"What's wrong with my child? Why can't she spell 'what'?"
While I am no parent, I recall responding similarly in a field experience with a K-2 class.
"Why won't this student write real words? Why is she pretending to read? He just wrote his entire story backward!"
After reading Kate Foley Cusumano's article "Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing," my eyes were opened to so many of the questions I had been asking. As it turns out, these are simply stages in a child's growth as a writer. When students are first asked to write, it is natural for them to write with invented spelling. "Wus," "wavd," "vary," these are all examples that Cusumano provides for the writing of a 5-year-old girl who spoke English, was read to daily, and attended two years of part-time preschool prior to entering kindergarten. In fact, for a 5-year-old, this student had mastered many writing feats for such a young student. She had a beginning, middle, and end to her story, mastered writing from left to right, included spaces between her words, and spelled "a," "the," "it," and "for" with ease. When we consider the strengths that students bring with them to the classroom, we are better able to see them as beginning writers than as children who have a long way to go in their ability to write. I believe that informing parents and the community about the natural progression of writing is important. Students should not have to be punished for misspelling a word or incorrectly punctuating a sentence when they first dive into the writing world. If children become so worried about mechanics, they may become too fearful to even get their wonderful ideas onto the paper. Mechanics will come with time, practice, examples, mini-lessons, and incredible patience and support from parents and teachers.
General reading instruction for early readers is explored by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier in Catching Readers Before They Fall. I have come to love the idea of looking at students' abilities rather than the deficits in their learning. Johnson and Keier do the same as they strongly recommend "finding a starting point" for students and discovering how much reading and writing they bring with them to class. No matter where students are at, the authors provide an excellent reminder: "Blaming previous teachers or the child's home situation serves no purpose, so let those thoughts go." I imagine it must be so tempting at times when a student is significantly behind curriculum standards, but the goal as a teacher is then to provide for that child in the classroom what has been previously been neglected in his or her literacy skills. If a student missed out in the previous year, he or she should not miss out again in our own class. Being behind, or even right on target, should not mean that letter and word identification activities are the primary source of teaching students to read. All that tells students is that you get to pass if you get the right answer. It says nothing about comprehension or enjoyment of reading, which I believe are what reading is truly about.
When students are just beginning to read and write, they should be filled with the joy and excitement of learning to do both as well as the thrill of learning from reading and expressing themselves through writing. As teachers, we should meet our students where they are at and help them to see the great rewards of dedication and improvement in both areas. Most of all, we need to help show our students that reading and writing are truly wonderful things to love.
Teaching tips (as promised):
-Use students' names in mini-lessons, books, everywhere, to help excite them and provide them with a frequently recognizable word.
-Help students learn to self-monitor their reading early on, especially to help with confidence in their reading ability.
-Reinforce students' positive reading and writing behaviors rather than focusing on their mistakes.
Theresa, I too, love the idea of looking at students' abilities rather than the deficits in their learning. However, I am reminded on a daily basis how it takes practice. It is hard to look at misspelled words and not jump at the chance to correct them immediately. I work with preschoolers and I have learned that if they come running up to me with an assortment of words that they have taken time and effort to write and I meet this effort with, "this is wonderful!" instead of "you misspelled this word" or "what does this say? I can't read it" they continue to come show me their work and take great pride. Our reactions effect children at a level that it hard to fathom. It is in those moments that it is so important to highlight their abilities.
ReplyDeleteT, Absolutely right! Don't focus on blaming, focus on strengths and help propel your students forward! Enjoyment of a discipline, when shared, may foster that same enjoyment by another.
ReplyDeleteT, I still remember sitting in class with you talking about how children sometimes write backwards. Then, I spent the rest of class trying to write every single letter of every word in my sentences backwards. :) I thought it was so odd and I had a hard time understanding how a child could do that! It was even more strange to me when you mentioned it could just be a phase and that it shouldn't necessarily be "corrected." After reading our articles and your post, I now realize how important it is to focus on student's positive reading and writing behaviors. It is quite amazing what children can do at such a young age and how much we can learn from them if we actually take the time to pay attention to what they are saying through their writing.
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