emergent literacy – Jane Farrall Consulting

Flip Keyboard Updates

Feb 14, 20265 Comments

In November 2025 I was very excited to share a new emergent writing tool – https://flipkeyboard.com/. It has been great to hear from those of you who are using it – and to get lots of requests for changes and additions. As a result, there are now a number of changes to the original version.

Flip Charts – An important Emergent Writing Tool

Oct 30, 20224 Comments

A long time ago, I learned about flip charts for emergent writers, thanks to Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver. Writing flip charts were first developed by Gretchen Hanser and staff at the Centre for Literacy and Disability Studies Flip charts as a writing tool appealed to me for a lot of reasons. Firstly, because I

Hello Book – in Dutch and Spanish

Apr 26, 2020

A few weeks ago I shared a week of emergent literacy planning on the topic of greetings, using a book I wrote called “Hello”. As I’ve mentioned before, I had a request from the fabulous Violeta for a PowerPoint version that she could translate into Dutch. Not only has she translated it but she has

Using the Developmental Writing Scale for Writing Assessment

Jan 7, 20195 Comments

In my last writing blog post, I talked about using writing data walls to keep track of whole school writing progress – and, of course, each and every individual student’s progress as part of this. The Developmental Writing Scale (Sturm et al 2012) is a key part of this. This scale is so useful as

Writing instruction and Data Walls: Focusing on ALL students at The Grove

Aug 23, 20186 Comments

In the third of my series of blog posts about writing, and working on helping all students to become better writers, I want to move away from individual writing development to a wider view of writing by talking about the benefits of a writing data wall. Over the last few years I’ve become a huge

Emergent Writing: Moving onto Form

Aug 19, 2018

It’s been a big time lapse (sorry!) – but this is the second of a series of blog posts about writing – and about assisting all students to become stronger writers. So moving on from the very beginnings of writing, let’s move to talk about the next stage. Early Emergent Writing: Moving onto Form In

Emergent Writing: Focus on Function

Apr 22, 20188 Comments

This is the first of a series of blog posts about writing – and about assisting all students to become stronger writers. Let’s start by talking about the very beginnings of writing. Early Emergent Writing: Focus on Function Mathilda is 17 months old. She loves drawing – and her parents are pretty happy when she

Comprehensive Literacy Instruction: Meeting the Instructional Needs of ALL Students in our Classrooms

Nov 21, 20152 Comments

Many of the schools that I work with have been consistently implementing good, comprehensive literacy instruction for some time – and as a result there are a greater number of conventional readers and writers in our schools. This has led to an increased need for differentiation in our classrooms, and for more teachers to provide