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.