Entry #12

      I have learned a lot about reading, writing and myself this semester and I think that keeping this reading and writing blog was part of it.  This blog has in on away or another helped me meet many of the students learning outcomes.  The blog was  a way that I could reflect on our readings and class discussion.  This met the learning outcomes that address genres, theoretical models or reading and writing, relationship between reading and writing process, meta cognition of writing types of reading and writing assignments.  Many of our readings focused on the outcomes listed above, the blog was a way for me to connect these concepts to own life, and share those connections with with classmates.  I also think that these connections and being able to write abut them made this learning more meaningful which will help me to apply the many different things I learned to my future classroom.  The blog my classmates kept also helped me, by reading their thoughts extended my own thinking.  This made me think of collaboration  that happens in schools when teams of teachers work together on a topic or problem.
       
          I learned something I wasn't expecting to, I learned a slot about myself as a writer and a teacher.  I do actually enjoy writing, In previous posts I expressed a dislike of writing.  I figured out that this dislike grew out of what it was like to hand in a piece of my writing for a grade.  I would go through the writing process, peer edits, and teacher conferences then still not get a good grade.  This frustration eventually grew into dislike.  From this blog/course I can say that I actually do like writing for fun it is the stress of grades that made me dislike it. How this revelation helped me because I don't want my students to feel the same way.  This is where I think that writing workshop and paying attention to student interest comes in.  With a general over arching theme in place students can work on a topic that interests them but still fit into writing instruction.

         I gained a lot from this course because I think the hardest thing to teach are the topics we aren't interested in.  This course has pushed me outside of my comfort zone when it comes to writing, which has forced me to grow as a teacher.  I have also learned many new tools and strategies to use in the future when I am teaching writing in my own classroom.

Entry #11

 When I think about writing I don’t think that I am good at it , and I usually avoid it because I don’t really enjoy it.  So at the beginning of this course I was nervous that my struggles would hinder my ability to learn the genres to best benefit my students.  As we moved through the semester however I gained more confidence in each genre.  I also gained a unique look into each genre that I think will benefit me as I start to form lessons to teach my students so that they don’t have the same struggles I myself have in writing.  I think that I have learned more about genres specifically through this course then I have all my different reading/writing experiences in the past.

          The genres I knew at the beginning of class that I knew well I would list narrative, descriptive and biography.  These genres were the ones that I have used the most and enjoyed the most because they fall into my personal interest of social studies most of the time.  While I had a good grasp of each I also have learned much more about each one.  Narrative is much more than just sitting down and writing in your own voice.  You have to consider all the different aspects of what a narrative is.  Same with biography and descriptive, I had a good grasp of the genre as a reader which net me up to absorb everything given to us to become a good writer as well.

          I struggled with poetry as genre both as a writer and a teacher at the beginning of this course.  I found it to be the most intimidating genre.  There were so many different types of poetry, with so many different forms that it can take, how was I going to be able to teach them all?  I also found poetry to be intimidating because of the creativity behind it,  I don’t find myself creative or artsy how could I expect my students to do what I didn’t think I could?  After watching the presentation on poetry and having Dr. Jones introduce different forms I have many more ideas about how to make poetry much more accessible to students.  The If I ruled the world poem and the I am poems I now see that there are many form poems that can be introduced for the students to use, it will ease them in and allow the students who like me were intimated to still participate. I also pick up something from working in a first grade classroom since September, the teacher introduces a poem a week, they discuss it and students have to illustrate it.  I think that this helps by making poetry they see every day and not so scary. 

          I think that all the other genres make sense to me as a writer which is the first step to teaching it to students.  Then looking into all the packets that the groups created with mentor texts, graphic organizers and different strategies will move onto create the best lessons to engage students.  I think that each presentation has helped to set me up to create a writing workshop that can teach each genre and foster students independence so that they can be writers on their own, and not dread it like I do. My own feeling about writing are what intimidate me about teaching it,  I want my students to enjoy putting their ideas on paper. 

Entry # 10

   " Giving students choice is something that we have talked about in class and a topic I've addressed in previous posts, however, this idea of passion and students having opportunities to write about things that they are interested in exploring connects to a writer's voice." While reading through my classmates blogs I found this quote in Jamie's entry.  It was he response to our other classmate Lindsay addressing students voice in writing.  This quote in particular struck me because every class in literacy that I have had so far has had some focus on student interest.  And the more time that I spend in schools the more I see how students choice can fall to the wayside in the rush to get everything else done. I think that student choice plays a huge rule in student engagement and motivation.  Think about it we have all had to do those assignment that we have not connection to but instead just do for the sake of the grade. I don't know about you guys but for me I didn't take away much from assignments like that, and I didn't put my best effort into my work either.  There was a lack of passion,  which Jamie address in the quote above.  How can we as teachers expect our students to learn as much as possible an engage fully with an assignment when we know full well how we have done in the past in our own educational careers?

     This idea of interest, passion and engagement all come back to the idea of authentic experiences with text.  Something that I had never thought about in depth before I got to graduate school. We as teacher have to create a classroom that allows students to interact with text in an authentic manner, meaning that it fits into the real world and their real lives.  This also comes down to writing that matches up with how they write and fits into the real world.  I think that this is where writing workshop really comes into play.  The way writing workshop and digital writing workshop are discussed in Hicks(2009) and Tompkins(2012).  Both want students to choose what they are writing about and work through the writing process at their on pace.  This will allow students to work on a piece and become truly involved with thier project not just do it to get it done.

   After listening to all the differnet genre presentions and seeing all the different ways that we can help kids to interact with and create text of all different types.  The more I think about it the more I think that the only way to achieve this is to create a writing workshop enviornment where kids want to work together and feel comfortable.  If students feel comfortable and understand that everyone is different and everyone is in different places in their writing process.  I have always known that for me creating the most comfrotable and safe enviornment for my students was my main goal when I start teaching and I think that is what sets the foundation for successful writing workshop as well as everything in the classroom.

   

Entry #9

       For class last week we had to read Tompkins (2009) chapter on expository texts to prepare. As part of this preparation we also had to bring in examples to use during class, this was when I realized how many different types of expository texts students encounter every day. There are so many difference in them and there are so many topics that they could cover. I think that this variety is what makes the task of teaching expository texts so overwhelming. During the lesson Dr. Jones brought to our attention that we need to stop and focus on modeling and explanation of how to read expository texts. This step is a most when exploring expository texts before we can expect students to pull information out of the text and fill in the graphic organizer like we used to explore our books during class.


       I have been observing a working with a first grade class since the beginning of the year and i have seen firsthand how important this modeling step is. The teacher of this group has modeled everything and anything you can think of that impact their day in the classroom. She has created an environment that after 2 months that an outsider would see as full of independent workers that function well as a group. Now, to apply that to expository texts, I have seen the students pull information out of their read aloud books without any issue, but when it came to reading an expository text on their own they have much more difficulty. To help address this the teacher was meeting with guided reading groups and mini lessons, where she goes through nonfiction texts structures as they read. I had the opportunity to lead one on these groups; we worked on the different structures that appeared in their text. We covered captions, labels, glossary, heading, and bold words. We discussed what each thing was and what it was used for in the text and how it helps you to understand what information is important. We practiced identifying them in the text and explaining what they do in our own words. There were able to pick up the features easily but it was harder for them to understand how they were useful during reading. To help with understanding we talked about nonfiction texts and why they were important and then the specifically important information from the text we were currently reading. I still don't think that these students would be able to fill out a graphic organizer on their own yet; they would need much more modeling. These experiences of mine support the point that Dr. Jones raise about how complexity of the text is the first that we have to tackle before we get to content.
          I have also considered this as I plan my genre presentation with my partner because writing new types of pieces can be quiet the challenge and the first step we really need to focus on is modeling and scaffolding. Once that has been established the form of writing can be addressed and students can start to write with in that genre. I think that my experiences in the younger grades so far this year has truly emphasized that importance of quality modeling so students have the best example possible when learning new things.