Inventive Learning

Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Writing, by Kate Cusumano, was a great read. I really found some useful information on every page of the article. By showing a sample of a student’s writing and going through how she examined it in steps, I was able to understand and learn from reading the article. The author mentions the importance of having parents and community members, and teachers on the same page when it comes to writing in the lower primary grades. I have always thought that correcting young writers and forcing them to re-write drafts of their writing was detrimental to learning. I did not realize that it would stunt growth. She mentions that it is common for parents to worry and show distress when their child does not spell words correctly, or invents their own spelling of words. One parent, she explained, thought that her student was having mini seizures. I have learned that it is my job as a future educator to educate parents and community members about the importance of never forcing the child to spell everything perfectly, and to always encourage and support the child at that the level developmentally they are at. I like her description of what writing at a young age really is, that writing is a system of symbols that shows meaning. If a child tests out and experiments with the rules of writing they are more likely to make meaningful connections with mistakes and inventions of spelling. The child who drew the American flag picture used the picture to present a part of the story, and I think it is so important to recognize that drawings are a type of writing. Children in kindergarten and in first grade use this as a way of symbolizing meaning. This is something that not many people think about when looking at writing samples.

As a future teacher this issue is something I need to consider. This article provided a nice list of things to do when having conferences and I really like the idea of show-casing previous students’ writing samples as a means of calming parent’s concerns. Families should know that every child is different and making them write or constantly expecting perfection will only make the child dislike writing and feel like they are never good enough. Reading to children, keeping journals, or even making personal word dictionaries, like mentioned in the article, are all great ways to incorporate writing into daily routine. This type of writing is meaningful and natural, unlike worksheets where children are expected to write and re-write sentences. Another point in the article I found helpful was thinking about a child’s picture as a plan for their writing. Children will use what they remember from visual cues and spell words the way they may look, sound, or in some cases use syllables to help decide how long the word might be. This was demonstrated by the girl who wrote “American” as “A Mar CNi” she drew the picture of the flag and then labeled it by sounding out the letters and using understanding of syllables. One of the more interesting parts of this word is the fact that she put an “I” at the end of the word. I would never have thought that the space on the page would have much to do with that, but what the author explains makes sense. After reading this article I realized there was a lot to learn from looking at such a small sample. By analyzing things like the placement of letters, the spaces in between them, and separation of sounds a teacher can work to improve the writing and help ease parent’s worries so that there can be a collaboration of parents and teachers to encourage beneficial writing experiences.