Identity texts and relationship to reading and writing in a 6th grade primary school class

Abstract

Introduction. In a context of identity-based writing workshops, set in a 6th-grade primary school class (students were 12 years old at the time of the experiment) in Quebec City (Province of Quebec, Canada), the purpose of our research was to explore the extent to which the relationship to writing and reading, on one hand, and the writing skills, on the other hand, were going to evolve and in what way (positive, negative, no evolution). The type of texts proposed to the students are called “identity-texts”, that is to say autobiographical texts. Students were invited to write about their own life experience. Those contexts of writing production are supposed to provide a significant context to the activity of writing and therefore to play a positive role in the relationship to writing (Cummins, Early 2011). It is what we intended to explore in our research.

Materials and Methods. Semi-directed interviews were conducted with 10 pupils of the class, before and after the implementation of the workshops, during a period of four months, in a linguistically heterogeneous sixth-grade primary: French-speaking thank ystudents and non-French-speaking students. The interviews were analyzed in order to highlight the evolution of the relationship to reading and writing.

Results. Our results indicate that the relationship to reading and writing has largely evolved favorably and that the meaningful context has allowed the evolution of the students’ writing and reading skills.

Conclusions. Therefore, we consider that writing identity texts should be promoted as they give the opportunity to pupils to develop not only their writing skills but also their taste and talent for writing, in a very significant manner.