I was sitting here reading a paragraph that Lu wrote yesterday
(he's 9yo, in 4th grade):
When I road a horse for the first time, it was fun!
My hat fell twice, and evry one lafed.
Have you road a horse?
If you ever ride a horse be really careful.
My hat fell twice, and evry one lafed.
Have you road a horse?
If you ever ride a horse be really careful.
That's how I read it the first time -
with all my attention on the mistakes.
with all my attention on the mistakes.
Then I remembered that only 10 months ago we were just starting to learn reading and writing in English, and it seemed impossible. How was I ever going to explain why, in English, we have a gazillion different ways to make the "short e" sound, when in Spanish we only have one? Let alone "silent e's", "gh's", "ph's"...
The assignment was to write a paragraph using different types of sentences - declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory. On that front, he did a GREAT job. He also used two commas. And, he wrote twice with a "c" and really with two "l's" (yay!).
Gosh, we've come a long way. I needed to stop and remember where we're coming from and look at everything we've accomplished so far, instead of always focusing on the finish line. Had I been able to see this paragraph when we first started, I would have thought:
"Really? We'll get THAT far in less than a year? Wow!!!"
The assignment was to write a paragraph using different types of sentences - declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory. On that front, he did a GREAT job. He also used two commas. And, he wrote twice with a "c" and really with two "l's" (yay!).
Gosh, we've come a long way. I needed to stop and remember where we're coming from and look at everything we've accomplished so far, instead of always focusing on the finish line. Had I been able to see this paragraph when we first started, I would have thought:
"Really? We'll get THAT far in less than a year? Wow!!!"
Excellent! :) I was talking recently with my 15yo tutoring student, and he was complaining about how hard it is to learn Spanish conjugations. He was under the impression that English is "soooo easy!" LOL! He didn't believe me when I told him that English verbs conjugate as well, and that English is just as hard to learn as Spanish. It wasn't until I actually fully conjugated a few English verbs that he began to understand that *all* languages have difficulties!
ReplyDeleteGood job, Lu!