Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Creating a Path I


Our four week course is drawing to a close and we have been encouraged to reflect on each of our child writers and to look into the future as to how we will continue to work with them. These are my thoughts today on my little girl:

My daughter is a natural story-teller. She talks and talks and talks. She loves to tell stories and she loves to listen to stories. She usually asks for CDs from the library to listen to and is usually very engaged in our chapter books. Her reading skills are not yet strong enough for her to be able to enjoy the kinds of stories in books that she likes to listen to. Her writing skills are increasing daily. She enjoys copywriting and is happy to edit her work.
I would like to support her in developing her concrete skills (spelling, handwriting, punctuation) so that she can comfortably write the stories in her head. Also, she needs to learn to type so that she can edit her work on the computer and publish it more easily. I would also like to help her begin to develop more complex or deeper ideas.
I loved doing both the alternate sentences and the dialogue with her. We both had fun and it felt very connecting. She commented on my spelling which showed me that she was reading what I was writing as well as listening to it, and noticing how I wrote. By being "in the middle of her writing" with her I can encourage her to develop her thoughts, I can draw out more of her ideas and gently challenge her.
I am committed to returning to copy-writing and will approach the editing of it more systematically, encouraging her to hunt out her own spelling mistakes and gradually to look for punctuation errors (5p a mistake found certainly increased motivation!). I will also gently and lightly edit her free-writes: a quick once over for tricky spellings and tidying up the punctuation.
I will move on to the idea of introducing words to her sentences, words such as “therefore” or “for example” or “but” to help her extend her ideas. I would like to move on to her writing three or four sentences and then me adding one to encourage more writing from her while keeping it focussed.

I am excited about next half-term's writing!

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