WEAVER CH 4

Anna Papst

Sean Agriss

English 408

07. 17. 2013

CH. 4 REFLECTION ON WEAVER

            This chapter opened my eyes to the world of early learners. There are so many words that new learners know to say and then, with their preconceived notions, write it the way that they say it. They do not have the knowledge yet to know why something that is said is not written the same way. When they hear adults talking, they begin to say the same words. This happens without the knowledge of what the words actually mean, because they do not have the thought process to understand yet what the words mean. When they first go and write down a word, they have learned to sound out a word a certain way and then write it like they are sounding it out.

            As teachers, we need to be sensitive to the learning of words that our students have already gone through. When going to write words and sentences, we need to be praising them for the progress that they have conquered. When starting to write, they should have the freedom to write down what they know and then the teacher should come along as a guide, not a judge against their work. In this way, the teacher helps them understand what they have done wrong, with the why behind it. The corrections are for teaching purposes and not meant to harbor their process in learning. This is going to be quite difficult, because as a teacher, we have already gone through this process many times. We need to remember that they do not have the learning that we do and we are there to help them become mature writers, and that starts from the beginning.

            Every error that students make is an opportunity to teach them why they made the mistake and how they can go about correcting it. They will make several errors from time to time. The purpose of learning how to teach them to write, should not come from a harsh standpoint, because we don’t want to turn them off of learning how to write, by being critical. In learning, they are embarking on this whole new way of thinking and learning how to express it through their writing. We don’t want to judge critically and turn them off of the process all together. When students are young, they are so impressionable and will remember judgmental comments that we make about their writing. The writing is their own ideas, and as teachers, we need to simply direct them in the right direction. This does not take the form of harshly marking all the errors in a paper and then asking them to correct them because they did something wrong, but instead going through and telling them how and why the errors are there. Every error has a reason behind it, we need to go through, and then find a way to instruct them in the right manner how they can improve what they are writing.

            This chapter reminded me so much of having kids some day of my own. How am I effectively going to help them begin to read? It is going to be important to sit back and observe them in beginning to understand what the letters represent and how they are going to then formulate them into words and sentences. Another interesting point was about children forgetting what they have learned when that’s applied to new concepts that they are learning. There is just so much that a child can learn at once. One important learning tip will be to help them add on to what they have already learned. Kind of like in my grammar class, you start with one concept and then build onto that, while retaining the information that you have already memorized and know how to use. Learning how to read and write is one of the most important skills that one can learn. As teachers, we need to come along side, coach and redirect their habits to make sure that they are getting the concepts that we are teaching. We need to correct errors as soon as we see them occurring, so they don’t turn into bad habits that the students are not able to break. Learning how to read and write letter, words and sentences correctly, will allow students to write essays with proper language. They will never stop learning, but we need to find a way to teach them that learning English is for a specific purpose and is so rewarding if they can learn and retain it.