Ch. 4 and Invitations

Ch. 4- Personally, I really enjoy poetry so I found this chapter to be somewhat interesting and helpful. It gives great examples of how to get students engaged in writing and sharing their personal experiences. Many students are bashful when it comes to this but incorporating small and fun activities such as "I am" poems and acrostic introductions can really get the ball rolling. I also really enjoyed the six-room poem structure. I feel like this is a great way to really get students writing poetry on a whole new level. Seeing these examples, I have some great ideas about how I can incorporate poetry in my classroom and help students enrich their Multigenre Research Papers. Having said this, I do still want to know how to get students to think and write on a deeper, more meaningful level. This chapter just showed how to get students to start writing; I want to know more about evoking deeper reflection and introspect once they become writers of poetry.

Invitations- I really like the idea of invitations because they can be used at any time. Invitations can be used for any subject as well. Having said this, every article I have ever read on invitations has been slightly vague. There are never any really good examples to really show they inner workings of a good invitation. Regardless, I do like the idea of them. Having invitation folders set in specific spots in the room is a great idea. Instead of simply sitting around and wasting time, students can be gaining a better knowledge on relevant topics to the class curriculum. I think the group discussions that were mentioned are extremely important because it is the group interaction and involvement that really gives invitations their significance. Through these interactions, students learn from each other and constantly raise new questions and concerns based off each others answers; collaborative learning is an amazing tool for any teacher to utilize in the classroom. Lastly, I'm still somewhat hazy on the best times to do invitations. Because they can be about anything and at any time, when is the best time to incorporate them into the classroom?

Crafting Writers 10-12

I gained a lot of new knowledge on conferencing after reading chapters 10-11. From one-on-one conferencing, to group conferencing, the small amount of time spent can really pay off big dividends. With simple and direct statements and questions, teachers can quickly stroke students egos and direct them to what they need to work on at the same time. These transitions are very important and can make or break the conference. After reading about each kind of conference, I'm a little hesitant to try group conferencing. I not too sure just how effective these conferences really are. Sure, they offer group work and interaction, but a conference is a time for one-on-one teaching that is crucial to the students development. Do we as teachers want to possibly jeopardize this special tailor-made learning experience for a group conference that isnt promising to be affective at all for the individual student?
Chapter 12 focused mainly on rubrics as assessment. Much of what it had to say I agreed with and could understand. I liked the idea of creating them together in order to aid in student comprehension. But at the same time, I personally feel like rubrics are just not appropriate for young children. Rubrics can be very unsettling at times. I'm 21 years old and still dont like rubrics. They tell you specifically what you need, but they don't always provide information on how to meet those expectations. So, I just wander if rubrics are actually an effective method of assessment for younger children?

Crafting Writers Chapters 7,8,9

After reading these chapters, I had a couple questions arise as I read. The first being, "If students have lots of issues with their writing, should we really spend time praising when we have limited time in correcting their problems?" I can understand the thought process behind praising the child. It will obviously raise their self confidence about writing, but simply helping their self confidence does not change the fact that they are not comprehending certain aspects of craft. It just seemed to me that too much emphasis was placed on praise. This concept may have worked for the couple of success stories in the chapter, but does it really work for all students? That is the question.
The other question I had was "How can we properly balance teaching craft and mechanics?" It seemed to me like a lot of emphasis was placed on craft and not so much on mechanics. Mechanics are a very important aspect of learning how to write successfully so it is important to know how to break down your lessons to include both mechanics and craft.

Crafting Writers Chapters 4-5

These chapters offered a great deal writing tools that I think can be very beneficial to emerging writers. In chapter 4, there were basically 5 main topics covered which included the five senses, show not tell, dialogue, sentence variety and word choice. I really liked the topic of incorporating the five senses. This is not something that I have ever thought about while writing and after reading this I have realized how much more enriching you can make a text by pulling from any of your senses and really adding some description. I think kids would enjoy this specific strategy as well. The "show not tell" aspect was also very helpful because many times kids do not show at all; they simply tell. This leads to uninteresting and dry writing. This section gave some great ideas and strategies for helping students really show what they are writing. So instead of writing "I was so sad" they will be showing by writing "tears were streaming down my face."
Chapter 5 was interesting as well because punctuation is very tricky to learn. At first, students will just place punctuation wherever they deem necessary. It is important for teachers to provide as many possible experiences with punctuation so students will build a background knowledge on when and where to use specific punctuation. I really liked the part where the teacher would have the students explore different books and look for punctuation and how it usesd within the sentences. This is a good idea and I think this would be much more engaging for the students than simply lecturing on a markerboard.

The Difficulties of Spelling

Spelling can be a very hard subject to teach. Many students get frustrated and bogged down in the idea of having to be 100% error free and correct all the time. In reality, they don't have to be at all. Spelling is a process which can take some time to truly master and if this process is taught correctly it can be very effective. As teachers, we can help students greatly by making them realize that spelling is a process and their focus should be more on the effort and completion of their work rather than on how accurate their spelling is. With time and practice, the correct spellings will come.
As a future teacher, I will definitely use this information for the benefit of my class. I will teach spelling as a process. There are several great methods to be used. The Sipes article included approaches such as the sound box and have-a-go chart. The Oglan article gave ideas for strategies for spelling such as placeholder, spelling as it sounds, letter name, etc. These strategies are great for students because it encourages them to write and explore their own vocabulary and challenges them to spell words outside of their comfort zone. All the while, they are getting great practice and are starting to internalize how to properly spell.
Overall, these articles shined great light on how we as future teachers need to address the learning needs of our students. Equipping me with great strategies, these articles were very beneficial and will be kept until I can apply them into my own classroom in the future.

Coffee Shop Reflection

In the coffee shop today, I noticed some things that were interesting to me. My biggest interest was the people who were in the coffee shop. On a Wednesday afternoon I was expecting to see a minimal amount of older people. Instead, there was a wide variety of ages and there was a large number of people there throughout the duration of my stay.
Another interesting point was the conversations being held. I had the part of listening to conversations and gathering tidbits. I wasn't surprised by what I heard because I was half expecting everyday small talk. I expected this because of my prior experiences in coffee shops. They aren't places where important or emotional conversations are held. So today I heard conversations ranging from daily plans to recycling. All of these conversations were simply small talk in order to pass the time.

Crafting Writers Response

I think that this reading really speaks volumes because I can clearly remember being told very generic and unhelpful things by my teachers such as "Needs something more" or "don't understand." Responses like these do absolutely nothing for the students and I personally think can be detrimental to students self esteem and how they see themselves as writers. These types of comments may deter students from taking their writing to a new level.
Having said this, I'm eager to learn the best ways to motivate students about their writing and how to really express my concerns in their writing and positively push them further at the same time.
I liked the ideas in chapter 6 because I'm big into expressing myself artistically and I feel that students would be also. Art itself helps to stimulate students and if they take this positive stimulation and turn it into a literary work than that would be perfect. This is also a great way for students to express themselves in a more fun and exciting form of than just writing on a blank sheet of paper with a pencil which can get monotonous after a while.