Why do parent’s worry about mirror writing?

It is important to understand why parents and carers should show such concern about mirror and backward writing. They are curious about the reasons for mirror writing but also they are worried that when their child is writing backwards that it is an indication of an underlying learning disability or issue that is yet to fully manifest itself. It is vital that professionals have the knowledge about the facts around mirror and backward writing to pass on at parent conferences and parents evening meetings and to ensure that as far as is possible that parent’s feel their concerns are being listened to, understood and answered.

Queries about mirror and backward writing should be addressed in a factual but simple to understand fashion and professionals should take care to minimise jargon when explaining why children may write from back to front as they are learning to write their name and other words.

Young children regard writing and drawing as the same task and if you have made it fun for them to make marks on paper as a teacher or a parent, they will hopefully be keen to do both as they begin the process of learning to mark make. Children in their early years will see writing and drawing as exactly the same thing and an opportunity to express themselves – and with expression, there comes freedom. They may draw a house with 2 windows for example or they may choose to put a chimney. They may not always draw the house in the same way of course because it is their house and their own form of expression.

Similarly, they may choose to draw something in the middle of the paper and something else on the bottom right hand corner – and who cares at this stage?

Young children’s very first marks on paper (which in an adult world is often labelled as scribble) is the very beginning of a process known as emergent writing. This is a journey which ultimately should settle down so that their writing is something which begins to represent what are more universally understood and readable as words and sentences. This journey, like all emergent processes, takes time and will encounter many milestones along the way to its final destination.

During the process of emergent writing, the young writer will experiment with different marks and eventually letters and write them in a random way upon the paper. Actually, the writing is not necessarily random to the child as they know the process that is in their heads as they create it but to the untrained eye, it can look chaotic and not make much sense. Letters may be all over the paper at first, some may be next to each other of course but there are likely to be many letters scattered all over the place.

To the child, it does not matter where these letters are placed and this is a perfectly normal stage of emergent writing.

Laterality

Young children begin to develop an understanding of what feels and looks right for them in relation to left and right from a very early age but as no two children are the same, this understanding can take longer in some than others. This concept is called laterality.

Teachers and parents often witness children swapping their crayons or even scissors from one hand to the next and are baffled as to why this may be the case. The answer is simple. It is a stage of lateral development. Just as some children seem to know immediately what feels right for them and stick to it, there are as many who continue to repeat the swapping, exploring and experimenting until they have refined their fine motor skills to an extent where they feel comfortable and correct.

Young children in the early years preschool are developing their sense of left and right. They are beginning to experience and make sense of the world and their own movements through a body which has two sides if you like. It is really important to remember that this understanding is an internal process for them and that an experiential curriculum where they are able to explore this concept through play is the best way for them to develop this.

Mirror or backward writing begins to manifest itself in some children when they reach the point where they are writing clusters of letters together to write words. Teachers and parents often see this occurring at the earliest point of teaching and encouraging children to write their own names. Children are often inappropriately expected to write their own names when their emergent writing is not showing signs that they are ready to understand why in English we write from left to right.

In addition to this, we can send out confusing messages by accepting their emergent writing however it is written or placed on the paper yet we constantly ‘correct’ or point out the flaws when they mirror write their own name or write it backwards!

Directionality

Directionality is a concept which manifests itself as the idea of laterality matures. In essence, it is the next stage of development which allows a child to begin to understand that not only do things happen using different hands or sides of our body but also we are able to control certain movements using a certain side of our body.

When it comes to the early writing process, a child must have reached the stage of understanding directionality to appreciate that their writing must go from right to left (in English) and that letters are formed in specific ways. To teach letter formation and for a child to understand it, they must be able to grasp the very concepts of top to bottom, left to right and up to down. Most importantly, with directionality comes the understanding of backwards and forwards. How many times do parents and teachers say to young children – ‘look, you have written that backwards!’

There is absolutely no point in telling a child something is backwards if they are still at a lateral stage of understanding! You may as well be speaking another language!

To go back to the drawing analogy, teachers and parents are unlikely to comment on the fact that a child has drawn a car facing left or a car facing right. So children can become very confused when they have a rule applied to one area of their mark making (writing) and no rules in other area like drawing!

Mirror writing

It is now perhaps easier to understand why some children go through a stage of writing backwards. Writing that is totally readable, like their name for example, when you place a mirror alongside it.

Children who mirror write are either yet to develop their sense of directionality because of their age or stage of development. Directionality usually manifests itself no later than around 60 months but of course some children will mature quicker than this – others will mature later. The development of directionality may be delayed until much later and a child may show other issues in their communication and learning as they reach the age of 6 years or so and then this should be investigated as a cause for concern.

Mirror writing will occur in some children if they are pushed to write in a formal way before they are ready. If you give them a name card to copy their name from, it is possible they will write all of the letters in the correct order but the wrong direction because they have a concept of right to left which is still developing.

If this is the case, a child will simply see that they have written their name. They will not understand why it needs to be a certain direction. After all, it is their name isn’t it? They can see it and read it so why can’t you?

Coupled with this is a lack of early reading experiences. Children are gaining experience in so many areas of learning and just like adults, they need enough experience to reflect and ask themselves ‘does this look right?’ Give children plenty of time to read alongside adults in your home or setting. Talk about how the print looks and as they begin to read themselves have fun by having them read sentences backwards and in the wrong direction. All of this will help their early writing and sense of directionality.

As children begin to learn their phonemes during a well planned phonics program, encourage them to sound out words – some of which won’t make sense backwards and this will also help them to apply the idea of checking their own words and writing to see if it makes sense.

It is vital that as teachers and parents we model the reading and writing process so that children can begin to form their own blueprint of the process. Always make a point to explicitly draw attention to where you are starting to read from (the right) and where you are starting to write from (the right hand side).

When children have established a sense of directionality but are still appearing to struggle, then putting a sticker or making a mark where you want them to start writing is a tried and tested model that has been proven to work in my experience.

Teaching left and right explicitly is also possible and necessary with young writers. I have used a stamp as a tattoo on their left hand to remind them that this is the side they need to remember to write from.

In summary, I tell my parents that mirror writing in isolation and with no other evidence of developmental delay is not a sign in itself that should cause them or I concern. I share with them the plans of what I am intending to do to help their child develop a sense of direction and I tell them ways in which they can support this at home. It is important not to make a big issue of it with the child because in time, the issue corrects itself and the child gains experience to self correct and notice the direction of their own writing.

Other articles by this early education specialist

Should the use of worksheets be banned in early years education?

Planning for snow theme in Early Years Preschool

Viewing is one of the most important skills in communication because it is a way of portraying information in the database, thus giving more emphasis to the importance of mental faculty that allows a perceiver to delineate or give details about a target that is inaccessible to normal senses due to time, distance or shielding.

Of all the skills in communication, viewing can help the global audiences watch their favorite shows either in movies or in televisions, as well as other forms of viewing devices. 

According to Center for Media Literacy, the literate reader, however, does not stop with converting printed words into ideas. He/she contemplates those ideas, and carries on an internal dialogue with the author, congratulating the latter for brilliant insights or condemning him/her for outrageous opinions.

The literate TV viewer carries on a similar dialogue with the creators of a program, congratulating or condemning them for everything from the sublime to the ridiculous.

At this point, reading and critical viewing, literacy and television literacy, become synonymous. Both the reader and the viewer learn to be active — to challenge, analyze, react, explore, and understand the medium, whether it’s a printed page or an illuminated TV set.

The Princess and the Pea is a fascinating fairytale for Early Years and preschool children and like all of the best fairytales is surprisingly simple. It makes an excellent EYFS themed topic unit and can cover all areas of learning in the EYFS framework.

Planning ideas around the ‘Princess and the Pea’ should begin with getting to know the fairytale.

Literacy planning in the EYFS and preschool is often the biggest challenge for teachers and practitioners but using the Princess and the Pea fairytale as a themed topic should be enjoyable for adults and children alike.

Here are some great early year’s literacy planning ideas to get you started.

Communication, language and literacy (CLLD)

·         Try telling the story to the children without using a book. Story telling is a great way to show children that we don’t always need a book to help us tell a fairy tale. You can concentrate on facial expressions, adding in your own exciting vocabulary and move in and around the children so that they really feel they are part of the traditional fairy tale.

·         Tell the story using props or puppets. You do not have to have fancy puppets – stick puppets will do the job just as well and prompt the children to make their own character puppets in the creative area later on. Props like pictures will help the children visually build the sequence of the story in their mind and having a dried pea or some sponges to build the mattresses on a bed made of wooden blocks will help to keep the children’s interest.

·         Make your own simplified version of the tale on a word document to create a book to share at story time. Use clip art or images to illustrate the stages of the story. This way, you can concentrate on making sure that you have lots of high frequency key words, CVC words and words related to the letters and sounds phonics phases.

·         Read the story as a group and block out some key words. You can block out the whole word or part of a word depending on the level your children are at in reading with support.

·         Use your homemade book for guided or individual reading sessions. If you have selected your words carefully, this will also make an excellent assessment opportunity.

·         Have an additional homemade book without the text and ask the children to help you put the pages in the right order. This will help with sequencing the story and allow plenty of opportunity for talking and discussion in pairs and in a group.

·         Add your own text to the homemade book as part of a shared and modelled writing activity. After a few days of the above input, children will be able to recall key events in the story and you can model segmenting for spelling and think aloud as you ask for their help for content, spelling and sentence structure.

·         Concentrate on one particular image – for example the castle on a stormy night. Use this as a starting point to create a list of stormy weather words. This will help children to extend their vocabulary to include words like blustery etc. This is an excellent link to those of you doing a topic or theme on the weather.

·         Add language to the pictures through the use of speech bubbles. Ask the children what they think the characters might be saying. For more able children, you could use thought bubbles and write what the characters may be thinking at certain points of the story.

·         Give the children some large sheets of paper and pens and ask them to draw a story map. Model this first and the children will soon get the idea of a simple story map or storyboard. This will help them to structure their writing later on.

·         Children could design a wanted poster for a ‘real princess’ to help the prince in his search. They could write instructions on how to tell if a princess is real or not by describing the process of placing the pea on the bed and putting the mattresses on top of one another.

·         Ask the children plenty of open questions about the story. When the girl knocked at the door, she didn’t look like a real princess – why do you think this was?

·         Make a small world area to develop their retelling of the Princess and the Pea. Use figures to represent the queen, king, prince and princesses. Washing up sponges or cloths can be cut to size to make the bedding and finer cloth to make some sheets. Use dolls house furniture including a bed. If you have a play castle then this is idea but think outside the box by adding some smaller construction materials like wooden blocks so that children can build their own castle for the story.

·         In order to engage boys and to make the tale more appealing to the batman fans in your class – concentrate on the aspects of the castle. Talk about the structure of the castle, the bats that flew around it at night and the heroic aspects of the Prince in the story.

·         Play around with the idea of modifying the story – read the traditional story book and then present your own version – the princess and the cabbage/apple/peanut. Children love to hear variations on a tale and find it fun to add in their own ideas. This will help them with their own creative writing process as they realise they can make up their own versions of traditional fairytales.

·         Use technology to watch a video version of the Princess and the Pea. There are several versions available on the internet and will bring the story to life through animation.

·         Take photographs of the small world play at various stages and in them up for display. You can annotate them or ask the children to write captions to explain which part of the story the photographs relate to.

·         Give children the opportunity to make their own Princess and the Pea books. Use zig-zag, shaped or regular paper. For children who are at the emergent stage of writing, ask them to choose one part of the story and make several full books from their efforts.

As with any literacy activity, if you want children to read and write successfully it is vital that you immerse them in the subject and show them many different ways to approach retelling the fairytale.

Other helpful EYFS Planning ideas and resources on other themed topics can be found below:

The Tiger who came to Tea – Early Years Planning Guide

Weather themed topic Early Years Foundation Stage planning ideas

Chinese New Year Planning in the EYFS Early Years themed topic

Windy Day planning ideas EYFS Early Years topic theme

Cover via Amazon

It is sad to know that over 40 million people in our country cannot read above the eighth grade level. Additionally, a little under half that amount cannot read above the fifth grade level. These people are considered to be illiterate.

Build on skills 

Our children are educated from elementary, to middle and then into high school. At each grade level they are suppose to master new and different skills and build on the ones that they have previously learned. Take reading, easy words are learned and formed into sentences. Then, with advancement of each grade level thereafter, that skill is further strengthened. Building on these skills is essential, year after year during their school years.

If reading is not properly taught to a student or for some reason, the student has not mastered that level, then an illiteracy problem can arise if the child is continually advanced into a higher grade. Not only illiteracy, but many times behind that comes failure in math, science and history. The student has a higher rate of dropping out of school.

Not all students drop out because they cannot read. There are other reasons. But, with statistics so high on the amount of Americans who cannot read and who are classified as being illiterate, this seems like one of the most prominent reasons for their illiteracy. Somehow, during the young years of school, it seems that these Americans did not learn what they needed too to be able to function in a literate capacity in our society when they became adults.

Everyday, some 7,000 of our own children become high school drop outs. Out of the students who stay in school until they are seniors, 20% of them cannot read. So, would it be a surprise to know that 85% of juveniles who break the law are at some level illiterate? It shouldn’t be.

Immigrants

In 2008, illegal immigrants and legal immigrants cost our country 346 billion dollars a year for social programs. It is now 2011. Many of them cannot read English and are at the level of impoverishment.

Financial Poverty

Every year, the budgets for all of the social programs in our country, such as welfare, social services and free school lunches just seems to grow larger and larger. Children continue to grow up in poverty. Why? Because within many of these households, their parents cannot make enough money to financially support them. Millions of these Americans and or immigrants are functionally illiterate. They cannot even read this article nor can they fill out a simple job application. What employer is going to hire someone who cannot read the company’s own job description? Most likely, not many.

Education Secretary wants personal finance taught as early as kindergarten　

Education Secretary Arne Duncan feels that personal finance should be taught in our public school system as early as a child enters kindergarten.

Does this make any sense?

Considering the levels of illiteracy, does implementing such a program right now even make sense? Why not make sure that all the aspects of what is causing our country’s illiteracy be aggressively tackled and defeated first? If an illiterate person cannot read, how can he or she figure out his or her financial status?

As a nation, we need to gain control over our illiteracy problem. Without doing so, our great nation is going to continue to suffer. With all of the wealth within our country, illiteracy causes our society so much pain and hardship through poverty and or criminal behavior. As Americans, we deserve for our government to tackle the most pressing and most fundamental problem first, illiteracy.

There are several really good websites offering educational tools to fit the national curriculum which have been designed to make learning both fun and interesting, thus capturing the child’s attention and encouraging educational development.

You can find fraction packs filled with pizza and cake cards in numeracy products and are broken into units which make it easier for your child to learn the basic fractions .Many parents find today’s curriculum so different from when they were at school and it can often be quite baffling when a child requires help with a piece of homework that is completely unfamiliar to the parent.The packs are arranged in vibrant, eye-catching designs incorporating fun figures and objects like flowers, bats, caterpillars and balloons.The numeracy playground wall stickers can also be utilized at home, perhaps in the flower garden or even on your child’s sleeping area wall and the bright and alluring pictures of aliens, rainbows, footballs and butterflies will grab your child’s curiosity and help them begin to know the rules of number bonds, number lines and multiplication.The literacy understanding card products cover letters, early words and spelling patterns to encourage spelling, reading and phonics and can be used at home, in the classroom or even outside on the playground walls.Learning should be fun and should also be something that children want to do not something they feel forced into.There are lots of coins in a money pack,your child can easily learn the basics of numeracy with the help of that coinsifor example they can easily calculate the price of their favourite food items and the amount of change they will receive after buying the yummy ice cream or the big cheese burger.The teaching resources are user friendly and easy to understand and are a tried and tested means of encouraging your child’s learning as well as maybe picking up the odd useful bit of information yourself.

Maths for children

By: Wendy Ghannam, M.A./B.A.

In the area of fostering better literacy objectives with young people, I have confronted the "torture" of earning a young lad's interest in reading and writing at the elementary school levels. I have had numerous instances where I have literally wanted to pull my hair out of my head, as I have had had numerous instances where I have wanted to literally pull my hair out of my head, as I have had the unfortunate position to cajole, provoke and antagonize a certain breed of male "curmudgeon" in order to garner the respect and outright interest in appreciating reading assignments for their scope and academic worth.  Thus, it is with great interest that I share my years of knowledge and individual capacity to counter a young man's inability to want to learn to read-for his own benefit, as well as for his parents' concern in the matter.

Yes, we have an illiteracy problem in America today-and I have been writing about this ill-fated situation in recent days.  However, when I see the educational system for what it is providing "our boys" in wanting to learn to read, and the resources used in this caliber format, I shudder in discontent as I am in complete opposition with many of the programs that are functionally not working for these "lovable rugrats" today in most schools around the country.  A boy needs to be "hands-on" from the time he is an infant.  A boy needs to be seriously involved in the presentation of any literacy element placed in front of his little being!  Boys are not like girls-they cannot sit still long enough to be taught by an adult who constantly supervises and shows extreme distaste for rude behaviors and crude oppositional remarks. Yet, in our educational system today boys are told to:  "Sit down, shut up and memorize!"  We have forgotten how these little urchins assemble the information in their little brains and yet we expect them to be able to decipher words and phrases by the time they are six! 

In context, we must find other avenues of instruction which will systematically enable young boys to learn to read. Over the years I have singlehandedly taught elementary-aged boys to READ.  I have taught them to read better than their instructional aides at school, and I have done this as a measurement factor for my own sanity.  I believe that all boys are able to read-the problem is how we teach them to overcome their lack of self-confidence and steer them into a different realm, whereby they desire to read and to be read to.  How do I do this?

I sit with each boy-BEFORE he has begun to anticipate what he thinks about me and the reading lesson at hand.  I find out what he ENJOYS in life.  I purposely ask him about himself-educators don't do this anymore.  

Today, American educators are concerned with testing, job tenure, facilitation within the bounds of educational guidelines, and the God-feared NCLB.  Something so simple and yet something which is genuinely needed happens when I sit with a young boy who has shown an adverse reaction to learning to read.  Whether he enjoys insects, dinosaurs, outer space, or the Washington Redskins, I get to the heart of what is embellished inside his little heart and we talk.  We talk about not just what he is interested in, but how he wants to learn to read.  Together we work on sentence structure that incorporates everything he likes to read about, and trust me-this will happen and it will happen often.  One day you will sit with the young man and suddenly he will put the words together into phrases and the phrases into sentences and then he will look up at you and say, "Wow, I just read that. I really did-and you taught me!" This instructional manner I have learned when teaching young boys how to read.  It is a simple approach and I have seen so many boys rise from the lower academic ranks up into the higher grade levels reading and appreciating the written word because I have used it extensively.  Good luck, I know you can do it too. 

www.ReadingWagonUSA.org        

 
ONE WAY TO DEAL WITH AMERICA’S ILLITERACY PROBLEM!
 
America has a larger-than-life problem on its hands that is evolving into an unparalleled crescendo of national awareness into a full-fledged crisis.  Over 40 percent of Americans do not read well–they are, in fact, dysfunctionally illiterate.  That means that nearly 40 percent can only read at the 3rd/4th grade school levels! Many articles have been written about this sad state of affairs over the years, and educators have been pinned down and factually accused of misdeeds and malfeasance–but literally no one has come to grips to announce how this could be handled by “trickling” down into the communities at large and target the affected populations and change the statistics overall.  I believe there is a no-nonsense, common-sense approach to the problem and how to handle it effectively for the greater good of our nation, as a whole.   
 
Research shows that sub-proficient literacy skills lead to sub-par grades and low achievement levels, which can then ultimately lead to profound drop-out rates in America’s schools.  As well, our struggling readership problem will soon become a national albatross that will significantly undermine and destroy our nation as a whole.  Added to that, America will definitively no longer be able to compete in the global marketplace if this continuing lethargy is allowed to continue unabated. America is literally building its own coffin because so many are ill-prepared to become strategically successful in the marketplace arena because they do not read well.
 
I would begin this effort on a state-wide scope.  If communities across this nation had access to a fleet of motorized vehicles containing books and learning resources–these vehicles would then be driven separately into at-risk communities to “work with the kids’reading problems”–then why couldn’t this approach be made the catalyst to put a huge, significant dent into the illiteracy problem today as we know it?  I am talking about a systematic approach to bring educated, mature, concerned adults into the framework of giving back to their communities and working with children to improve their reading comprehension and writing skills.  My vision is to use the above-mentioned idea to bring America out of its lethargy and its societal shame in this manner.  The technology is there, the awareness is there, and the need is most definitively there:  All components that would well make a difference in how our society treats and works with its young children as a generational font to improve reading skills, and as a determined segment of operational specialists who want to make a difference in the communities they live and work in.
 
Children need to read and to be read to on a daily basis.  They need the focus of attentive adults to help them cope endear the pressures of their academic lives–and learning how to read better will unceremoniously present them bi er-than-life options down the road, as they enter each year academically prepared for subsequent work products/assignments and to be able to debate life’s transitions/circumstances, as well the politics of choice and segmentation in society.  7,000 kids drop out of our schools everyday across this nation and in most of these instances it is because of their inability to cope with academics–READING.  The question becomes:  Where have we been all this length of time concerning this fundamental problem we are witnessing today?
 
The business concept mentioned above could feasibly work for all ages of children.  It could work with all ethnicity factors.  It could work within communities that are predominantly ESL-focused.  It could work well despite the politics of education, and any/all turf egotistical “wars” being experienced inside communities today.  It could, as a matter of fact help bring this country out of its economic demise and back into the quadrant of national significance and pride.  This idea could revamp the earnestness  in which children “want to learn” how to read (and write better) in principle and context.  What are we waiting for, America?  Our children need us to render them the dedication and concern for them today and for their educational futures tomorrow.  This concept could extend not only an awareness in literacy for the sake of reading, but it could promote the aspect of being a ”vehicle” to help communities who are in dire for improved tutoring for their children.  “We have the capability, let’s share it and let’s get it off and running!  America’s children cannot wait any longer.”
 
 
Wendy W. Ghannam
Chantilly, Virginia         
 

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Every 15th of September is declared by the world as literacy day. This is an event celebrated worldwide. Its essence is to educate and sensitive people on the need for knowledge acquisition to boost their being.

What is literacy? According Encarta Dictionary, “Literacy is the ability to read and write to a competent level. Skill acquisition in particular subject: knowledge of or competence in a subject or area of activity”.

It is therefore clear to say that literacy is relative as such it must be stated the aspect of it that we want to concentrate on. In the context of the definition above it would be difficult to say precisely that someone is illiterate in its fullest. We all are literate in different spheres of life

For instance a blacksmith who does not know how to read and write where do we classify him? What about the farmer and drivers who drives our vehicles etc. Do we say because they cannot read and write as such they are illiterate?

I want to belief that the literacy in question is on how to rid our nations and world globally free from errors of speaking and writing. If this is taken, then we now will dwell on that.

This day is worth celebrating in the west to an extent but it is a façade of normalcy in some of the Africa zones especially in Nigeria, where the rate of illiteracy is still on the increase. For you to acquire knowledge you must be willing to put certain things in place to facilitate effective learning strategies and follow up.

Education is a right and not a privilege. This is one of the fundamental things that any nation big and small supposes to give to its citizenry. But in actuality does it go that way? In Nigeria for instance you pay through your nose to make sure you are educated while as in theory, it is supposed to be free. Then the question to be asked is who is fooling who?

The recent increment in school fees of some tertiary institutions in the nation is indicative of the fact that the idea of literacy for all in the year 2015 or there about is a matter of rhetoric. Education as a matter of fact is elitist and not meant for the common man on the street.

If truly, it is all encompassing, then how many primary schools are free of tuition fees? How many secondary schools are tuition free? If the primary and secondary are taken care of then people would have learnt how to read and write.

Besides, what happen to the indigent ones who cannot pay the stipulated money? What about the orphans and the downtrodden in the society? When budgets are made are they considered? Are the facilities needed for this learning in order? The personnel are they enough? The environment and atmosphere is it conducive enough for learning? In time past there was bursary service for students, what happens to it now? If our idea of literacy is real, then, some of these areas need immediate visitation and activation in order to realize the set goal. We cannot claim ignorance that we do not know that what operates now is a sham and far away from our expectation. All hands must be on deck and we all must wake up from slumber.

During the period of the missionary in Africa, because they were serious to an extent they were able to achieve the results they craved for. If only we are determined we will certainly reach that zenith that we wish. But as it is for now we are still crawling and not until we sit, stand and walk the desired results may not be achieved.

In conclusion, the indigent students and bursary facilities plus a functional library and constant orientation should be done intermittently so as to intimate people and create the needed awareness.