Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

For this blog post I am going to share an article and give some personal stories about my children because they have learning disabilities (LD).  The article I am going to share is "All Children Can Write" by Donald Graves. Donald Graves is to be considered the father of how the process of writing for children. This paper focuses on the fact that poor writing skills has more to do with what a child knows. The example that is in the paper is about a child who would cover their paper and have a lot of black smudges all over because of him trying to spell. Many children do not realize that writing is not just something that you need to know but it is a form of communication. "There was not attempt to connect his writing with the communication of ideas" (Graves, 1985, p.1). When the correct approach is taken children understand this but with the wrong instruction they see it as just something they have to do. When the child was diagnosed with visual motor problems the approach then they took a different approach to helping this child write. The teacher took time to find out what he was interested in. The teacher allowed the boy to teach them about something he was interested in which help change is perception about writing. "The writing-process approach to teaching focuses on children's ideas and helps children teach the teacher or other children in the class what they know, with emphasis first given to ideas and clarifying" (Graves, 1985, p.2). The realization that writing can help a child to communicate with other children. When children understand that their writing is being read by other children can help them understand the importance of written communication. The two basic principles that have been gained by the research is that teachers teach best by showing and the environment must be structured. What I gained from this article is that teaching writing is about showing children the meaning of writing. My children struggle with writing and find it time consuming.

My oldest is ADHD and one of the problems is that sloppy hand writing is just a fact of life. The reason is because it takes too long. She understand writing is a communication form but it is hard to spend the time writing because it takes a long time. Attention span is a struggle. My middle child struggles with writing because she has short-term  memory issues and she had fine motor issue early in life. She is very frustrated when she writes because it is a struggle and time consuming . Both my children's writing difficulties flow over into reading for one reason or the other. Because of Donald Graves research my children are taught differently how to write. They are not treated bad or talked differently about. Children all learn on a different level I found this article interesting because it was 35 years of work and they made many strives to help impove the experience of children learning to write.
Reference
Graves, D (1985) All children can write, Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/6204/?theme=print

Personal Research Journey

This is going to be a journey learning about how to create a research simulation. The topic that I want to focus on is RTI (response to intervention). RTI is a personal topic for me because of my children. I have had many experiences with not getting my children diagnosed or recognize that there is a delay until it is too late or we have missed the window. My 6 year old had a 90 minute seizure when she was 18 months old. We have been see more and more affects from this seizure as she enters school. My family is consider middle income so we do not always get the help that we need. When the professionals in the school system tested her since she was 2 years old she has always tested above average. The problem is she has sort term memory problems and she struggles with writing. She had fine motor skills problems from birth. I had to take classes to become a Developmental intervention assistant in order to help my own daughter because I could not get the professionals to see what I had been witnessing.  There are many other delays she has but these are the big ones. So, I want to learn about context at subsequent application of RTI. I want to answer the question of what should be the time period between discovering that the instruction is not responsive to a child's needs and development? How and when and by whom? I am tired of the line she will grow out of it. My sister has a 5 year old that struggled to walk normally and speak normally and she is just now getting the proper help. My sister is also low income and her children have been in preschools and on help programs but no one would take the step to help it was always she will grow out of it. We have these great programs but children are still falling through the cracks. I want to understand why. I want to learn from this course on how I find out why and how to conduct a research so I can answer why to help children who are not receiving the proper help. What I have gained from completing the charts so far is that research in the early childhood field is very complicated compared to doing a scientific experiment in organic chemistry. When I was 18 I was a biology major and I would conduct and do research projects in organic chemistry. Finding reliable research and that many of the research in early childhood is qualitative not quantitative. Yes, there is many research conducted with quantitative date in the early childhood. In this field you have many variables to consider. When studying a child you have many things change in one day. I have gained that developing a research simulation takes many considerations and understanding all the variables. It is not like picking 2 chemicals and watching their reactions in different situations. These are the things that I have gained so far in this course. I am looking forward to guidance and insights from the information in the course and colleagues.