[nobe-l] teaching writing and editing

Sat Jul 30 13:11:40 UTC 2016

Hi Ashley, 

I’m a college writing teacher, so this is a favorite topic for me. 

I would encourage all of your students to read aloud regardless of their skill or comfort level. Very few people are thrilled to read their work aloud, but it’s a necessary skill. They will get over the initial embarrassment and shyness. I’ve found that the students who are most confident about reading their work aloud tend to think that they’re doing everything right, which may not be the case. 

Even if you don’t have them state their punctuation, you should get a sense of it from how they read. If they read what sounds like a run-on sentence, you can ask them to stop and say, “Hey did you put a period there?” 

Even though these are young children, a non-direct approach is still helpful. You’ve said that you’re not expected to check all their work but that you are a perfectionist. You’ll find that in teaching writing, copyediting is what students expect but it is the least productive way to teach a skill. What you could do is see if students exhibit patterns of error and then address those with the whole class. Also, peer-editing is a good skill: treat error-finding like a scavenger hunt. Give students points or praise for each time they find a correctly punctuated sentence in their partner’s work. 

Spelling is tough to check by ear. But you can always have them back up and tell you how they spelled certain words. Again, it should also come across in their reading. You may not be able to hear the misspelled word, but you might hear an awkward turn of phrase — like the student is trying something out but they’re not sure. Make them spell some of what they’ve written for you. Or ask them questions like, “Did you capitalize the first letter of each sentence?” 

Perhaps you could assemble a score sheet or checklist that will teach them to read over their own work. If you do something like this, create a hierarchy of errors, and target the errors that affect comprehension the most. Minor punctuation errors aren’t on the same level as repeated misspellings or misuse of homophones. 

I hope this information is helpful. Let me know how it goes! 

With best,
Emily 

---
Emily K. Michael
emily.k.michael at gmail.com
Blog: http://areyouseeingthis.wordpress.com/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authoremilykmichael/
Twitter: @ModwynEarendel

“Science, technology, and the economic uses of nature need not be antithetical to celebration.”
 –Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

> On Jul 30, 2016, at 2:08 AM, Ashley Bramlett via NOBE-L <nobe-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I’m planning to volunteer with young elementary kids at a summer camp which has low income minority kids. 
> I hope to have a part time job in a recreation or educational after school program so I’m trying to get experience in this area.
> 
> 
> I majored in liberal studies which was psychology and communication. But I had some education classes before changing my major since the education courses were too much to handle at the time, but I still might be an educator if I choose to go to grad school.
> Anyways, so I do have some basic knowledge of child development and teaching based on classes and being around kids.
> 
> Some of the activities involve writing in this camp. I have low vision so its not likely I can read their writing as the writing is small and not in dark ink. I can read print best with 20/20 pens.
> 
> I need to assist with writing; not the literal formation of letters since the kids know this from school; they are in first grade or above. But 
> I’d help with things like thinking of ideas to write about, sentence formation, spelling, and editing.
> 
> I know we don’t like to think of limitations, but without seeing, it poses some challenges.
> 
> How can I help them with writing? They are writing short journals with a beginning sentence started for them. The topics have already been decided by the camp leader.
> I will try to get the topics ahead of time.
> Brainstorming ideas should pose no problem as that is a matter of asking questions and helping them think of what to write.
> But the rest might be hard.
> 
> How can I ensure they have the right spelling, capitalization, and punctuation?
> They probably will ask me to help them spell words they do not know, but what about the words they think they know and write incorrectly?
> How about checking on them? If I were sighted, I’d circulate around the room and look over at their papers to read it or spot  check it to see if they were almost done.
> 
> I know after I discuss the topics with them, they can write. Then I can ask them to read it back. But some kids probably struggle with reading and may not read in a way that I can hear the punctuation. I mean they may not read sentences with pauses where there are commas for instance. Then you have the fact that some kids are shy.
> 
> I thought of asking the older kids to come over and read the paper of a younger kid. This will work after someone is done. Should I just ask the kids to read it with stating punctuation?
> Should I ask them to verbalize something after each sentence?
> Rather than checking on everyone, should I pick maybe 2 or 3 of them to work with which would allow the time for more verbalization?
> If I really need an adult pair of eyes, there is the camp leader and another volunteer.
> 
> Now, I’m not expected to check everyone’s paper and correct it as a teacher with perfect semantics and grammar. But as a perfectionist, I want to help them the best I can and have them learn. I want to catch mistakes since they are young and correct them so they do not continue making such mistakes in the future.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for any ideas.
> 
> Ashley
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