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.

"The blog must go on"

I personally have never been a blogger. I honestly have never seen it as practical or useful. After reading "Thats online writing, not boring school writing" I started to see a useful side to blogging. I doubt I will ever start blogging for my personal interests but I do think it would be really interesting to use a class blog like the Talkback Project. Classrooms in this new "technological age" need to be phyiscally and mentally stimulating and computers are a great tool for creating this type of classroom. I think my future students would respond well to having a 2-way blog with somone else. This idea of blogging could even turn into whole other lessons as well. My brother teaches at a school in Honduras and I could easily have him set up blogs for his students and could create 2-way blogs between his students and my own. This would be a great multi-cultural experience for his and my own students. This would be an exciting and fun literary tool. Blogging could bring about a whole new classroom experience.