Writing before reading

[Jennifer]

My daughter, who just turned six a few days ago, is
doing something I find interesting:

She doesn't read, doesn't try to read. But she writes.
She writes stories and writes in her journal.

In the car one day she wrote the words to one of my
favorites songs when I was a kid (I put in the spaces;
she runs it all together):

BUY BI MIS UMARCIN PIYE

DIV ME TO THE LEVE

BUT THE LEVE WUS DRY

THEM GDL BOYS WR DRICING WISCE AND RID
SINGINN THIS WL BE THE DAY THAT I DI TH W B TH DAY
THAT OL DI

Anyway, I just thought it seemed ... well, not what we
learned in college! :) .... to be writing before
reading, and I was curious if this was more common
than I thought, and/or what your experiences and
observations with that have been. I should add that it
doesn't bother or worry me in the least; I just find
it kind of fascinating.

Jenny

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[Sandra Dodd]

-=- I was curious if this was more common

than I thought, and/or what your experiences and

observations with that have been.-=-

Holly did that but not as extensively or as well as your daughter!
But a little, she did, and she would ask us how to spell words, or
she would tell us a short story, we'd write it down, and she would
copy it out. It was a few years before she could read.

Sandra

[Karen Tucker]

My son, Will, wrote lots and lots of 3-4 page illustrated books in the time between 3 and 5.  He didn't read until 7.  I still have them.  Sometimes he would dictate to me and I would write them, and sometimes he would write the words and then tell me what they said.  He knew all the letters at that point, but not necessarily what they sounded like.  Of course, he didn't spell anything but very common words, like mom, dad, his brother's names, and his name.  His name is Will, but when he wrote the word "will" he wrote something else, I remember. 

I didn't consider it writing so much as composing.  Your daughter was writing something she didn't make up, though, and that's pretty cool and certainly okay!

Karen

[Marina]

Yes,  my oldest who is 11 learnt to write spontaneously at a year and a half.  Some of his letters were invented(I didn't recognize them) but others mimicked "real" letters.(lol)  I am forever making lists & writing little thoughts or poems, and apparently this behaviour imprinted.  His first real letter was a "B".  I thought he was drawing a bumblebee<g> and got really excited as I thought his figure 8 was a beautiful creature. 

 

Needless to say other adults tried to get me to reveal my "secret" to his early writing, and didn't believe child-directed learning could produce those sorts of results.  He didn't know the names of the letters he drew and he learnt upper case and lower case simultaneously.  Your daughter seems to know phonetic spelling.  Natural learning is interesting that way.  My niece who is almost six seems to be learning how to write before she can read, too.  I always think writing is active and reading is passive, so some kids learn to write because that is who they are.

 

Marina

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[meredith]

> I was curious if this was more common
> than I thought

Fwiw, its common enought to be considered the norm amongst montessori
educators and other proponents of "developmentally appropriate early
childhood education". There's a teaching method called "write to
read", and the "whole language approach" encourages writing. I'm not
sure that has anything to do with unschooling, but its interesting.

I enjoy seeing what letters kids use to represent different sounds.
For awhile, Mo used "ch" to represent the sound she heard for "tr".
Since she used letter names as a guide to their sounds, she also used
"y" to represent the "w" sound for awhile. It was fun to decode her
spellings and think about spelling conventions in other languages, or
translating from other languages.

Ray didn't really play with letters and sounds the way Mo did - he
just asked for spellings o ver and over. He wasn't interested in
spelling "rules" either. He's a great speller, now - I often ask him
if I'm stuck trying to remember whether or not to double a letter or
which vowel combination to use. I tend to default to French, since I
*like* spelling rules and those are consistent. Screwy, but
consistent.

---Meredith (Mo 5, Ray 13)

[Joyce Fetteroll]

On Apr 11, 2007, at 8:29 AM, Jennifer wrote:

to be writing before

reading, and I was curious if this was more common

than I thought

Last time the subject came up several people mentioned their kids did this too -- and now several more :-)

Kat definitely did it. She wrote well before she could read.

I always think writing is active and reading is passive

I think, while they share common areas of the brain, I think they draw on different parts too. I know I often make spelling mistakes as I'm writing that are glaringly obvious when I read back over it.

One way of making sense of something is to use it and get feed back from the process and that's part of what's probably going on. Well the primary reason is that writing is a fun, intriguing puzzle :-) but the reason it's intriguing is because our brains find working through puzzles a useful way to learn.

And, now that I'm turning it over, I'm thinking writing is a lot easier than reading. With writing, you're transcribing thoughts in your head. With reading, you not only have to recognize the words (and sometimes the letters if the font is odd), but you have to pull up some kind of meaning for each word or phrase and let those meanings swirl about in your brain until you've gathered enough to assemble into the picture the author is trying to create in your head. Think about reading:

red

You don't get a specific image, just the idea that something will be red. (Though it could mean Communist or something like that but usually you're brain doesn't drift that far unless there have been previous clues that's what the subject is.) Then:

fat

Is fat a noun? Are we talking about "red fat" (whatever that might be -- we assume the rest of the text will explain.) Are we talking about the fat that's cut off meat? Are we talking about fat meaning plump?

juicy

Though juicy usually has something to do with liquid, it still doesn't give a clear picture. But your brain is probably prepared for several words that could fit.

worms.

Finally there's a complete picture. We're always doing that as we read. We build up a picture, tear down parts, build new pieces on. It's complex! And while most people's bodies are passive, the brain sure wouldn't think so! ;-)

Joyce

[Jason & Stephanie]

 

On Apr 11, 2007, at 8:29 AM, Jennifer wrote:

to be writing before

reading, and I was curious if this was more common

than I thought

Last time the subject came up several people mentioned their kids did this too -- and now several more :-)

Kat definitely did it. She wrote well before she could read.>>>

 

*****My kids  wrote before they could read, right now my 7 & 8 yr olds are in the process of reading. What I mean by that is they recognize many words, my ds has quite a sight word recognition and dd is one who sounds words out. They both can write many words by memory and they often ask how to spell something or they just copy words that they see. I actually thought it was typical, I mean they  wrote their own name long before they can read any words. My 4 yr old has tried to form letters and he gets frustrated because they don't look the way he wants, he hasn't tried to write anything lately.

 

Stephanie in TN

 

Kieran 11, Brennan 8, Cassandra 7, Jared 4

 

www.learningthroughliving-stephanie.blogspot.com

 

"There is no difference between living and learning...it is impossible and misleading and harmful to think of them as being separate"
~John Holt in "What Do I Do  Monday"

[mysti...@frontiernet.net]

""worms.""

 

Ewww.... I was not thinking worms!! Steak actually.  So you can imagine how it was when I was tasting the words in my mind.

Elissa

 

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare."
-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

[Michael Herrick]

> She doesn't read, doesn't try to read. But she writes.

That's great. She wants to make her mark! She sees all these magical
words written all over, words that tell adults what to do, words that
consume the attention of adults, and she wants a piece of that action!
Some of my children were also interested in writing before reading. In
a house with four children, it's an important skill to be able to
create a sign that says "Keep Out!"

[Angela Shaw]

My youngest (Lilly) learned to write before she learned to read. Writing to
her pen pals (her older cousins at that time) was her motivation for
learning to write and I read the letters to her that they wrote back.

It was very different from the way her older sister Leigh learned to read.
Leigh was interested in letters from the time she was very small and knew
them all by the time she was 2.5 along with all the sounds that go with
them. She loved to play letter games and also loved to play geography
games.

Lilly had NO interest in playing letter games at all. She learned her
letters when she wanted to write to her pen pals and I would point to each
letter that she needed to make in order to write what she wanted to say and
she would copy it down.

Interesting thing is that they learned to read at almost the same age.
(Recognizing common words and sounding out things) Leigh's early letter
recognition made little difference in her ability to read and Lilly's lack
of letter recognition didn't hold her back at all. Then they both
progressed at a similar pace as they were exposed to more of the written
word. I find it all very interesting.

Angela Shaw
game-en...@adelphia.net
Life is Good!

[Pamela Sorooshian]

Rosie did it, too. A lot. Interesting, too, was that she couldn't really read it back even after she was the one who wrote it down, herself.

-pam

Relay for Life

http://www.acsevents.org/relay/ca/longbeach/pamsoroosh

[Jennifer]

--- Pamela Sorooshian <pamso...@earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Rosie did it, too. A lot. Interesting, too, was that
> she couldn't
> really read it back even after she was the one who
> wrote it down,
> herself.
>
> -pam

Yeah! Same thing with Rachael. She had written several
pages of her "hospital story" (she was in ICU for
weeks when she was four) and whenever she would sit
down to work on it again, she would have me read it to
her so that she knew where she left off.

Jenny

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[Sandra Dodd]

-=-Yeah! Same thing with Rachael. She had written several

pages of her "hospital story" (she was in ICU for
weeks when she was four) and whenever she would sit
down to work on it again, she would have me read it to
her so that she knew where she left off.

-=-

My best friend from college ended up living in the neuro ward of a
hospital for a few years after a broken neck. I used to visit her
once a week for a long, long time.

For a while she had a roommate who had brain damage that caused her
not to be able to read, but she could write just fine, and
beautifully. Nice handwriting, perfect grammar, all still there, but
she couldn't read a word, not of print, not of her own handwriting.

She wrote letters to her kids and friends. When she'd be interrupted
for a procedure or whatever by doctors or nurses (which happens
lots), someone would have to read back to her the last few sentences,
and then she would pick up and write again.

Sandra

[Kathleen Whitfield]

My daughter also has done a lot of writing before she could read well. Even
though she can read virtually anything right now, she tends to write more
than she reads. She also likes practicing her handwriting and is working on
"cursive" right now -- totally self-directed. Her writing is pretty evenly
divided between composing at the computer and on paper.

In addition to writing stories and songs, one thing she's been liking
recently is to make lists of names, including at least one for each letter
of the alphabet. Ideally, she wants names that won't trigger the underlining
function that MS Word does when it doesn't recognize a spelling. So she's
looking for classic, traditional names, many of which she hasn't heard of
much before herself.

Recently, I found her a names site with all the variations on different
names and some of their histories. It was from Googling, which she's
undoubtedly seen me do a lot. Then, she sat down and copied all the names
she liked, sometimes asking me how to pronounce a name. (It's also
interesting to me that some of her favorite names are Agnes and Agatha -- an
insight into the cyclical nature of names and that different sounds seem new
and appealing to different generations.) One thing she does with these lists
of names is names her Polly Pockets with them, but that doesn't seem to be
the sole reason she does it -- she finds pleasure in making her lists.

Later that day, I saw her at the computer and she was Googling things she
was curious about without me. That seems to really fit her learning style
right now. She watches and copies. I have other children who do like talking
about and having me involved when they try different things. She tends to
watch and then do.

She's also told me recently how it's sort of odd for her to be able to read
because once you know how to read you can't *not* read all the words that
are always in front of you. (She turns 9 in July, BTW.)

Kathleen
in SoCal

[nellebelle]

========to make lists of names, including at least one for each letter
of the alphabet.=========

 

We attended a wedding recently where the tables were named, alphabetically with marriage/relationship words-love, forgiveness, compromise.

 

My younger dd also wrote a lot before reading and couldn't read what she'd written.  She also did a lot of mirror image and backward letter writing.

 

Mary Ellen

[Pamela Sorooshian]

What a great description of the way she is learning....this is what we're always trying to get new unschooling parents to do, pay this kind of attention to the way their child "is," rather than trying to get them to be some other way. 

-pam

Relay for Life

http://www.acsevents.org/relay/ca/longbeach/pamsoroosh

[sg.o...@verizon.net]

My daughter did it too. Many of her pre-reading stories and diary
entries are still around, and sometimes she can decipher them. Our
family favorite is "Wons a pot a tiem." I also found the way she wrote
"she" interesting: "sheeye." It sounds like the way someone emphasizes
it when they are trying to get you to really hear the sounds.