Expressive Resources in Fifth Graders’ Construction of Texts

Despite high performance in reading assessment tests such as PISA and PIRLS, Finnish schoolchildren are constantly reported to struggle with writing literacy (Lappalainen 2007; 2011). Yet, they write more than ever – and enjoy it in social media where they play with expressive resources (e.g. Leppänen 2009). Obviously, there is a mismatch between school literacies and spontaneous literacies. Do these literacies grow in different trees, or are they branches of the same tree?

In this paper I will approach middle school writing literacy from the perspective of competences instead of deficiencies. The data consist of a variety of writing assignments during an academic year in three classes of fifth graders. The altogether ten different assignments represent different goals in expression and genre derived from the National Core Curriculum. These include 260 narrative, informational and argumentative texts. Given the pedagogical freedom inscribed in the NCC, the class teachers do not subscribe to a fixed writing pedagogy but make use of mixed methods.

My analysis of these data focuses on competencies identified in the student texts. By means of genre analysis and content analysis, I will illustrate fifth graders’ interpretations of salient features in the variety of genres covered by the assignments. The results show that the students have access to a wide variety of expressive resources. Their sense of genres is developing. Simultaneously, many of them ignore certain academic conventions of written language. Towards the end of my presentation I will discuss the findings in the context of future school literacies. Should the children adapt to the tradition of education, or do they develop strengths that could be a breeding ground for new writing pedagogies based on competencies.