February 13th Extra Credit 401

Bissex: Patterns of Development

This article talks about patterns saw through the development of a student's writing. The patterns are processes of differentiation and decentration. Differentiation is essentially something that is big is taken and broken down into smaller parts. "Decentration is Piaget's term for this movement outward from the young child's egocentric view of the world. Decentration involves being able to take another person's point of new, which increases about age seven" states Bissex (page 198). The article talks about Paul and when he started writing, he used letters in form like to get a message across. These letters didn't represent any words or sounds. Paul went through a lot of obstacles and when he was five years old, he was absorbed in naming, naming the world around him in parts. He expressed his interest in different ways like informational reading. All in all, differentiation and decentration go together, hand in hand.

Bissex: Watching Young Writers

When children say their first words, parents are thrilled. It is known that without making constant corrections, kids will become accurate in the words that they use that may be different when they first start saying them. For example, "wawa" which we can also infers that it means water. The generating principle states, "that letters recur in variable patterns--so that with knowledge of only a few letter shapes a child can produce strings of print that resemble conventional writing."(page 103) Children learn so much about print even before they enter first grade. As teachers, their job is to find out what the children already know so that they can plan instruction around that. Children use things around them to help them process their spelling system. Children learn about writing and how text is read from left to right as well. Children learn about writing in more ways than one. As an end note, teachers teach what by knowing what the children know and what they are able to grow on.

Dyson: Pine Cone Wars

Writing can be a lot of hard work for the young children. Teachers, have to adapt to their students and accommodate them to have a productive play time that connects with school and their own cultures. Dyson states, "Play is a child's work, as the saying goes; that is, it is a prime mode through which children explore, organize, and stretch their understandings about the world." (page 306) When children play and when children work, they have a relationship. With play being an important part of a child's life, teachers tend not to be the center of attention in the school life. As the article talks about the pine cone wars, they also connect it with writing time wars. This talks about the anticipation of what was going to happen or what the child was going to do. When the children plan and enact, it demonstrates, "...the centrality of imagination and play to unofficial worlds." To end, the article stated that unofficial and official expectations are brought into play. This lets the children explore with each other in different settings.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVRYSC8YyYA I feel like differentiation needs to be explained more and I feel like this youtube video does a good job at explaining it and giving tips about it.




Veronica, Lauren, and Brittany