Several Sundays ago, I spent the day babysitting for two of my nephews and one of my nieces. We had a lazy Sunday filled with reading, snacking, and board games. Towards the afternoon, my sister called an asked me to help Eily with her homework. Eily is five years old and in kindergarten. For her homework, she had to find four topics that she could write stories about. Not only did she have to be knowledgeable about these four things, but they had to be things that she was interested in. Her list included gymnastics, American Girl dolls, kittens, and nail polish. Helping Eily decide what she knew a lot about wasn't the hard part. The tricky part came when I had to help her spell the words and she had to write them on the paper. Eily had to write only seven words. This task that would take me seconds to complete, took Eily and I twenty frustrating minutes.
The assignment appeared to be easy. I spell the words and Eily writes them down. She was ready and armed with her glittery pink pencil. I didn't just want to give her the letters, I wanted to see if she could spell them herself. The first word was gymnastics. I asked Eily what does gymnastics start with. She said a j and wrote it on the paper. I told her it started with a g. She laughed and explained that sometimes she forgets. Eily erased and started again. To make things simpler, I just gave her the letters. But then Eily ran out of room on each line. She wrote letters backwards, left huge spaces between letters, left little or no space between wards, and wrote capital letters in the middle of words. I tried to explain why we leave space between words and how small spaces between letters gives us more room to write, but it was lost on her. After the twenty minutes were gone and I was looking at her sheet, I was struck with fear. Is this normal? Will Eily ever learn to write well?
I am only Eily's aunt, so I can only imagine the fears that parents must have in regards to their children learning to read and write. Luckily for me, one of my graduate professors assigned a reading that gave me some reassurance. In her article, Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing, Kate Foley Cusumano offers insights into developing children into writers. Cusumano provides reassurance that everything at this stage of writing is normal. She illustrates by giving examples of common and normal errors children often make when learning to write, such as writing letters backwards, switching between capitals and lower case, inventive spelling, writing largely, etc. Along with the reassurances, Cusumano offers ways family and community members can support and engage children in writing. But most importantly, Cusumano reminds us that writing and reading is hard work. Children are rapidly learning how to write, so mistakes are inevitable. The best way to support is to "provide praise and encouragement for the ideas without criticizing the errors in conventions." In other words, put their work in perspective to the skills they have acquired so far. Praise them for their hard work and put the red pen down.
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| Eily Kate |
I am only Eily's aunt, so I can only imagine the fears that parents must have in regards to their children learning to read and write. Luckily for me, one of my graduate professors assigned a reading that gave me some reassurance. In her article, Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing, Kate Foley Cusumano offers insights into developing children into writers. Cusumano provides reassurance that everything at this stage of writing is normal. She illustrates by giving examples of common and normal errors children often make when learning to write, such as writing letters backwards, switching between capitals and lower case, inventive spelling, writing largely, etc. Along with the reassurances, Cusumano offers ways family and community members can support and engage children in writing. But most importantly, Cusumano reminds us that writing and reading is hard work. Children are rapidly learning how to write, so mistakes are inevitable. The best way to support is to "provide praise and encouragement for the ideas without criticizing the errors in conventions." In other words, put their work in perspective to the skills they have acquired so far. Praise them for their hard work and put the red pen down.
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