http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3486832/Blog_words

Finally, the final blog post

The semester is finally coming to an end! Sadly, my last day in my field placement is this Friday. I will miss those little munchkins! Last Thursday, I was able to go on a field trip with my kids to the UGA rodeo! The kids had a blast and so did I! Recently, we recieved notification for where we will be student teaching next semester. I am so excited that I will be in a 2nd grade classroom at Fowler Drive Elementary. I have heard many wonderful things about this school and I am eager to interact with this age group!

One thing I remember about being in 2nd grade was my student teacher. He was amazing because he always had exciting activities for us to participate in. He was enthusiastic and kind. I was lucky enough to have him the next year in 3rd grade. I had many wonderful teachers in elementary school but Mr. Spinks was different than any other teacher. He created a kind and inviting classroom environment where everyone felt loved and accepted. I will never forget how he turned our classroom into a functioning "town" where everyone had a box surrounding their desk and an assigned job that allowed students to earn a set salary. For two weeks, our class learned economics, math skills, social studies, and more while participating in our town. This was by far the coolest thing I ever got to do in school. I hope that one day, I can create the kind of rich learning experience that my 3rd grade teacher did each and every day. 

I am so excited to begin my adventure as a student teacher. I hope to draw inspiration from the many wonderful teachers, like Mr. Spinks, that I have had throughout my school career. Look out second grade! Here I come!

Responding to Kiddos

http://5thgrade.ecologyofeducation.net/?p=2922#comment-248

http://5thgrade.ecologyofeducation.net/?p=2514#comment-249

http://5thgrade.ecologyofeducation.net/?p=2523#comment-250

Never say never..or something like that

We've all heard the saying, "Never say never." It has been around for ages, long before that sweet little Bieber boy, and for a good reason. You just never know what might happen! For some odd reason though, I still catch myself saying, "Oh, I'll never do that in my classroom." I started off this semester with an attitude kind of like that. I guess I just had an idea of what the ideal teacher/classroom should look like after taking a ton of education courses where the ideas are great but are mostly just that...ideas that don't always fall into place once in the actual classroom.  Most of these practices in teaching that we are learning about will take time, patience and EXPERIENCE. When I walked into a kindergarten classroom at the beginning of the year, I expected a heavy dose of positive discipline delivered in a structured, organized, consistent way. I immediately began to think, "Oh, I would never do this in my classroom." I also became extremely overwhelmed that I was not seeing many of the practices and teaching methods that we had learned about in all those education classes. I became almost blind to the many wonderful things that were happening around me.

Once I was able to open my mind and began to look for the things I could learn from my experience, I became not only comfortable in my classroom but confident as well. I realized that because the classroom environment is flexible with its structure and isn't crammed full of rules and routines that are set in stone,  I have plenty of wiggle room to experiment with my own ideas without stepping on my mentor teacher's toes! She has been wonderful in allowing me to try out different methods of rewards systems, classroom seating, and lessons. Every day I am in her classroom, I leave with more knowledge that I came in with. If I had continued the semester with the attitude that this classroom just would not work for me, I would have missed out on such a blessing. Although there will always be things that might not settle right with how I want to run my class one day, there is still so much for me to learn.

Wait...what did I just read?

Maybe it's the spring break laziness that hasn't worn off yet but I didn't really understand the whole multigenre research paper thing. I totally understand what the article was saying about the importance of allowing students to choose a topic based on authentic curiosity and personal connections, but I don't really understand what the multigenre research actually is. From what I can gather, multigenre research is a big project on a significant person or event presented in a creative way. So does anything go when writing the research paper part as long as the information that is presented is well thought out and accurate? I think what is confusing me is that students can include fictional letters or other fictional things in the research paper. I really like this idea a lot because it sounds like something I would enjoy and I can see how it displays the students' knowledge and interpretation of what they have learned about the person or event of study but how does the student distinguish what is fact from fiction in the paper? Now that I think about it, I guess it really isn't all that confusing. I'm really intrigued by this multigenre research process......

As for chapter 12, I like the idea of choosing units of study based on student interest and resources available. If you base your units of study on student interest, you will never get bored year after year because student interests will always be changing!

SmoothingOut the LayOut

I would love to implement writing workshop in my own classroom one day. Being the control freak that I am, I've been slightly worried about the structure of the workshop. I'm really glad that chapter 7 offered some tips for managing predictable distractions. One way to prevent absolute chaos in the writing workshop is to use classroom space efficiently. Having a space that is comfortable for students to meet as a class is super important. As a teacher, you can have assigned spots or a rotation to follow each week so students know where and how they are expected to sit during this time. Also, having a wide selection of resources for your writers in a designated area of the room will cut down on problems when resources are needed.

When chapter 8 said that writing workshop would always feel slightly beyond your control and messy, I almost decided to just give up on ever trying writing workshop. BUT I guess knowing that can actually be comforting and in a way, gives me a sense of control! I'm not sure if that even makes sense but needless to say, I still want to use writing workshop. The out-of-controlness doesn't mean that students are running around crazy! The workshop itself is actually very much structured in a flexible way! It just means that as the teacher of 18 or more students, you'll constantly be trying to keep up with where each young writer is in their writings. I think I can deal with that.

Knowing when and how often to set publishing deadlines for students is pretty scary. But one thing is for sure...Studnets MUST publish. Chapter19 made it clear that publishing doesn't require a big celebration for every piece published. Publishing just means that the piece is finished and made available to the public (newspaper, school library, classroom, parent newsletter etc.). It is important for teachers to give students a calendar of the publishing deadlines. This allows students to plan out their time in the workshop.

Conferring, Sharing, and Assessing...

Katie Wood Ray did a good job making the processes of conferring, sharing, and assessing seem not so scary. Before reading chapters 14, 15 and 17, I always thought of conferences with the teacher as a some-what formal and a whole-lot teacher telling you what you need to do next.  The only teacher conferences I've ever experienced in school were super intimidating. I just rememeber being called to the teachers desk where we "conferred" about what I was doing wrong with the assignment and what I needed to do to fix it. And that's about all I can remember. So when I read that teacher-student conferences in writing workshop shouldn't just be for students who are having trouble, I was a little surprised. But it makes sense because as teachers, we are supposed to use these conferences as a time to teach students, not just help them.  I really like the fact that conferences should take place at the students' desks instead of having the students come to the teacher.  This takes the edge off and makes the conferring seem  like exactly how its supposed to be: a conversation between the student and the teacher about how the writing is going. It is pretty helpful to know that conferences should be short and sweet but also meaningful to both the teacher and the student. The following acts are great components to conferring with students: Researching (listening to what the student says about their writing), Deciding (deciding what you can teach the student about writing that will be useful), Teaching (self-explainatory), and Recording (making note of what you taught student during this time).This is good stuff...it will be so helpful in my future classroom!

I'm really glad share time was addressed in chapter 15 because I recently was asked to share students' writings in a Kindergarten classroom. The teacher wanted me to go through and read all of the precious informational writings to the class. I've seen the teacher, and others, do this before and I wasn't really a fan of the format but I also wasn't so sure of the best way to have share time. I asked the students if they would like to read their stories but most didn't want to. I think only 2 people stood up to read their stories. I think if the students had been given the opportunity to share their work themselves from the beginning of the year, they might feel more comfortable doing so. The book called this creating a "learning community" which I am all for! Students should be able to share their completed work with others so they can gain a sense of accomplishement and acknowledgement. After all, they are the ones who worked so hard on completing the writing. Why should the teacher get to read it for them? Doesn't this take away their sense of ownership? There are always going to be those who don't like reading in front of the whole class or sharing their work with everyone.  That's why I love Katie Wood Ray's different formats of sharing time. The Simple Response Share allows students to talk about their work instead of actually having to read the whole thing. The Survey Share is probably one of my favorites because students are asked to choose a sentence or a word that they think is particularly "well crafted." This way, students are choosing what they think is their very best to share with everyone.

Chapter 17 did a good job taking the edge off of the assessment part of writing workshop. I really liked the suggestion to have students explain what they think they deserve and why. I love having rubrics to refer back to when I am completing an assignment but I always worry that the teacher grading my assignment might not apply the rubric in the same way that I do. Allowing students to assess themselves and to back it up with explainations is great especially for writing assignments. I definitely want to do this kind of assessing in my classroom.

You can preach it, but can you teach it?

Chapters 9, 10 and 13 really cleared up some of my anxieties about writing workshop.  Prior to reading these chapters, I felt anxious about actually being prepared to implement the writing workshop in the classroom.  Chapter 9 pretty much laid out the structure of a writing workshop by actually giving some ideas for structures and routines that can take place in the writing workshop. I really liked the idea of having a basket for students to place texts that have been marked to be copied for their study and the bulletin board that displays students' pieces of writing. This chapter even gave examples of material resources needed for the writing workshop.  Having the basic lay out of what is needed for writing workshop makes me feel confident that I can actually do the writing workshop in my classroom.

I thought it was pretty neat that chapter 10 encourages teachers to share from their own writings.  I would have never thought to do this but I can see how it brings authenticity to what the students are learning. It also makes perfect sense to teach punctuation, capitalization, spelling and structure by using examples from students' own writings. If students are able to apply what they are learning in writing workshop to their own peices rather than correcting or identifying it on a worksheet, they are more likely to understand the importance of what they are learning.

I'm so glad that chapter 13 explained how to create your focus lesson. Again, I like how the teacher is encouraged to pull from their own writings. My only concern is what if I don't really write a whole lot? I mean, I totally agree that for teachers to teach writing well, they should be writers themselves. But right now, I don't write a whole lot. In fact, I write for academics and for practical reasons but I don't have a personal writing journal. I guess that is just something I'll have to work on! These chapters were definitely helpful!

My First Blog...EVER.

I'm not gonna lie. This blogging business makes me SUPER nervous!  I've always had hang-ups about writing casually for everyone to see!!! Just to back up this statement, I'll have you know that it took me 10 minutes just to write these few sentences. AND I just read this to Jenni and asked for feedback! Pathetic. But who can blame me? Throughout my entire academic career, I've been drilled to write for the prompt. As a child, I had a wild imagination and an interest in reading and writing.  I wrote countless stories, plays and diary entries at home.  I had so many adventures and experiences to write about. But in the classroom, I was usually limited to writing only about a specific topic or experience. I learned to write exactly what I thought my teacher wanted me to write.

In my own classroom, I want to give my students the chance to choose what they want to write about. Think about all I would miss out on learning about my students if I chose the writing topic for them every time! Chapter 1 basically says that if we expect our students to write well, they need to have their own reasons to need to write well. Having students to write about something that is meaningful to them will help them develop as a writer.  However, I was surprised that there is actually a curriculum for choosing topics to write about. I'm curious to find out how this actually works in a classroom, especially in a lower elementary classroom where the students are just learning how to write.

I want my classroom enviornment to be a safe zone for my students. Writing workshop is a great place for students to be able to write about what is going on in their lives. I want them to feel safe telling me about their greatest achievements of the week as well as their disappointments.  I want my students to be able to write about what is real to them, what they are experiencing in the world around them, and how they feel about it.  At the same time, if a student wants to write about an adventure or something they have dreamed up on the playground, I want them to feel safe sharing with me and not afraid that I will think they are nuts! I also want writing workshop to be a staple in my students' day. The book basically says that the students should know exactly what needs to happen during this time and it needs to be consistent.

Questions for Beth...
I am in a kindergarten classroom this semseter. Can writing workshop be implemented in Kindergarten when the students are just learning to read and write?