Every Mark on the page

I loved this article, and as a soon to be teacher I have already made a mental note to start each school year with an explanation to the parents of what I expect of the students. This article goes along well with my idea that the early years need to focus on encouraging learning and not punishing mistakes.

I believe, as the author of this article does, that mistakes are often a very good sign. A mistake can actually be a progressive step forward such as inventive spelling. By nourishing the process instead of hindering the mistakes we are encouraging students to learn for themselves and to remain excited about school.

As a teacher of younger children I remember the first months of school filled with excited faces which gradually changed into the older faces of students who hated school. And, a lot of this was because the methods other teacher's and the student's families used. A mistake on a page means that it is to be rewritten ten times correctly. After a couple of months my students hated turning in papers, because they knew what every mistake would mean for them. It destroyed their confidence and desire to learn. If I had been able to clearly communicate with the parents I would have loved to have told them "mistake's are ok, and not neccessarily a bad thing at all."

The article talked about how different "errors" could be interperted and I feel that it is worth noting that almost everything was positive. While I am sure shs selected the optimal piece for writing this article, it also gives a lot of great examples. I would have liked to of had a couple more bad mistakes pointed out though. Perhaps, the child is writing from right to left, which shows they have not yet grasped the layout of writing. Or something along those lines I may have given a bad example.