Children all over the world often follow similar patterns in developing drawing, at the youngest age by holding the writing tool and pushing it from side to side. At times the "writing tool" could be a crayon, at other times a spoon on a tray of food!
Then the movement develops into a circle shape with a cross over where the lines might meet.
Then the man drawing sometimes starts to form. The circle is given eyes and a belly button, then fingers are drawn from the sides of the circle and later on limbs are added.
Children's drawings are symbols, their trees are circles on sticks, eyes are at the tops of heads. When they draw a table from side on, they can only see two legs, but they know the table has four, one at each corner and so they draw four legs. Their table is a bird's eye view with a leg sticking out at each corner.
Never criticise a child's drawing with an adverse comment, and, if you have a doubt that you are not recognising what the child has attempted to draw, then don't let the child know this, but say,
"Your drawing looks interesting. I'd love you to tell me about it".
Some teachers are uncomfortable about allowing time for drawing and perhaps allow only children who have finished writing to llustrate their work by drawing. Why? This means that only the quickest and possibly the more able child gets the chance to draw and the slower one, who perhaps needs to draw even more than the others, is never given the time! Why does the teacher not let the class start the writing task with drawing, maybe giving a set time in which to do it? Or when the writing interest is flagging, have the children draw the next bit.
Starting putting words on paper We usually start with the child's name, and in lower case letters. We concentrate on lower case letters because the first reading books are printed in lower case letters. But we do not exclude capitals entirely. In fact some children, later on, have difficulty in reading text that is only in capital letters. In such cases, a pile of old comics sent in from overseas is ideal, as most comics seem to be written entirely in capital letters.
After the name, simple words and sentences follow, carefully copied from either the teacher's writing, or from flash cards, or from words round the room.
After that they start to form their own sentences and I find that a tub, made from a cut down plastic bottle with some plastic lids with sentence starters and with a few everyday word flash cards is very useful here and starts the child on the way to acquiring more independent writing skills. (The flash cards do not have to be all the same colour as they are here....assorted colours help some children to more easily acquire the visual memory of different letter patterns.If a child keeps sticking hesitantly over a particular word, I draw a picture on the back of the flash card as a prompt or aide memoire and let the child have a fun peek to get the word. After a while the child remembers the word and no longer needs the peeking game This is not cheating, this is good quality, efficient learning)
The word cards I have included here can be used for lots of reading games so that children become very familiar with the words and then they can use them when creating their own sentences. Such games are Word Bingo and Speed Reading.
Cloze procedure cards work well for the next stage, with the word missing at the end of the sentence, when this activity is first introduced and then later when the child has mastered this, with the word missing in the middle of the sentence and then, later still, with the word missing at the beginnning of the sentence. Cloze procedure encourages the child to learn to predict or anticipate words and this skill helps the reading to be more fluent and fluid. This than adds to the child's confidence in reading as he feels his reading jogging along nicely.
In all cases, cloze procedure cards have the words that are needed to fill in the gaps, written somewhere on them, maybe in a different colour, maybe all starting with the same letter; there are all sorts of variations according to the skills being worked on.
In cloze procedure, children are expected to write out complete sentences with a capital letter to start, a full stop to finish and the sentence making sense.
Cloze procedure takes children on to the next stage of independent writing, as it teaches sentence construction and how to take contextual clues as well as developing comprehension. This is because children must have understood the content of the sentence before they can choose which is the correct missing word.
A series of cloze cards can be made, that, when completed, tell a full story. I have done this using old Christmas cards for illustrations and numbering the cards sequentially.The children do the cards in any order, so a group can be working on them at the same time. But the work is mounted in sequence order, from the Annunciation, to the coming of the Magi. If the child's mounting paper is a long zig-zag-folded piece of brown paper, there is the complete sequence of the Nativity Story to stand up and to be admired. (Sequencing ideas is a very important skill which can be acquired in many fun ways like this one.)
Question cards After that, and alongside it, the children can tackle simple sentence questions with simple sentence answers. Children can be encouraged to look for the words they need to put in their answers from the words already in the question. Other words that might be needed can be written by the teacher on the back of the card. This method encourages the child to be able to work independently and without constantly asking for help..so improving concentration skills as well.
Alongside working on question cards, is simple news writing and story writing and then they are fledged! But none of this should be done in isolation. Skills in all these areas of literacy are accelerated if the children’s work compliments the main theme.
You will notice that I promote the idea of teachers making work cards for all this. I use all sorts of re cycled card to make these and when I can, I wash plastic bags and keep the cards in those to extend their life span. Childrens ability can be matched to the most suitable of the cards and so in this way they are working at their own level and consequently achieving. Teachers who just write work on the chalkboard for all the class to do are not catering for everyone and the teacher's work is wiped clean never to be seen again, such a wasted opportunity!
Work cards allow children to work at their own pace, so that the faster ones are not slowed down and the slower ones do not feel the pressure of keeping up. For the faster pupils you can have a stand-by box of spare minutes cards to extend them.
By making work cards the teacher builds up a bank of work for future children. Some chalk board writing is so beautiful and teachers invent such useful ideas and then it is all erased! What a waste!
Many children find seeing and scanning the board and very tiring and sometimes very difficult. The chalk board could be old, it having been ages since it last saw a coat of paint, or it could have reflections on it that impede careful copying, or the child could have a sight problem. Work cards avoid these problems.
VERY,VERY IMPORTANT! Please note that whatever type of writing skill pupils are working on, celebrate their efforts by praising them and by displaying their work for others to admire and for them to feel proud about. This not only helps the writer, but encourages the reader as well! If teachers do not do this, a wasted opportunity to accelerate writing skills is lost.