The first-grader in my life came home from school with this amazing piece of writing the other day.
Some background information (these details come from the first-grader):
*It's a letter to a friend.
*It's written in 'curse'.
*The first-grader wrote it because he just moved from Pennsylvania to NH and he misses the friend.
*The first-grader also wrote it because the friend is about to have a baby sister, and the first-grader, an experienced big brother, had a lot to say about that.
When he saw me taking a photo of the writing, the first-grader told me that he was happy to explain it to me. I said, "Can I film you?" He said, "Sure." Here's the video (BTW - When you hear a half-second of dead air, it's because I muted the name of the first-grader's friend):
A quick thank-you to the first-grader for demonstrating a WHOLE bunch of concepts about emerging reading and writing and for letting me capture it on film.
Here are some of the concepts about print that he demonstrates: he knows that in English, you read text from left to right and the top of the page to the bottom of the page. He knows that with cursive (He still calls it 'curse' and I love that so much), the letters are connected to each other. He knows that you open a letter with a greeting. He knows that a greeting goes on its own line. He knows that you close a letter with a good-bye, and he knows that goes on its own line, too.
The ideas that the first-grader wanted to share were more complex than he could write with alphabetic letters - trying to sound out that many words would have made the task painful rather than joyful. So, rather than not writing, he represented the letters and used speech to explain it.
What especially stands out to me here is how the first-grader engaged with three of Braunger & Lewis's (2008) principles about learning to read (There are 13 total in the article). The first principle I see is, "Reading and writing develop together" (p. 66). First, the first-grader wrote it, then the first-grader read it.
The way that the first-grader engaged with the principle that, "Background knowledge and prior experience are critical to the reading process" (p. 64) also overlaps with the prior principle. Before we left Philadelphia, the first-grader and I made about 50 self-addressed, stamped envelopes for him to give to his friends, and he spent the summer getting letters from and writing back to his friends. All that background knowledge impacted the first-grader's writing of this particular letter.
The third principle that stands out to me with this video is the way, "Social interaction is essential in learning to read" (p. 65). This is the principle that teachers often call 'authentic purposes'. The first-grader really wanted to write this letter to his friend because he misses that friend so much and because he's so excited that the friend is going to have a baby sister. Caring about the friend makes the writing and reading worth it.
So, huge amounts of concepts about print, demonstration of multiple principles about literacy, and an adorable letter to a friend... it's amazing how much a bunch of scribbles can be.
Braunger, J. & Lewis, J.P. (2008). What we know about the learning and development of reading K-12: Thirteen core understandings about reading and learning to read. In S.B. Kucer (Ed.), What research really says about teaching and learning to read. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
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