Dora Learns to Write

In Pat Cordiero’s article, “Dora Learns to Write and Encounter Punctuation,” Cordiero addresses a situation in which a teacher helps a students learn to write (ADD TITLE TO PAPER). Although it seemed that Dora’s teacher had a passive style of teaching punctuation/writing, it allowed Dora the freedom to experiment and slowly begin to grasp the concept herself.  The teacher did a great job of encouraging the student without making her feel inadequate. She never questioned Dora’s methods directly or told her she was wrong; instead, she slowly introduced new ideas. Each day she pointed out something new for Dora to focus on. She encouraged Dora to read out loud and notice when she dropped her voice. When this made Dora put a period at the end of a clause, the teacher didn’t correct her because she could see this was the start of Dora understanding when to use a period. Allowing Dora to come up with her own hypothesis, gave Dora the opportunity to understand and develop the concept rather than just be told the concept. She points out places where Dora does well in her work, which then encourages Dora to discover where it feels right to put a period. Dora, WHOSE writing is just developing, learns something new each time she experiments with her punctuation (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN). Her introduction to the concept of a sentence and a period was very short and sweet. She used her hands to try and frame a sentence and taught students to pause every time they see a period in a piece of writing. This gets them to focus on the idea of what a sentence sounds like so they can begin to play with the idea in their own work.

The teacher never criticizes Dora’s attempts at period use; never does she make her feel dumb for experimenting with her punctuation.  The teacher never acts displeased with Dora’s work; instead, she encourages her to experiment and praises her for the attempts she is making with her writing. She doesn’t give the students a hand out, or give them a list of rules of what makes a sentence; she instead allows them to think on their own.

Dora struggles to find when to use a comma because speech and writing are two different concepts. Although she is able to speak well, she is a new writer and writing is a language all of ITS own (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN). Speaking aloud does not give a clear indication of when a sentence ends, so a period is a whole new concept. When Dora learns she needs to separate her words, she starts putting a period after every word in order to emphasize the separation. This makes sense because she is realizing that a period is used as a marker to end something. Because she is new to writing, it is going to take her awhile to figure out when it is the appropriate time to use a period to mark the end of a sentence. It is a hard concept to grasp, especially since a place where a comma would go sounds very similar to the end of a sentence to a new writer. Dora’s teacher offers a good approach to teaching writing, although YOURS might differ, her approach worked because it allowed Dora to understand versus memorize a concept (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN).