First Dora Revision

             When I started reading “Dora Learns to Write and in the Process Encounters Punctuation” I thought that the teacher was not being very constructive in Dora’s grammatical education.  As I continued to read on, I realized that the teacher was actually being helpful.  The teacher asks Dora to talk through her rationale and thought process when she writes and punctuates.  By doing this, she is able to better understand from where Dora’s confusion comes.  Young children often do not see the errors in THEIR writing, so it is important that the teacher is able to see how the children think as they write [use of the pronoun their].  The teacher also teaches Dora by example.  She shows the class books so that they can look at examples of sentences and punctuation.  When Dora is confused about the “dots” in her sentences and words, the teacher shows her the differences between her use of them and the use of them in the books.  Although it is hard to teach grammar by example because it differs depending on the context, using examples to teach how periods end sentences is a good idea.  She is also supportive with the STUDENTS’ work [I put an apostrophe after the s here].  She understands that the learning process is slow, but she still encourages Dora when she sees that she understands even the smallest concept a little bit better.  She is very helpful and supportive of her students WHOSE writing shows slow signs of improvement [use of the pronoun whose].

     I think that the teacher does do a good job overall, especially considering how difficult it is to teach grammatical concepts to such young children.  While she does a good job when she’s physically working with Dora, I think that Dora gets confused when the teacher gives her directions and sends her to do her own to work.  When the teacher asked Dora to read her work “the way it was meant to be” and to “stop at all the periods,” Dora was confused (Cordeiro, 63).  The directions are contradictory to her because she had been told that she also needed to drop her voice at the end of her sentences.  I, personally, do not think that the teacher should have told her to drop her voice because this causes Dora to focus too much on her voice rather than the content. Due to her teacher’s contradictory directions, Dora feels that she is forced to “choose between attending to her punctuating marks or reading with meaning” (Cordeiro, 64).  Cordeiro does say, “in early writing experiences the child is often faced with abandoning an alternative hypothesis which seems valid” (Cordeiro, 65).  So, while it is not uncommon that Dora feels she must abandon her way of thinking, she should not be getting too many confusing directions from her teacher.

     The article makes it clear that Dora struggles with the use of periods.  I think that part of the reason that she has such a difficult time with this is because she is still learning the correct usage of the punctuation mark.  Originally, she was told by her friends to use the “dots” to signify the end of each word.  She practiced doing this for a while because it made sense to her.  After she looks at a book, she realizes that there are not “dots” or periods between every word.  However, it is difficult for her to understand why the periods went where they did because she often reads her stories differently than a mature writer would read them.  To her, it makes sense that fragments could be considered sentences because this is simply how she reads at this stage in her life.  The concept of reading with the punctuation marks is hard for Dora.  She especially struggles with her use of the period because she does not necessarily understand ITS function or use in different sentences [use of the pronoun its].  However, she makes progress after each meeting with her teacher; she just needs more practice.