Children's Plans for Writing: Characteristics and Impact on Writing Performance

Planning plays an important role in the production of written texts. Little is known about why children plan and the plans they create when they are not explicitly instructed. This study explores the plans that elementary school children in Years 1, 3, and 5 create before writing a text. We compared performance of children educated in Catalan and in English (the United Kingdom) and examined whether the plans were related to their language and literacy skills. Children of all ages produced plans before writing either by producing a draft or an organizer. The types of plan changed with age and were influenced by the educational context. Plans were not associated with either the text length or the text quality. Nor were language, literacy, and transcription skills associated with the plans. School instruction is important for producing plans but, at this stage, children's self-generated plans do not impact on the texts produced.