriously and make sure they knew that. Their reading comprehension is at a beginning level. They are able to answer simple literal questions regarding text that is read to them. They are probably able to identify some sight words, and the letters of the alphabet.

Random-Letter: I couldn’t see the picture that well, but it looks like a child that is part of a classroom and is pointing to the board. There are random letters at the bottom. This child is probably age 5, just entering kindergarten. Their comprehension should be retelling simple stories, recognizing letters and letter-sound matches, begin to recognize some written words with spoken words. They might be able to write stories with some readable parts because they are learning to write words. You could encourage writing words for the child and make sure they are reading left to write when they are “reading” their stories back to you.

Invented Spelling: This is probably done by a 6 year old or a