Perchance to dream, perchance to write for young children

Science Centric | 16 April 2010 00:32 GMT


An approach to teaching young children the principles of writing and literacy that prohibits them from borrowing from our common cultural landscape is a problematic one, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development.

Anne Haas Dyson, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says that excluding pop culture touchstones such as movies, TV shows, comic books and cartoons from composition programs in order to focus almost exclusively on the everyday occurrences of a child's life is a contradictory notion, at best.

'Since the line between fiction and reality for younger students is often very thin, it's inevitable that children will borrow from what they know, and that they will create stories where they and their friends interact with Spider-Man, the X-Men or Hannah Montana,' Dyson said.

Not to be confused with plagiarism, copying, which could be thought of as an adolescent version of what hip-hop artists call 'sampling,' has a long history as a pedagogical tool for teaching younger students the alphabet and letter formation. It was once advocated as a method for helping them make sense of written language and its connection to meaning, and was considered an intrinsic part of the production process for beginning writers.

Now, with schools under pressure to teach basic composition skills because of the regulated curriculum mandates of No Child Left Behind, Dyson says there has been a curricular rejection of open-ended composing, especially in schools serving low-income children, in favour of writing instruction that is much more regimented.

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Anything that gets students writing, expressing themselves -- and comfortable with it -- is a good thing....

And I say this as a writing teacher...