Blog #5

Dora Assignment: First Posting

            Although many teachers and young students do in fact agree that learning punctuation is often on a worksheet or a whiteboard exercise, this article gives a different technique in which you can teach a student to understand the process of punctuation. The author of this article has created an imaginary girl named Dora, WHO is a first-grader, to evaluate and understand that punctuations are more than markings at the end of a page. [USE OF WHO]

            As Dora began her writing, she wrote as if her words needed no spacing or punctuation at all. Her words and sentences were written like this, “YERCOMAYERAMOSDARA.” Whether or not people understand this, as the article continued, it was marvelous to look back and realize that this was her starting point. Interestingly, I noticed that the teacher had read and realized that learning to place periods is key, and can potentially provide a window for students to learn about the structures and conventions of their work. Before Dora could get much farther on her work, I noticed that the teacher had questioned her about how the punctuations in her books were related to the words she had written on her papers. This is the first step Dora had learned in her way of progress, so she thought she would try separating her letters. AS DORA HAD LEARNED THIS FIRST STEP IN HER WAY OF PROGRESS, SHE THOUGHT SHE WOULD TRY SEPARATING HER LETTERS. Considering progress was still being shown in her work, I had noticed that the teacher continued to question Dora’s writing compared to the books that she was reading. I BELIEVE THAT BY DOING THIS, THE TEACHER DID A GREAT JOB BY ENCOURAGING AND PROMOTING DORA'S LEARNING HABITS. [COMPOUND VERB] As the teacher would question Dora and use their hands to frame the words in Dora’s story, I noticed that Dora would show significant progress, especially when she would communicate with her classmates at the writing table.

As I noticed that the teacher would help correct Dora by asking her to present her writing and reflect upon it, I also noticed that the teacher did not do things that I maybe would have. For example, I maybe would have actually done the worksheets or the whiteboard exercises to possibly reach out to more students than Dora. WHOEVER came up with the idea to remove worksheets and exercises from school curriculums may have created a large mistake. [USE OF WHOEVER] However, related to Dora, I would have sat down and actually worked with her to show her how to punctuate the end of sentences correctly. Rather than slowly working out one kink at a time (which was very interesting to see Dora’s progress), I would have shown her the correct way to punctuate the whole sentence. While doing this, you can even do worksheets and reflect back to the books Dora has been reading to accomplish the same task. As I said before, it seemed that the teacher had taught Dora one-step at a time. Unfortunately, I believe that this is why it had taken Dora so long to apply the concept of sentence-end-marking. UNFORTUNATELY, I BELIEVE THAT TAKING ONE STEP AT A TIME MAY BE THE REASON THAT DORA TOOK SO LONG TO APPLY THE CONCEPT OF SENTENCE-END-MARKING. As I was reading this article written by Pat Cordeiro, I was realizing that as Dora was learning new concepts, she was sent back to her desk to re-teach herself and elaborate with her other classmates. Although we read this story without actually knowing how long it took Dora to accomplish sentence-end-marking, I would assume that she actually took quite awhile to accomplish this task.

            During the process of Dora’s accomplishment, I did notice that the teacher did provide positive help and techniques to help her. Although the teacher did read to her to show examples where periods need to be placed, and the teacher asked Dora to read her examples as if it were in her head, the teacher taught in ways that I possibly would have done differently. However, I would conclude that the teacher did an excellent job in successfully teaching a student how to punctuate the ends of sentences correctly. 

I need some help finding and/or creating SVO sentences. I also struggled finding some of the #3 POW exercises. So, if any editor is reading this, any help would be greatly appreciated.