Writing child study - Employment

To address his spelling errors I will use a strategy in the Buckner text: Reading backwards. I will have his read his
story backwards and circle the words he knows are spelled wrong or thinks are spelled wrong. Then I will have a book
handy and have him try to find that same word in the text to find the correct spelling for it. This process will help him
see how he spelled the word wrong. If I had more time with Nadjib I would have allowed more time in the prewriting
stage with exploring the setting and characters more before he wrote his first draft to really paint a picture in his head
of how his story looks. This would allow him to incorporate more details right from the beginning and not have to
work so hard with adding details during the revision stage. Again, if I had more time I would have done several other
methods of expanding his topic other than the one I did from Buckner. Time simply wouldn’t allow it so I had to keep
moving onto working with the tense so it all agrees and working with punctuation and capitalizing letters. A method I
would use to help with adding detail to his characters would be to use Fletcher & Portalupi’s lesson for physical
description of a character. They say, “Perhaps the easiest way for young writers to begin developing the characters in
their writing is to attend to the physical traits of those characters” (2007, p. 46). I would read them a story and have
them make a list of the physical traits that come to mind from the story. Then, have them look at their list and by using
that as an example try to write about their characters as descriptive as the list they made. Also from Fletcher &
Portalupi, I would use their lesson for using details to describe the setting. I would have them draw a picture of the
setting in their story and then have them write about what their picture looks like to help them see what the mental
picture they are writing about should look like. The last thing I would work on with Nadjib would be to add some
dialogue into his writing. Using Fletcher & Portalupi’s (2007) lesson on getting your characters talking, I would have
him listen to me read an excerpt of dialogue and have him make a chart. On one side it would be what he has learned
about the character and the other side would show what piece of dialogue showed him that. By seeing this side by side
comparison it will really help him see how dialogue strengthens a story. Then I will have him work on adding
dialogue into his own story (p. 106).
Use of writing process: after writing (consider publishing and sharing writing).
Observations/examples
When It was time to publish Nadjib’s story he seemed
very uninterested. He was tired of working on the same
story over and over again each week so I tried to add
some interest in it by asking if he wanted to type it
instead of writing it out by hand. He loved this idea
because it was something that he didn’t do all the time
and it also incorporated easily seen real life knowledge
into school work. After we got it all typed out, I told
him I would print him a copy so he could bring it home
and share it with his family.
Interpretations
Hicks explains, “I often talk with teachers who feel that
they are doing the writing process, yet their students seem
uninterested in writing” (2009, p. 7). Like those teachers, I
felt the same. We were going through the writing process
and when I was in school I was excited to publish a piece or
writing because it meant it was worked on thoroughly and
was my best piece of writing I could do. Nadjib seemed
exact opposite. By bringing technology into the process it
immediately interested him because it’s something he is
around and using 90% of the time when he’s home. Using
technology made him feel like what we were doing actually
applied to his life and was something he would use in the
future. In addition, I think it’s extremely important to get
students writing digitally as early as possible. I know
schools simply don’t have it in their budgets to allow every
student to type their writing every time they write but since
I have a computer and am working with only one student,
it’s within my power to allow him to get more experience
with this. Hicks also proposes, “… if we engage students in
real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that
it complements their innate need to find purposes and
audience for their work, we can have them engaged in a
digital writing process that focuses first on the writing, then