An investigation of children's non-narrative writing in a year 6/7 classroom

Nature and purpose of the study This study investigated the broad question, "What affects children's nonnarrative writing in the classroom?" The research perspective and design employed was naturalistic and participatory. It sought an integrated view of children's non-narrative writing performance by examining the following questions, in a natural classroom setting. 1. How, if at all, do students distinguish between different types of writing? By what criteria do they make their distinctions and why? 2. What preferences, if any, do students have for particular types of writing? Why do they have such preferences? 3. What do students believe affects their production of non-narrative writing in the classroom? 4. How do students go about non-narrative writing? What writing strategies do they apply? 5. What instructional strategies influence students' non-narrative writing performance (process and product)?