Gnys at Wrk: A Child Learns to Write and Read

by Glenda L. Bissex

Book Overview

When he was five and a half years old, Paul Bissex wrote and posted this sign over his workbench: DO NAT DSTRB GNYS AT WRK. The "work" from which this "genius" refused to be "disturbed" was the work typical of all children, namely, the task of learning how to write and read. In Gnys at Wrk, Glenda Bissex goes far beyond the chronicle of her son's accomplishment to provide the first in-depth case study of a child's confrontation with written...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674354907
• ISBN13: 9780674354906
• Release Date: October 1985
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Facsinating Case Study for the Right Audience

This is the story of a mother chronicling the written development of an inquisitive little boy. The mom is a teacher, so it is full of technical terms to support what she is seeing, and classroom implications about the way we teach writing in comparison to how it often develops naturally in children. There is some support for the inventive spelling movement in what she discovered, but we need to bear in mind this was a highly literate household where the child received support he may not have gotten in other settings. The child added cognitive rules to his process with each new discovery, and the development is clearly traced as we watch him mature. She also explores his reading development and some of the parallel discoveries. As a reading specialist, I found the book fascinating. My daughter found it very theoretical, but she does not have the foundations I do as an educator.