This is Deseree

Deseree was 7 years old at the time of this research project. She does not have a computer at home, so they had no idea about what she liked to do with computers. In her pre-interview she mentioned games played at the computer lab at school. Her parents are pretty proud of her abilities as a reader, writer and speaker. They believe she does all those well. Deseree's parents remembered one story she'd written at school, "My Lost Kitten." a true experience story. At home she generally tells the events of the day. Her parents said she enjoys 'happy stories' but didn't elaborate on that. Her Dad reads her bedtime stories. They believe she is a good communicator overall.

Deseree's teacher agrees that she is a good communicator and says she was 'on level' by the end of the year. She claims that Deseree could write up to 5 or 6 sentences in a story. This met end of year expectations.

Deseree participated in class' Monday morning routine of writing journal writing about the events of their weekend. The teacher said the class began the year required to write 2 sentences and then ended the year expected to write 5, which Deseree could do. Deseree was often deliberate and slow in her writing, and her thoughts sometimes strayed, but she made sense, which was valued by her teacher.

During free writing, she choose to write about family and friends and also social studies topics the class was studying. Interestingly her teacher also noted that Deseree often made connections between school topics and her real world experiences. She could find patterns and could make connections to stories they read in class.

Deseree was an agile speaker, and used accentuated and appropriate expression to get her point across. Her teacher believed her to be better orally than in print.

Deseree's writing sample from her journal is unimpressive. I choose journal writing because the digital stories they created weren't closer to journal writing than highly polished and published pieces. She wrote what she did over the weekend in a simple three sentence list. I went... I went... The picture she drew showed a bit more care an interest. In another piece she wrote about getting her nails painted and then drew her hand and nails. She talked about how much she like the nails and that they looked pretty. I could assume from the writing that except for times when something exciting actually happened (the nails) she was not enthusiastic about writing about the events of the weekend. There was no elaboration. I see no grading on her writing samples. Deseree probably did not expect anyone to see or respond to these pieces.

Deseree was fairly quiet during author's chairs. She was engaged and watchful. During her own presentations she slumped in her chair and smiled with a guarded smile. She could not tell why she decided on her second story (numbers one) and said it just popped in her head. Her goal for her last story was to make "everyone laugh."

In her post interview She was the only student who mentioned that Author's Chair was her favorite part of the experience. She also talks about being nervous when people watched her story.

SHe also talks about that the parts that were funny (voice) were the parts where she was "nervous." There is no reason to be nervous during recording unless you are aware of audience which is something previous writings didn't have.