Focusing on Children's Strengths

When working on literacy with children it is important to focus on the strengths, instead of "what they can't do". If you as a teacher are focusing on what your students cannot do, are you really helping them learn and develop as literate people? The answer is no, and that is why we need to focus on what a child can do. When we see what a child can do, we get a better understanding of where the child is at in regards to reading and writing. This helps us to know what we can work on with the child, and what particular areas are their strengths, and what areas they may need support in. In Marie Clay's article Running Records she says "Typically children's progress in learning to read is measured by testing the number of letters, or sounds, or words they know" (Clay, 3). So for a child to be considered literate, does this mean that they must know every letter, every sound, and be able to spell every word? NO. It is important that teachers praise students for where they are at. If a child writes                           

                                        "Th kat iz qt." 

does this mean that the child is not literate because they clearly cannot spell the words exactly how they should be? NO. From this sentence, we can see that the child knows that words in a sentence go from left to right, so therefore has directionality. The student is sounding out the words that they are spelling. He/she knows that there is a th /th/ sound in the word "the". In the word cat, he/she knows that there is an "at" at the end producing the /at/ sound. The student knows that there is a period at the end of a sentence. They know that there is capitalization that occurs at the beginning of the sentence. Do you see how easy it is to find the strengths in this simple four word sentence? From this simple sentence we can learn so much about what the child already knows. If we focus so much on every little detail we lose sight of what the child already knows and understands. In Cusumano's article entitled "Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members About Young Children's Writing" it is stated that "in the early stages of learning to write, children don’t feel constrained by conventions as adults do, and they experiment with size, shape, and direction of letters" (p.12). This speaks true to focusing on what children can do. They may not know every single rule like adults do because they are not experts yet. They are just figuring themselves out as readers and writers. They experiment with different ways of making meaning and producing. To give them proper opportunities for growth and to further develop as readers as readers, don't focus on what they can't do, focus on what they can.