Writing Memories

It can be quite overwhelming attempting to look back on the writing I created in elementary school, simply because I feel majority of school growing up consisted of some form of writing. I specifically remember writing in Second grade very vividly. Second grade was when I learned how to write in cursive. My teacher told us we were only allowed to write once we had a cursive license. This basically meant we had to wait until we learned how to write each letter of the alphabet in cursive. This part of learning how to write in elementary school is still so vivid because of how my teacher kept my classmates and I away from writing in cursive before we were ready. He told us the cursive police would come and have a talk with us if he caught any of us writing in cursive. He would tell us the cursive police were two girls with blue curly hair, at least thats how I remember picturing them looking like. My Second grade self did not want anything to do with the blue haired cursive police so I definitely was not writing in cursive until I had my official cursive license.

I also remember in Third grade having the opportunity to create and “publish” our own book. By that I mean we wrote a creative story on one of those blank white hard cover books. I remember really enjoying the ability to write and illustrate whatever I wanted to for that book. I unfortunately do not remember what I wrote about except for the fact that it involved a kangaroo and Easter. Once my classmates and I finished created our books we all had the opportunity to read our books aloud to our classmates. It was really awesome starting from a completely blank book and watching it come to life and being able to say I created a book entirely by myself, even if the book was completely random and was created by my Third grade self. It’s really important to give students chances like that to explore the different components to the writing process, especially at an early age to continue encouraging them to explore their own creativity.

Focusing on the Following Questions:

-How do you define writing?

Defining writing can be challenging but I personally think its best described as utilizing words to help create meaning or portray a message to an audience. It can be used to invite people to explore the feeling of vulnerability by expressing their personal thoughts. Writing can also be found in so many different forms of writing which all also portrays a meaning behind which form of writing is chosen to display a message.

-What do you see as the teacher’s role in children learning to write?

Teacher’s have a very essential role that is crucial in children learning to write but it also takes a lot to understanding how exactly to guide students towards learning to write. There is a fine line for teachers to teach writing because you want to help the students get the ball rolling on their writing processes but also don’t want to over-step your boundaries by taking away their creativity aspect of writing. Guiding students towards exploring their own topics to write about is a major role teacher’s have when teaching students to write.

-What else do you think is important in children learning to write?

It is extremely important to show them the foundation to creating writing before expecting students to be able to write about absolutely anything. Having students learn to write at an early age will lead them to various years of practicing different writing techniques. If children do not have a strong understanding of how to write at a young age this will lead to many challenges for them in the future since writing is such a crucial component to our society today.