Apostrophes With Dora

Sydney Bushnell

English 326

“Dora” Blog 1

“Dora Learns to Write and in the Process Encounters Punctuation” Article

            Like any normal first grader, Dora just wants to be able to write to impress her teacher to show her how well she has done. Also, like most first graders, WHOSE [POSSESSIVE PRONOUN] teacher helps them with their different problem areas, she seems to be struggling with how to write proper sentences. With the help of discussion amongst her fellow first graders, multiple exercises, and guidance from her teacher, she progressively begins to form her sentences.

            There are a number of things that Dora’s teacher does to help her in succeeding in her writing. As Dora progresses, her teacher tends to strategize on how to help Dora best proceed with her writing. From the very beginning, Dora’s teacher always has Dora read aloud what she has written. This helps Dora hear both what she is doing correctly and what mistakes she might be making. Also, after Dora has written something, the teacher asks her to compare her own writing to that in a storybook to see how her writing differs. This gives Dora examples of how to alter her writing to make it more correct in terms of how it might look.

            Another strategy her teacher uses in helping her is to discuss and ask why she put periods where she has and how that might be an incorrect placement. She has Dora read her work as it is written so that Dora can hear the choppy sound it makes when she puts periods at the end of phrases. This helped Dora realize that she wasn’t correctly placing the periods and give her an idea where to correctly place them by how she wanted her sentences to sound when she read them aloud. Dora became increasingly better with her writing and when she did something well, the teacher complimented her on it versus questioning why she did it that way. This gave Dora confidence rather than confusing her more.

            Things that I noticed the teacher didn’t do to help Dora in her writing was to give Dora the opportunity to ask the teacher questions about why or where she is supposed to be putting her periods. For example, Dora had been writing and putting periods at the end of each line and the teacher did not say anything to Dora about it so she wasn’t sure if she was correctly placing them but she became more focused on the topic of her stories rather than where the periods should go. The class listens to the teacher explain how to place periods and she wants THEIRS [POSSESSIVE PRONOUN] to reflect hers in that she doesn’t just place periods after each word. If the teacher points out where they are being placed incorrectly only some of the time, this might be confusing Dora as to where they actually should be placed by saying something like “YOURS [POSSESSIVE PRONOUN] show improvement but if you look at this example you can see the difference in them.”

            Reasons that Dora might be taking so long to grasp the idea of sentence-end-making could be that the medium she is writing on (a booklet) might lead her to believe that she should end her writing at the end of the page and before the next page begins. Another issue is that when we speak aloud, we can’t always hear where pauses, spaces, or periods are or would be if we were to write out what we were speaking. This makes it difficult for children like Dora to transfer from speaking to writing. As Dora continues in her writing process, she will begin to develop senses for simple and complex sentences and learn little by little how to punctuate these sentences.