[nobe-l] Writing complaints

[Valerie Gibson]

Hello,

For those who don’t know, I am almost finished with my classes to become an elementary school teacher. I seek to teach in the mainstream classroom.  I’ve got one more year of field placement classes, and then a semester of student teaching. The field placement classes is a way to sort of get your feet wet in regards to teaching by observing and doing a little teaching in another teacher’s classroom. It’s sort of a midway point between student teaching and regular class lecture.  

I am in a “teaching writing for grades K-6” class. It’s an add-on to my field placement classes.  

We are reading a book called, A QUICK GUIDE TO Reaching Struggling Writers. 

The book talks about how to teach struggling writers. It lists complaints or comments that students might say to avoid writing.

One of these questions is, “My hand hurts”. The book tells us that we should first make sure that nothing is truly wrong.

Have any of you come across this sort of complaint, and if so, how did you handle it?  I know the obvious answer is to check to see if the child’s hand really is hurting, and maybe I’m just way overthinking it, and if so, I apologize. I guess what I’m asking is how did you check?

I haven’t started field placement yet. They’re still trying to find me a school, so it’s got me a bit anxious of doing something wrong when it could have been avoided.

I’m sure this semester, I’ll be pestering you all with questions as something is brought up that I did not think of, so I’m going to apologize in advance. :)