Writing

This chapter touched on some things that I had never considered before and really got me thinking. The first of which was the importance of drawing and connecting the drawings to words. Listening and showing interest in what a child has to say about their drawings can really show a depth of thinking that someone might not see without asking. I have seen in my observations of kindergarten classes where the teachers will have the student draw a picture about a topic and under it have the students write about their picture. At the beginning of the year most of the pictures were pretty elaborate while the writing made little to no sense to me. However, when I asked what they drew and what they wrote about their drawings the students had a lot to say. I think that this is true for most young children, has anyone else witnessed this?

The second thing that I have heard over and over again but have never given much thought to until now was the idea of incorporating the social aspect of writing. Having the students communicate through writing. As adults who text, send emails, and some even write letters social writing is a large part of our lives. Yet, when I think back to my school experience I can not think of one point where I wrote a letter and actually sent it to someone. My writing experiences were never authentic I never received responses to imitate like this chapter suggests. Does anyone remember actually having an authentic writing experience where they got to communicate with someone? Often times I think that we, as teachers, get too caught up in the teaching of literacy concepts and forget that the reason students are learning these concepts is to communicate meaning to another person. When I think of a literate person I think of someone who knows how to read. This chapter has changed my view on what literacy is. The book says that literacy encompasses reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing.

This chapter provides some very good information on strategies that we can use with students at many different stages. I did not realize how much can be done to promote writing from birth to two. Being positive and supportive of the many different types of marks and sounds that a child makes is very important to their development. Having parents that read and write often or even taking the time to model reading and writing for children who are still very young has profound impacts. This surprised me. I see my two year old niece doing many of the things mentioned in this section of the chapter but I never really thought about how much development was actually going on. After reading this I plan on taking more interest in how she holds books, makes marks on paper, and what she says about her drawings and marks. The examples provided by this chapter of actual children's writing and drawing really helped me to understand and see the different stages. Did the amount of literacy development that takes place from birth to two surprise anyone else?