Children Learning Literate Practices in Spriting

Abstract

The exploratory empirical work presented here suggests that children engage in conceptual processes through a new activity called spriting (Shankar 2005, 2006) previously thought of as late-emerging and dependent on writing. Spriting is a new technologically- supported composition process that does not require intermediate mediation with a written form. The output of spriting is a talkument. In this paper, results are presented from a design research study of the impact of spriting on the literacy development of children, ages 5-10, at two different schools. In particular, composite composing and editing actions in spriting presage a reversal of some trends seen in written composition, such as older children producing longer compositions. Furthermore, this paper describes early observations of children appearing to make certain literate habits, such as pausing to plan, explicit in spriting in ways they had not learned to do yet in writing. Results suggest that spriting could offer an alternative way to explore extended forms of literacy and habits of mind before a child is able to write.