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.
Rianna, you provided a really helpful assessment of how you see the all the course activities and assignment influencing your disposition toward writing. What else could you say specifically about the Learning Outcomes and whether or not keeping a blog this semester helped you to meet any of them? For example, do you think keeping a blog this semester helped you to develop a better understanding of the role of writing assessment (#7)? Or do you think it helped you to better understand the role of metacognition in writing proficiency and reading comprehension (#5)?
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