fostel@ncsu.UUCP (11/17/83)
Writing before reading does have the attractive feature of encouraging
better creativity, but it strikes me as craziness for every other reason.
A much better way to do this and spred cheer at the same time is to help
your child write letters to relatives, G.P's being esp appreciative.
Let the child dictate the letter, and the parent write it down. The
creative aspect is preserved, but the skills and co-ordination are not
needed. If you want to excersie the writing skills, do that by having
the child copy the letter over, or you dictate it back, slowly, perhaps
letter by letter. This lets them concentrate on the logistics of the
dexterity and on the creative aspects seperately. Don't try to do both
at once or the kid will just fuzz out.
I guess my opinion of Montessori schools is accurate ....
----GaryFostel----mark@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/21/83)
What are the 'every other reason' that you think that writing before
reading is crazy?
As an adult life comparison, it is easier to speak a foreign language
than to understand one, you can always send Morse code faster than
you can listen to it, etc. I think that writing before reading
is the most natural: you aren't burdened with understanding
anyone else's idea of spelling, or grammar, or storyline.
Dictating and having someone else write it down is MUCH LESS
satisfying. You haven't done it yourself, your parent really
did it for you. You are still very dependent instead of having
fostered a sense of independent accomplishment. Perhaps you have to see
the wonderful stories and bright faces that result from this method
to really appreciate it. (Have you tried the dictating letters method?
It is fun for the the child for a little while, but soon wears off.
And they have to keep waiting for mommy or daddy to have time...)
My (good) impression about Montessori schools are reinforced by this.--
spoken: mark weiser
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!mark
CSNet: mark@umcp-cs
ARPA: mark.umcp-cs@CSNet-Relaymason@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Mason) (11/23/83)
The obvious solution to the problem of kids having trouble writing, at
least to this audience, is to have them type into your full screen editor,
it would also be a good test of user friendlyness for the net.cog-eng
people. I certainly expect my (future/maybe) children to be able to type
& mouse before they can write/before they go to school.
--
-- Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG,
{utzoo,linus,cornell,watmath,ihnp4,allegra,floyd,mhsta,decwrl,
decvax,uw-beaver,ubc-vision}!utcsrgv!masonmark@cbosgd.UUCP (11/28/83)
re: typing into a screen editor I'm pretty skeptical about this. For one thing, the print size on my screen is pretty small, and small children need to see big print. (Doman has us starting with 5 inch tall letters in red.) The second problem is that a small child has trouble with the individual keys on the keyboard. My son loves to type, but he mostly types by leaning the heel of his hand on the keyboard and letting the keyboard auto-repeat. Efforts to get him to use one finger and hit one key so far have been futile. I don't know the age at which he'll be able to handle keys, but that TI commercial (why are they still advertising?) shows a 3 year old just learning to hit one key. Doman claims a child can read BEFORE HE CAN TALK. I'm not sure I completely believe this, since it's nearly impossible to measure comprehension, but I do think training the visual pathway to read should be no harder than training the audio pathway to understand speech (maybe even easier - OCR is easier than speech recognition for a machine) and there's no doubt that a 1 year old can understand a good deal of speech. Given a bitmapped terminal into which you can load a very large font, and either a child who can use a keyboard or a mouse and a keyboard drawn on the screen, a screen editor might be interesting to try.
ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (11/30/83)
#R:ncsu:-240600:hpfcla:32700001:000:822 hpfcla!ajs Nov 28 08:59:00 1983 Yup, I'm optimistic too about my daughter's chances to read and write before starting school. She's six months old and already enjoys banging on the keyboard at home. I whipped up a cute little program (I mean LITTLE, we're talking five minutes) and she'll be growing into it for months. What it does is take the last key typed and plot it on the screen BIG, with some beeps while it works. (It helps to have an HP9845, whose LABEL statement already knows how to draw ASCII characters.) Right now she hasn't connected pressing any one key with what happens, but she gets a thrill nonetheless out of the noises and pictures when she punches keys. Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"