Moffett’s article, “I, You, and It,” really hit home for me. In third grade, students are centered on the ‘ I,’ and I found myself wondering, 1) how do I move them past that, and 2) are they developmentally ready? I will definitely use a process like he showed with the cafeteria by having students think about something that happened to them, vocalize it, write about it informally, and finally try to write it in a formal piece of writing. The formal writing will no doubt be the hardest for them as my experience has shown me that third graders have a hard time writing enough details and information so that an audience who has never met them can read it and understand it. They tend to assume everyone knows what they are talking about. According to Moffett, “Proper writing assignments can lead the students to good generalizations,” but what are those assignments? I’d like to learn more about that.
One of the things I agreed with in this article is that “teachers do not feel they can take the time to let a student abstract from the ground up.” This is not only true of writing. I know that kids need to use hands-on activities with manipulatives before they move on to abstract thinking in math, but I feel so crunched for time that I often skip that stage hoping they’ve had some of those experiences in 1st and 2nd grade.
In the end, I feel this article has helped me develop a better understanding of how students learn to write which is going to be useful for me to improve my teaching of it.
Do you think you have a better idea of an assignment that will lead students to good generalization now? Did any of the readings following this one help define that for you?
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