Sunday, November 8, 2015
Chapter 7: Writing, Spelling, and Literacy Development
In Chapter 7, the very first line states that children learn to write before they learn to read. This specific line stuck out to me, because I think that we don't give our students enough credit in the classroom. Children want to be given the opportunity to explore things through writing not just reading and comprehension. In a lot of instances, I think we just don't give children these opportunities because we are afraid they might fail, but how will they ever learn this skill if we don't allow them the chance to fail or exceed. When you start looking at older grades, you see reading and writing being clumped together, but on the other hand, many times you don't see writing at all in the younger grades. We just expect them to express what they know through drawing. I personally believe this could be detrimental to their learning experience. In the book it says that while children are reading and writing they are engaging in very similar activities, so why not link these two content subjects together and tie in whatever you possibly can. From the reading, I learned that children's early literacy experiences are embedded in real life experiences of thermally and community. Writing development is part of a child's literacy development. So, we should remember that even though drawing is the first step in a child's literacy development journey, writing should also be important in curriculum. From this chapter I have learned that the first stage consists of drawing, then writing, and lastly reading. So when we are planning what our students should be engaged in, we should keep this in mind. In your future classroom, would you encompass all three of these things. How would you go about doing this? Do you believe it's important for children to write at a young age?
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Cami,
ReplyDeleteI understand your point about the opportunities given to younger students relating to reading and writing. However, I must disagree with your idea of teaching writing to the younger elementary grades. I do not believe that the younger audience is ready to take on such a task. Children must gain an understanding of reading and comprehension before they can move on to writing. Drawing scribbles that later turn into pictures is the first step for an early learner. Young children communicate through their drawings because they are unfamiliar with how to write letters and form words. This type of communication of expression begins the long process of learning how to write. As a teacher, it is unfair to expect our students to easily understand how to communication through writing. Expecting them to draw a picture, however, is more reasonable and easier to for them to achieve success. When it comes time to begin teaching writing I find myself a little overwhelmed. Chapter 7 does a good job describing possible strategies to use in order to teach writing development.
During my latest visit at Apple Tree, I sat down and drew pictures with a group of children. I noticed that most of the children would use their imagination to create a story or scenario to explain what is going on in their picture. I would encourage the children to explore their imagination by asking questions about their drawing. I would not ask specific questions; instead, I would ask the children to describe what they drew. This strategy is discussed in Chapter 7 as it allows children to explore their creativity and decide if the pictures they drew represent symbols or a series of letters.