Young Children - March 2008 - (Page 36) families in the project so they could see the importance of integrating language and mathematics. The project was an opportunity for adults to view children as the experts. The children reported on their families’ observations. When one child shared the word cube with his mother, she responded that “cubes have three dimensions and they remind me of a Rubik’s Cube.” The mother of a child whose word was square said, “The square is one of the most useful shapes. It is used as picture frames, televisions, books, buildings, and signs.” A child whose word was cone recorded this observation from his mother: “I learned that a cone is sort of like a triangle [contrasting two- and threedimensional shapes].” In this way children and their families became partners in learning and coconstructors of this mathematics text. They wanted to use short phrases, like the author did, and they wanted their first lines to be repeated in the last lines. Revising As the children finished their first drafts, they each met with Michelle over the course of several days to discuss their work during writers’ workshop time. Michelle used these conferences to address children’s individual needs. After each child read his or her piece aloud, she posed such questions as, “What parts are you most pleased with and why?” “What parts do you want to make better?” Some children needed help in clustering common ideas together. Others needed help fixing grammar or punctuation errors. For instance, one child learned about the homophones they’re and their; another learned about rules for making plurals; and still another learned about the standard use for upper- and lowercase letters. Writing The next day the children used their word lists to begin creating their poems. Before they began writing, Michelle and the children briefly discussed some of the elements of poems. Because the children wanted to follow the style of Margaret Wise Brown, they reasoned that their poems should not be written as “one long line.” They wanted to use short phrases, like the author did, and they wanted their first lines to be repeated in the last lines. This analysis of a poem’s form enabled the children to clone the author’s style and try out her organizational structure themselves (Short, Harste, & Burke 1996). With these guidelines in mind, the children began their writing. Typesetting Once all the children had completed their final drafts, Michelle led them to the computer lab to type their poems. The children were proud of their poems and wanted their finished products to look typeset, like the text in The Important Book. When the children began typing, it was clear that they lacked basic keyboarding skills; however, they were very eager to learn to use the word processing software. Michelle took them to a corner of the computer lab, where she introduced some basic skills on a computer with a larger screen. She demonstrated how to open a Microsoft Word document; capitalize a letter; understand what the green or red squiggly underlines mean; and add space between the lines (see “Another Choice for Authors”). The children returned to the computer lab several times to complete their typing. Another Choice for Authors The choice of spacing between lines (single, 1.5 lines, double, and more) caused quite a stir! There were so many options that the children were not sure which one was most appropriate. So Michelle had the children go on a “space hunt” to find examples in the books in their classroom of how authors use spacing. When the children met in the lab a day later, they shared what they had found. They noticed that in The Important Book and other poetry books the spacing was often double, while the spacing in their chapter books was single. The children reasoned that the double (and even triple) spacing made the writing “look more like a poem.” They argued that poems have fewer words and that more spacing helps to emphasize the “importance” of each word. This discussion highlighted more of the choices authors make and increased the children’s appreciation for the unique potential of poetry. Examples of children’s work Sarah Many of the children’s poems reflect mathematical attributes as well as real-world applications of the shape. For instance, Sarah’s poem is about a sphere. She clustered the applications together at the start of her poem and the mathematical attributes at the end. She chose the sphere’s resemblance to the Earth as its most important attribute and made the Earth her illustration. Sarah, like several 36 Young Children • March 2008
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