Sei's Reflection to Graves (15-17)

Graves Chapter 17 Reflection
How to Keep Handwriting in Perspective

Like a true writer, Graves starts chapter seventeen with a simile and metaphor:
“Handwriting is the vehicle carrying information on its way to a destination. If it is illegible the journey will not be completed. Handwriting, like skin, shows the outside of the person. But beneath the skin beats the living organism, the life’s blood, the ideas, the information”.
By this, Graves means that handwriting and information go hand-in-hand. Although we live in a society that places great emphasis on the physical appearance of one’s handwriting, the reality is that “it pale[s] next to the substance they carry”. As readers, we must be able to look past handwriting and see the information that is trying to be conveyed. And as writers, we must be able to master the craft, making it an automatic process so we can concentrate on conveying the important part- the information, thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

As a future educator, this chapter provides me with useful information that helps me to understand the process and importance of handwriting. Although the appearance of handwriting is important, that shouldn’t be the sole emphasis on children’s writing. Even though a child may have messy handwriting, a teacher must be able to understand a see the message that the child is trying to express. If not, that child may feel discouraged and feel like his ideas are not good because his handwriting isn’t good. If I see the importance of the message and the ideas that the child is trying to express, the child won’t be so fixated on consciously perfecting his handwriting. The handwriting of the child will improve on its own when that child is provided with enough writing time and he/she is able to write about whatever is important and of interest to him/her.

Graves reviews the general phases of a child’s handwriting development:
Get-it-Down Phase: This is the phase when “just putting the words on paper is enough” for the child. When they first come to school, children are determined to write, whether it’s words, letters, numbers, or pictures.
First Aesthetics: “From the beginning, children show their concern for aesthetics when they reshape a letter or a word”. They also show their concern for aesthetics when they “clean their pages”, which is when they brush a piece of paper from top to bottom before they start writing. Oftentimes beginning writers erase a mistake so much that it makes a whole in the page. For this reason, beginning writers should be supplied with a durable writing surface.
Growing Age of Convention: “Toward the end of the first grade many children want their writing to appear conventional.” In this phase, the children become meticulous about things that were oblivious to them before-things like, margins, spacing between words, and writing in the lines. This is the stage that children start to look back at their writing with a critical eye and they want to do things the “right way” so “content now takes a backseat for many”.
Breaking Conventions: This is the phase that teachers need to show their students that rewriting is necessary and the first draft doesn’t need to be perfect in appearance. “Young writers need to learn a whole repertoire for ‘messing up’ their paper to deal with new information, reorganization, and adjustments.”
Later Aesthetics: “It is a significant moment when a child decides to line out instead of erasing an error [because] this immediately signals that the paper is only a draft, that the text can be reworked, and further copies made that will be much more pleasing”.
Time and Topic: “When children have a well-chosen topic, their urge to express so dominates the activity that they lose track of the conscious aspect of handwriting to focus more on the message.”