New Expectations

Many people today are familiar with how to help children become better readers but fewer people are aware of how to help children become successful writers. In the Article, Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Wringing Cusumano recommends that instead of focusing on the conventions of a child’s writing that we focus on the message and the content of the story that the child is writing about. When children are first learning to write it is suggested that they first draw a picture, and then write their story. When this happens the picture often acts an outline or prewriting technique for the child to think about and arrange their story.

When trying to help a student with their writing it is suggested that we focus on the meaning of the story and the basic elements. These elements include: does the story have a beginning, middle, and end, is the writing from left to right, did they leave spaces in between words, have they used any punctuation or capitalization? Looking at all of the positive things that they child has done is important. After you have found some items that the child needs to work on you can read books or examine other writing pieces and point out these elements instead of critiquing the child’s work. When working with parent and showing them how they can help support their own child’s writing it is best to begin by using a different child’s work. This will help remove any emotional connections and they will not feel like they need to defend their child’s writing.

In another topic of discussion this week is teaching children to read. We are focusing on phonemic awareness in young children in kindergarten and first grade. First I believe we should define phonics. Phonics refers to the knowledge of letter-sound correspondence, which readers use to visually examine letters or combinations in words and produce a sound that corresponds to the visual stimulus. When trying to make children notice individual sounds in words it is best done by playing songs, rhymes, and pointing out sounds throughout the day. It is extremely important for children to develop phonemic awareness as it has been shown that it is correlated with reading and spelling achievement of students through grade 6. Students should begin by examining words that they know and are familiar with. These can be in songs, poems, or books. Children can begin examining rhyming words or words with the same letters at the end.