The Map and the Journey: My Reflection on Writing Theories and Development

 

Lately, I’ve been rethinking everything I thought I knew about teaching writing. At first, my focus was on the visible stages of children’s writing development the scribbles that actually carry meaning, the bold invented spellings, and the moment when a child suddenly “cracks the code” of letters and sounds. I used to see these stages as the whole journey. But recently from listening to discussions in class, I’ve started exploring the theories that describe the actual writing process, and it has completely shifted my perspective.

It feels like the difference between looking at a map and actually walking alongside a child on the path.

The Linear Mode: the one with neat stages like Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Publishing was the model that first made sense to me. It’s structured, predictable, and honestly, kind of comforting. But when I placed it next to the developmental stages of writing, I realized its limits. A young child in the emergent stage, who’s proudly writing something like “I LIK MI DG”, isn’t separating drafting from revising they’re pouring every ounce of energy into just getting those letters onto the page. To force them into a rigid step-by-step process at that moment would squash the experimentation that helps them grow.

That’s why the Cognitive Process Model from Flower and Hayes struck such a chord with me. Unlike the neat, linear steps, it feels more like a description of what’s actually happening in a child’s mind. Writing isn’t a straight road, it’s a messy, overlapping, recursive process. When I watch a child pause mid-sentence to figure out how to spell “because” I can see them juggling everything at once: thinking about what comes next, sounding out the word, and checking if it looks right. That messy struggle isn’t failure; it’s the real work of writing.

So, what does this mean for me as a teacher?

I don’t see the Linear Model as something I need to enforce anymore. Instead, I see it as a goal. For fluent writers, it’s a useful roadmap. For beginners, I might just take one part of it like talking through a story before writing it down.

The Cognitive Process Model gave me a new lens of empathy. When a child looks stuck, I now ask myself: Are they struggling with ideas (Planning)? With spelling (Translating)? With checking their work (Reviewing)? Knowing this helps me give the right kind of support instead of just saying, “Keep trying.”

More than anything, I’m reminded that writing is not just one skill it’s a symphony of thinking, remembering, moving, and creating. Each child is on their own path, and my job is to honor where they are while giving them the tools to take their next step.

For me, the developmental stages show me the child in action, while the theories give me the language to understand what’s happening underneath. My goal is to stand at the intersection of both to know the map, but still walk the journey with the child, side by side.

Fellow teachers, how do you balance process models with the reality of where your students are developmentally? I’d love to hear your strategies in the comments.