Iamgintobeodms.

Having trouble pronouncing the title?  Well, it says "I am going to be Optimus."  You're giggling, "Oh I see it now!" or you're saying, "What is she talking about!"  One of my students wrote that sentence on Friday because he was going to be Optimus Prime for Halloween.  Apparently, Optimus Prime is a Transformer.

Watching a child acquire language is fascinating.  Those cute baby sounds become word approximations (baba for bottle).  Then approximations become whole words and short sentences.  Almost overnight it seems as if the toddler is speaking in complete sentences!  Now at the ripe old age of five, I'm asking students to go backwards.  Take your sentence, separate each individual word, and then break those words down into their individual sounds.  Holy cow!  That is hard work for these little guys!

Learning to read and write is very similar to learning how to speak according to Brian Cambourne in his book Whole Story: Natural Learning and the Acquisition of Literacy.  During writing I can observe student approximations as they put their thoughts on paper - not so much in whole sentences - but in the sounds and words they write.  Someone else might look at my students' writing and see all the cute mistakes.  To me they are not mistakes, they are approximations.  I learn more about my students from their approximations than what they get right.

My little Optimus Prime knows the words I and am and was able to put down sounds he heard for the other words, but he has difficulty understanding that each word needs it's own space.  I know that he hears /ing/ at the end of going, but doesn't know it is spelled -ing.  He heard the /pt/ as a /d/, which are similar.  When we write on Monday, I will remind him to use his Spaceman to put spaces between his words and possibly assist him with one or two sounds in his writing.

Another student in my class wrote "I see the yee g dfoo," the other day.  His sentence is really, "I see the leaves falling down."  This little one understands how to write the sight words we have learned including the spaces between the words, but is having difficulty sounding out words on his own.  He has the ee for leaves but the rest is confusing.  He hears the d and f as he says his sentence but he doesn't understand where they go.  When we write on Monday, I will sit down to help him stretch out his words so he can hear the individual sounds.  I might find out that he is able to stretch out the words into sounds, but he doesn't know which letters make those sounds.  See how confusing writing is for five year olds!

As they write, I tell my students to take risks and sound out words on their own.  Generally speaking, I can decode (yes it takes some heavy duty decoding skills to decipher some of my students' writing), but to be on the safe side I always have them read what they wrote to me.  This is good reading practice as well, but I'm only addressing writing right now.  I celebrate each student's successes no matter how small,  knowing that tomorrow those words of praise will encourage my students to take more risks and make more approximations.  Those approximations will guide my instruction for individual students as well as for the whole class.