Writing Instruction I Recieved As a Child

 

I loved to write from the very beginning. In elementary school, I loved to write stories and I liked to “play” with my handwriting, changing my penmanship from fancy or serious, bubble letters to cursive. In third grade, I remember a writer’s workshop time that I just could not get enough of. My teacher would let us sit under the desks (COOL!) and use clip boards (EVEN COOLER!).  We conferenced with the teacher and we conferenced with our peers, a task we took very seriously.  Two of my most memorable stories that emerged from this year were “The Great Ravioli” which told of a cheese ravioli who came to life and joined the circus, and “Eggbert: The True story of an Egg Shaped Kickball.” The second one is pretty self-explanatory. I suppose that inanimate objects coming to life was my signature as a third grade author.

The more I think about my experience, the more I realize that most of my memories are of me writing and drawing and creating, not of my teacher teaching me to do those things. This makes me think that my teachers took more of a “progressive” approach to teaching me to write, putting me “at the center of the educational process” (Gibbons, 2002). This “progressive” approach was very active and I feel that my teachers consciously built upon my prior experiences and knowledge by staging appropriate learning experiences that would encourage progress for me as a writer.

 

 

References:

 

Gibbons, Pauline (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing.