Every Mark on the Page

Reading the article, Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Writing by Kate Cusumano, was such an enjoyable read for me as a future educator but especially for me as I'm working in a kindergarten classroom. I don't think before entering this field experience I realized just how little kindergarteners know about writing.

They very first thing the article starts out with saying things like "My daughter still uses only capital letters," "My son, Samuel, squishes all the words together," or "my child can't spell like that." These parents panic somewhat resembled my thoughts my first couple weeks in kindergarten. I think I'm extremely lucky to work with kindergarten during this field experience because it's by far my most challenging obstacle as an undergraduate education major. I like these parents thought the same things. Our teacher uses a writing prompt everyday. It's October and students still squish their words together and only use capital (or lowercase letters) and they can't spell at all. But to see how far they've come in just over a month of working there is awesome and wild.

I like that the author explains the importance of noticing what the student does right. When I saw the picture of the flag was done by a kindergartner I, too, was impressed because none of the kindergartners in my class could do that (so far). I noticed a lot of the strengths the author points out. That the author of the flag and story uses more words than pictures. Something kindergartners do not do in the beginning of the year (or even midway. My students are not there yet). She knows punctuation is important. Her invented spelling makes sense meaning that you can actually decode what she has written by thinking like a kindergartener. Remembering that they mostly only know sounds of individual words.

I love the idea of having a newsletter and/or workshops for families to attend. I think it's important for the family members to understand that students are often where they need to be. In my field experience during their writing notebook time, I had a hard time not correcting their spelling when we would sound words out to write in their books! So I can relate to these parents. I think that offering them some guidance on what to expect and what is okay is such a good idea. Like the article says, pushing students to conventional spelling can ruin their writing. We want to help parents create students who love to write. Writing is often about being creative! Helping parents understand how not to take away this love for writing can greatly benefit students.