p. 25 | A *Suggestion for Teaching Writing

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Nov 7, 1907

A Suggestion for Teaching Writing

DURING the first three years of my experience in teaching, my beginners readily learned to write by merely watching me write the lesson on the blackboard. I helped them a little, guiding their hands as they made their first letters, and correcting their mistakes. I did not have much difficulty in teaching them to write, and in a short time they wrote their lessons without any special help from me.

The fourth year, however, I had a beginning pupil who seemed to find it very difficult to distinguish one letter from another. When given a pencil and some paper, or when sent to the blackboard to write the sentence she had been reading, she would write a line of m’s, and seem quite satisfied. I did not censure or criticize but smiled encouragingly, and then tried to show her that her writing was not quite like mine. When I guided her little hand, she wrote quite well, but as soon as she was left to herself, she again would write nothing but m’s.

At the end of the first week, one could not know, from her writing, what she had been trying to write; for it did not in the least resemble the copy which she was expected to reproduce.

I was not discouraged, however, for she was a bright child, and I knew that if I could devise the right plan for teaching her, she would soon be able to write. I then thought of a plan which I decided to try. We both went to the blackboard; each took a piece of crayon, and as I slowly drew the lines of a letter, I had the little girl follow very closely with her crayon, making her letter near mine. As I drew a line upward, she drew a line upward; when I brought my crayon downward, she brought hers downward; and when I had finished my letter, she had hers completed also. We wrote one letter over and over in this way until she could make it without my assistance.

After we had written letters in this way for two or three days, we wrote words, and continued in this way for two weeks. Later whenever she had a new letter to write, I helped her in the same way, and in a short time she was able, without my aid, to write all the letters, and any word that I wrote on the blackboard.

She made marked improvement in her writing from week to week, and at the end of the six months she had progressed in all her lessons beyond the expectations of teacher and parents. *