Chapters 4 and 5

Chapter four talked a lot about expanding a child's writing and encouraging him or her to add more details to his or her writing. It brought up the idea of using the 5 senses again. I really liked the idea about when you are writing to think about not only what you saw but what you heard and even, if it made an impression, write about what you tasted, felt, or smelt. I think it is very important to get children to think about details in their writing because in the long run it will really help them become better writers.
A lot of the things in this chapter are things I wish I would have thought about more as I was growing up and learning how to write. I had never thought about thoughts and feelings and how you can affiliate your thoughts with your emotions. Writing is such a powerful way to express your emotions and I hope someday I can emphasize that to my students. Also, using dialogue is a great way to add detail to your writing so you are not just using descriptors. My favorite line I read from this chapter was, "readers are supposed to fill in some information with their own visualizing; we wouldn't want every single thing described for us. But I find that most students are still working on offering the reader enough details to create a healthy balance." I feel this is very true because we read to create an image in our heads and we cannot create these images without some detail but we, as the reader, still want to imagine some things on our own.
Chapter five was all about teaching children the craft of punctuation. I am very worried about finding a good way to teach this to my students because grammar and punctuation are what I had the most trouble learning while I was growing up. I am still not the best with it but as a child I really struggled trying to understand all the punctuation rules. Learning this stuff is so important because it will keep coming up all throughout one's life. I still have to edit all of my papers and make sure that my punctuation and grammar is correct. This is such an important thing to learn to gain respect from others because using proper English will get you much further in life.