See also Planning instruction; The reflective practitioner: action research as a way to deal with the isolation of teaching.
When Ms Scanton taught second grade, she kept a journal about her experiences. Sometimes she simply recorded interesting facts or information individuals, but other times she commented and reflected on individuals at more length. Here are three of her journal entries.
Document 1: Ms Scanton's observation of Ashley's writing
October 4: Ashley procrastinated a lot again today during journal-writing time stared at the ceiling, at the kids near her, etc. etc. I reminded everyone that they were supposed to write about this week at school,_ but it didn't seem to sink in with Ashley. After sitting a long time, she drew a picture of her family Mom, Dad, cat.
I know she especially loves her cat, but I also thought she should follow directions more closely. I ask her, “Is that all you've done?_ She frowns. I smile a sincere one.
“It's hard," she says cautiously referring to the writing itself.
“But that's why it's important to work at it to actually write," say I. A pause. Then, “How do you spell 'Mom'?" she asks.
I tell her to sound it out; ask what is the first sound, etc. /m/…/ah/…/m/… She says these sounds slowly, maybe to please me.
"/m/," she repeats, and then write down one letter: M. I have to leave to check on others. From a distance I see her write down K, then erase and switch it to C. Was she sounding out “cat”?
Document 2: Later that year: Ms Scanton's log of Ashley's misspellings
Ashley, November 21: Ashley is still misspelling so many words in her writing that I'm getting exasperated, to put it nicely. Here's a list of her misspellings from the past two weeks mostly from her journal:
techrs (teachers)
milmen (mailmen)
peliec (police)
er pepel (fire people)
pepl (people)
librein (librarian)
lectrisudie (electricity)
doctrs (doctors)
nrsis (nurses)
loyors (lawyers)
* What to do for her? *
Document #3: Still later: Ms Scanton journal reflections
April 21: Just finished a cool book, GNYS AT WRK,by Glenda Bissex, that made me think about Ashley and her misspellings. The author described her son's invented spellings and how they became more plentiful and complicated at first, but eventually became more “adultlike” or conventional. Fascinating! The mom was in no hurry to cure her child of his spelling problems, but he seemed to outgrow them on his own. The chief point seemed to be that invented spellings may be good because they show active efforts by the child to figure out the rules of spelling.
So maybe Ashley will outgrow her misspellings too? I do note that her misspellings ”her inventions” have become more complicated across the year. Here's from her journal last week:
TDA W WT T JM NAD W PLY TWLIT TAG
With a little help from Ashley, I figured this out as today we went to gym and we played toilet tag."
Here's from the week before:
TIZ WK W MAD PTY MAX.
Translation: this week we made party masks."
Quite a difference from the start of the year, when she would only write down a couple of letters during journal-writing time! Maybe I need to support her efforts more and worry about them less. But how to do that and still make sure she really is learning how to spell?
P.S. If you are interested, the book about invented spellings that Ms Scanton mentioned in Document #3 is listed in the bibliography.
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