Dora's learning to write!

In "Dora Learns to Write and in the Process Encounters Punctuation" Pat Cordeiro discusses how Dora's teacher teaches Dora how to properly punctuate her writing [THIS IS A SHORT PIECE, NOT THE TITLE OF AN ENTIRE BOOK, SO IT SHOULD BE IN QUOTATION MARKS INSTEAD OF ITALICS]. Dora's teacher takes a hands-off approach to teaching punctuation. She allows Dora to explore her own writing compared with sample materials and encourages Dora by acting pleased with her, smiling, and saying things such as, “I especially liked the way you stopped when you read the period after …” (44). Instead of telling Dora that a sentence was incorrect, and that a comma was needed instead of a period, she encourages Dora’s development in recognizing syntax. 

Additionally, Dora’s teacher asks her students to talk about writing of theirs [THIS IS A POSSESSIVE PRONOUN], encouraging the writing process and encouraging students to think about how they write and why. When she notices a piece of punctuation Dora is missing, the teacher points out to Dora the sentence and its punctuation using sample materials [its IS A POSSESSIVE PRONOUN]. She does this by asking Dora if she has ever taken note of it. This helps Dora learn to pay close attention to the smaller details of writing. Dora’s teacher also used her hands to help Dora visualize words after she noticed how words ran together in Dora’s piece of writing. Dora’s teacher introduced the students to more complex concepts as they developed, and she did so in a way that did not humiliate the students.

Dora’s teacher did not give much direct instruction. Instead, she allowed her questioning strategies to push the students to the next concept in punctuation and writing. Also, instead of pointing out errors in their writing, she showed the students examples of how sentences and paragraphs are constructed in published writing. This technique allows the students to learn from examples instead of learning that they are wrong. In fact, the students aren’t exactly wrong when they make what advanced writers would consider errors. Instead, the students are exploring and developing their writing skills. What may look like an errors is simply part of developing strong writing. 

The teacher also made use of student groups to help them come to a consensus on writing together. Instead of going around and telling the students what they were not understanding, she let the students learn from one another. She also didn't point out whose writing was wrong [WHOSE IS A POSSESSIVE PRONOUN]. This helps the students in the future become interdependent learners. 

Also, the teacher used modeling to show students new punctuation concepts. For example, when she asked Danny to read aloud in sentences, she demonstrated how to do it by reading aloud herself. This introduced the students to the concept of sentences and the period. She did the same when she showed Dora how to revise her writing by putting a period in the proper place. She then asked Dora to go over her writing and “see if she could” (42) add the other necessary periods.

It takes Dora a long time to develop sentence-end marking because she is learning to write. She already knows how to speak and listen, and thus knows what she wants to say. However, she doesn’t have the knowledge to make those words into sentences, because that is not how people speak to each other. Dora has a difficult time learning sentence-end marking because, developmentally, she is not to the stage of understanding how written language works. She also does not understand the concept of a sentence continuing onto another page.