For this weeks entry, I would like to bless Alyse's entry "A Fluke". I really appreciate and can relate with the fact how hard it is to find the time to keep a balance between everything going on in your life. I have felt and overwhelming amount of stress with trying to balance the amount of homework and assignments and also with keeping a clean house, dinner on the table, making sure my fourteen month old son is cared for and played with, and also that I am maintaining a healthy relationship with my family and friends. It has been a lot on my plate and it has been starting to show now more than ever. I sometimes get so stressed that there is not enough time in the day to get everything done that I have been taking it out on others, and it is not ok.
I can also relate with Jacki's Entry #8 when she also talked about struggling with blogging. I have been finding it difficult in finding the motivation to write my blogs. I feel as though blogging was something totally different than what I am experiencing now. I thought that it was more like a journal where we would be able to free write, where WE were our own audience. With each entry I write, however, I have found that I was wrong. I always seem to be missing something in my blogs and I just can't seem to fix whatever is missing. Anytime I write now, I expect something to be missing and it makes me not look forward my next entry. Hopefully I will be able to get past these feeling so I can have the motivation to write my blogs each week.
I would also like to bless Kristine's entry on March 5th. She talks about her negative experiences with professors and how they would provide negative comments on almost all of her assignments she got back. I could definitely relate with her frustration and how discouraging it could be experiencing this with every assignment. I myself have had experiences with a few professors that no matter what you do, nothing you did was what he/she wanted. It made me dread completing any assignments because I knew what I would see when I got it back-a bunch of marks all over my paper. It was really frustrating because it made me feel like nothing I could do was right. This leads me to agree with Kristine in that teachers should provide 2 positive comments for every negative comment they place on a paper. As a teacher, that is something that I want to make sure I do. I don't want my students to ever feel the frustrations I have when it comes to writing. I want them to be able to enjoy it and I want my comments to help them rather then hurt them emotionally.
I guess I really didn't have one person to bless, address, or press. As I starting writing, I realized there were a lot of other entries that I could mention. I think that everyone brings up some really good points and issues, but these were just a few that stood out to me.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Entry #7
Over the last two weeks, I have been doing a lot of work on the Teaching the Genre presentation. My genre is on expository text and every article that I have read has talked about how important learning to read expository text is for a child's comprehension. They push teachers to introduce expository text to students as early as possible in their reading careers so that they will be able to develop the skills that they need to learn from such texts (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Children seem to enjoy reading these kinds of texts, so why are we seeing so few children reading informational texts within our classrooms? Why not have them available and make it a habit to read these kinds of books if we know our students are interested in them?
One of the articles that I read talked about the importance of direct instruction and how it is essential if teachers want students to become good readers of expository text (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Teachers need to be able to plan their instruction very carefully, by making sure to pay attention to three main things: building and activating background knowledge, teaching new vocabulary, and scaffolding. I feel that background knowledge is something that can be very easy to teach. I know that a lot of students come from different background and may not have the same amount of background knowledge as other members in the class, but all a teacher would have to do is build on their knowledge by teaching that student about the topic or having their peers teach them what they know so that they too can add that information into their background knowledge for the future. With informational text, there is frequently going to be new vocabulary within the readings, which is why it is most important for the teacher to teach any of these unknown words. The more practice and access students have with these kind of texts helps them learn to process information in new and different ways during their readings.
Another article that I read talked again about the lack of direct instruction on comprehension strategies and how important it is for a child's comprehension. It talked about the importance of teaching student's the text structure of expository text and how it would have a positive effect on reading comprehension. The author says that, "expository text structure awareness is one reading comprehension strategy that should be explicitly and systematically taught" (Dymock, 2005, p.177). I feel like the author makes a great point about teachers needing to take the time to teach the text structures of an expository text and how they are different from others. They need to understand that you do not need to read the text from front to back in order to understand it. Once students understand the text structure, it will in turn help them better understand the text and will improve their comprehension of expository texts. I, myself, actually learned about the two different kinds of text structures: descriptive and sequential. These both were new to me. I learned that the descriptive structures focus on the attributes of something, whereas the sequential structure focuses on a series of events that progress over time.
After reading different articles about how important teaching students about expository text is and how it can improve their reading comprehension, I want to be sure to include it in my future classroom someday. I want to be able to provide my students with informational books in the classroom that they will be able to read and become familiar with. I will also make it a point to read these kinds of books with them, in case some students don't take it upon themselves to read them on their own. The most important thing that I want to make sure I do is to teach my students the expository text structures so that it will help them better understand the books during their readings.
One of the articles that I read talked about the importance of direct instruction and how it is essential if teachers want students to become good readers of expository text (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Teachers need to be able to plan their instruction very carefully, by making sure to pay attention to three main things: building and activating background knowledge, teaching new vocabulary, and scaffolding. I feel that background knowledge is something that can be very easy to teach. I know that a lot of students come from different background and may not have the same amount of background knowledge as other members in the class, but all a teacher would have to do is build on their knowledge by teaching that student about the topic or having their peers teach them what they know so that they too can add that information into their background knowledge for the future. With informational text, there is frequently going to be new vocabulary within the readings, which is why it is most important for the teacher to teach any of these unknown words. The more practice and access students have with these kind of texts helps them learn to process information in new and different ways during their readings.
Another article that I read talked again about the lack of direct instruction on comprehension strategies and how important it is for a child's comprehension. It talked about the importance of teaching student's the text structure of expository text and how it would have a positive effect on reading comprehension. The author says that, "expository text structure awareness is one reading comprehension strategy that should be explicitly and systematically taught" (Dymock, 2005, p.177). I feel like the author makes a great point about teachers needing to take the time to teach the text structures of an expository text and how they are different from others. They need to understand that you do not need to read the text from front to back in order to understand it. Once students understand the text structure, it will in turn help them better understand the text and will improve their comprehension of expository texts. I, myself, actually learned about the two different kinds of text structures: descriptive and sequential. These both were new to me. I learned that the descriptive structures focus on the attributes of something, whereas the sequential structure focuses on a series of events that progress over time.
After reading different articles about how important teaching students about expository text is and how it can improve their reading comprehension, I want to be sure to include it in my future classroom someday. I want to be able to provide my students with informational books in the classroom that they will be able to read and become familiar with. I will also make it a point to read these kinds of books with them, in case some students don't take it upon themselves to read them on their own. The most important thing that I want to make sure I do is to teach my students the expository text structures so that it will help them better understand the books during their readings.
Dymock,
S. (2005). Teaching expository text structure awareness. The Reading Teacher, 59(2), 177-
181.
Gregg,
M. & Carver-Sekeres, D. (2006). Supporting children’s reading of expository
text in the geography classroom. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 102-110.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Teacher's Comments on Student Assisgnments
Reading some of my peer's blogs, I would have to agree with Nicole with the fact that it has been sometimes hard to write some of these blogs considering I do not have my own classroom at the moment. It is kind of unrealistic in a sense to think of my "dream" classroom and what I would do in it. I don't know the kind of classroom I will have down the road let alone the kind of children that will fill it. So it is difficult to think of the different things that I would do with the children in my future classroom. However, as someone who has always been discouraged by the pen marks all over my paper, I found Sommers' article to be very appealing and something that I could relate with. Having experience with the topic, I could at least talk about what I would do in the future, based on the experiences that I have had as a student myself.
Every time I would have a paper returned to me, whether it be in elementary school, high school, or college, I would always look at the amount of writing on the paper before actually reading the comments. I didn't read whether they were positive or negative comments, I just looked at the amount of red pen on my paper. I thought that if there was a lot of marks then that meant I did something wrong, which would make me upset and it made me feel like I was a poor writer. After reading the article by Sommers, however, I realized that not all comments are have to be negative and that teachers should have a balance of positive and negative comments. This way the teacher doesn't make the student feel like there writing isn't good enough and scare the student away from writing.
As a future teacher, I don't want my students to feel the way that I would feel every time I would get a paper returned to me. I want my students to be able to benefit from the comments that I leave on their papers by making any changes that I may suggest to better their writing. However, I want to also make it a point to write positive comments on their papers as well. I don't ever want my students to get so discouraged with my comments on their papers that they are too nervous to hand in any pieces of writing in fear of what I will say to them. My goal as a teacher will be to create a balance of positive an negative comments so that my students will learn to enjoy writing instead of fearing it like I sometimes still do.
Every time I would have a paper returned to me, whether it be in elementary school, high school, or college, I would always look at the amount of writing on the paper before actually reading the comments. I didn't read whether they were positive or negative comments, I just looked at the amount of red pen on my paper. I thought that if there was a lot of marks then that meant I did something wrong, which would make me upset and it made me feel like I was a poor writer. After reading the article by Sommers, however, I realized that not all comments are have to be negative and that teachers should have a balance of positive and negative comments. This way the teacher doesn't make the student feel like there writing isn't good enough and scare the student away from writing.
As a future teacher, I don't want my students to feel the way that I would feel every time I would get a paper returned to me. I want my students to be able to benefit from the comments that I leave on their papers by making any changes that I may suggest to better their writing. However, I want to also make it a point to write positive comments on their papers as well. I don't ever want my students to get so discouraged with my comments on their papers that they are too nervous to hand in any pieces of writing in fear of what I will say to them. My goal as a teacher will be to create a balance of positive an negative comments so that my students will learn to enjoy writing instead of fearing it like I sometimes still do.
Sommers,
N. (1982). Responding to student
writing. College Composition and
Communication,
33(2), 148-156.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Class so far...
Dear Dr. Jones,
Class so far is going great! I signed up for this class because it was the only elective that I had left to take and to be honest I wasn't too excited to take it. I have never been a big fan of writing, it just has never came easy to me. So at the start of this class I didn't really know what to expect because of my past feelings about writing. However, being over a month into this class, I couldn't be more pleased with what this class has to offer. I have never had so much freedom to write about whatever and however we wanted to. It allows me to enjoy the writing more, which I feel helps to improve my writing overall.
Over the past few weeks that we have been in class I have learned so much already and have enjoyed every minute of it! Although I have heard about blogs I have never used them before so everything was new to me. I have learned how to set up blogs as well as post and respond to others. Now that I have learned how to do them it is something that I can see myself using in the future-not only for myself, but with my students in the future as well. However, the one major thing that I found most interesting so far is the challenge that Hicks makes against the definition of writing. He tells us that we should think of writers not merely as writers, but as composers as well. He talk about photo-essays as being a form of writing, which I disagree with. I feel that writing should be visual letters written on paper instead of a bunch of picture put together to tell a story. However, I feel that if we add some writing to our pictures or if we add pictures or even podcasts into our writing, writers can be thought of composers and writers all in one.
When I write, I tend to do a lot of thinking to make sure I get everything that is needed or that I want to say down on paper. I think that I sometimes over think, which I feel could be the reason why I have always had trouble when it comes to writing. I tend to edit and revise as much as possible while I write, when I should be focusing on the flow of the writing and the content. One thing that I feel that I need to work on more is my prewriting. I need to plan better about the topics that I plan to write about since 70 percent of writing is spent on the prewriting part. That is one thing that I have never spent much time on, which has probably been my biggest weakness when it comes to my writing.
Blogging and wikis are two strategies that we have been taught that I feel will be very beneficial to use as a teacher of literacy. I want my students to have the change to learn from other people's writings and responses to their writings. They could share their thoughts and ideas with others and make changes to their writings if they feel the need to based on the feedback they receive from their peers as well as their teacher. Wikis will also provide my students the opportunity to work collaboratively with one another on writing tasks, which I feel is an important thing to be able to do.
Overall, I really wouldn't say that I am struggling in any certain area. I definitely think that I need to continue working on everything that we have learned about this semester so far, considering it is pretty much all new to me. The more practice I am able to get, the better I will become at everything that is new to me.
Sincerely,
Krista Urbanczyk
Class so far is going great! I signed up for this class because it was the only elective that I had left to take and to be honest I wasn't too excited to take it. I have never been a big fan of writing, it just has never came easy to me. So at the start of this class I didn't really know what to expect because of my past feelings about writing. However, being over a month into this class, I couldn't be more pleased with what this class has to offer. I have never had so much freedom to write about whatever and however we wanted to. It allows me to enjoy the writing more, which I feel helps to improve my writing overall.
Over the past few weeks that we have been in class I have learned so much already and have enjoyed every minute of it! Although I have heard about blogs I have never used them before so everything was new to me. I have learned how to set up blogs as well as post and respond to others. Now that I have learned how to do them it is something that I can see myself using in the future-not only for myself, but with my students in the future as well. However, the one major thing that I found most interesting so far is the challenge that Hicks makes against the definition of writing. He tells us that we should think of writers not merely as writers, but as composers as well. He talk about photo-essays as being a form of writing, which I disagree with. I feel that writing should be visual letters written on paper instead of a bunch of picture put together to tell a story. However, I feel that if we add some writing to our pictures or if we add pictures or even podcasts into our writing, writers can be thought of composers and writers all in one.
When I write, I tend to do a lot of thinking to make sure I get everything that is needed or that I want to say down on paper. I think that I sometimes over think, which I feel could be the reason why I have always had trouble when it comes to writing. I tend to edit and revise as much as possible while I write, when I should be focusing on the flow of the writing and the content. One thing that I feel that I need to work on more is my prewriting. I need to plan better about the topics that I plan to write about since 70 percent of writing is spent on the prewriting part. That is one thing that I have never spent much time on, which has probably been my biggest weakness when it comes to my writing.
Blogging and wikis are two strategies that we have been taught that I feel will be very beneficial to use as a teacher of literacy. I want my students to have the change to learn from other people's writings and responses to their writings. They could share their thoughts and ideas with others and make changes to their writings if they feel the need to based on the feedback they receive from their peers as well as their teacher. Wikis will also provide my students the opportunity to work collaboratively with one another on writing tasks, which I feel is an important thing to be able to do.
Overall, I really wouldn't say that I am struggling in any certain area. I definitely think that I need to continue working on everything that we have learned about this semester so far, considering it is pretty much all new to me. The more practice I am able to get, the better I will become at everything that is new to me.
Sincerely,
Krista Urbanczyk
Learning and Incorporating Blogs and Wikis into the Classroom
Before last semester, I had never used, let alone heard of a wiki before. We had to use them in an online class that I was taking. I enjoyed being able to see everyone's thoughts and writings about each of the topics that we were given. Wikis allowed us to put our writings together and allowed us to give our peers different ideas for their writing. Since I have only used wikis once, I'm sure that I don't know everything there is to know about them just after one semester, which makes me want to work with them more in order to learn more about them. The more that I learn about wikis now, the better I will be able to help students in my future classrooms learn how to use them as well so that they can collaborate with their peers on different writing pieces. I want my students to have the chance to read others writings and be able to give them their ideas about their writing. And since every update you make to your writing is saved, it makes it easy for students to go back to anything they need to so that they can see what they previously wrote.
Another digital tool that I have had little to no practice with are blogs. Yes, I have heard of blogs before, but before this semester I have never used blogging before. In the beginning of this class, I had a few glitches with blogger since it was the first time that I had ever used it. However, I am finally starting to figure it all out and I am actually starting to see all the benefits that blogging can have for both students and teachers when it comes to writing workshop. I enjoy being able to continue my writing at home and then posting it so that others can read it and comment on it with their own thoughts and ideas. It also allows the teacher extra time to read every students writing on their own time and give the student feedback just like they would in a face-to-face conference. As Hicks says on p. 37, by having writings and responses captured digitally it "provides a permanence that talk during a face-to-face conference does not". It also allows us to pause and reflect on what others have to say. From the time I have spent so far blogging, I could really see myself using this in my future classrooms. I think that it is a great idea to have everything electronically saved so that it is easy to access it whenever needed. The best thing that I found that I like about blogs so far is that as soon as you post it, it is date stamped so that it is easy to find in the future if necessary.
In the past two semesters, I have learned about how to use two new digital tools. I think that they are both very valuable and beneficial to both students and teachers and they are both something that I want to incorporate into my classrooms someday. When it comes to writing workshop, I would for the most part like to give my students the freedom to choose the topics that they want to write about so it will drive them to better writing. I would encourage my students to look at others writings and post their thoughts and any ideas that they may have for their peers. I will want my students to take part in collaborative writing as well and to do this I would post weekly wikis that the students would be responsible for completing. I feel very excited about trying this in my own classroom someday and I can't wait to be able to do so.
Hicks, T. (2009). The digital writing workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Journals within the Classroom
Looking back, I never really enjoyed writing in journals when I was in school. To me it was just busy work to give the teachers some extra time to do something that they needed to do. I didn't really see the point of it at the time. However, as a future teacher and with the amount of education that I have received since then, I now have a totally different prospective on journal writing.
If I ever taught in the upper grades, I would want to have them use wikis or blogs as their journals. I would want to be able to assign work that they would have to do on their own at home. I would expect my students to read their peers writing and comment on it and give them ideas on how they could make their writing even better. In the upper grade levels, I find collaboration with peers to be very important and for me wikis and blogs are a way to make that happen in any classroom. It also allows me to revise or interact with my students while at home and it saves time spent meeting with students face-to-face,which can be very time consuming.
Written journals and digital journals both have their advantages and disadvantages for everyone, but for me they are most definitely something that I plan and want to incorporate in my classroom someday. Funny how the years and knowledge helped to change the way I felt about journals!
When I get my own classroom someday, I definitely want to incorporate journal writing in my daily instruction. I plan to use a variety of journal writing methods: personal journals, dialogue journals, and depending on the grade level I am teaching I may introduce digital journals, like wikis or blogs. I feel like each of these types of journals have many advantages that I would like to have in my classroom.
By using personal journals or dialogue journals, it allows the student the freedom to write about anything that they want, as long as the teacher doesn't give the students a specific topic to write about. The students know that anything they say in their journals stay between the teacher and the student, so they are free to say whatever they want or feel. With dialogue journals, teachers can write back and fourth to the student and they are able to have an ongoing conversation. It is also a way for the teacher to get to know the student better and create a personal trusting relationship with the student. There are a lot of kids out there that don't have many people to talk to or feel safe talking to nowadays, so it is important to me to incorporate these journals into my classroom so that my students will be able to talk to me about things that they are normally would not talk about.
Written journals and digital journals both have their advantages and disadvantages for everyone, but for me they are most definitely something that I plan and want to incorporate in my classroom someday. Funny how the years and knowledge helped to change the way I felt about journals!
Digital Writing Workshop
Thinking back on the last classroom that I was in I would have to say that there were a variety of different individuals among the students that I had. I remember that they were separated into two different groups: the green class, which were the lower level students and the gold class, which were the more advanced group of students. Knowing the levels of all the students and what they were capable of, I knew that my green class would struggle with the digital world if I made it available to them. A lot of the students in the green class also came from a lower socio economic status so they had very little access and experience with computers. The gold class, however, knew how to do pod casts. For some of our projects that were required within the grade level, the computers were necessary for all students. They needed to be able to look up information and create a paper, or more, afterwords. The gold class had no problems with this project, however, when supervising the green class during this project, I found a lot of them stuck or playing with other things on the computer. I found it extremely helpful having four adults in the classroom because we were all able to walk around and assist the students with their projects on the computer.
The one thing that we had in place in order to begin our digital writing workshop was a classroom set of laptops. The computers were shared within the grade level so they weren't for our classroom personally, but it was very useful to rent out the cart and have each student have their own computer to work on within the classroom. There was no need to travel down to the computer lab or the library to work on our writing pieces every time we needed to write. We were able to stay right in the classroom and work with the students individually in a more comforting environment for them. I also seemed to notice that it was a lot less distracting staying in the classroom and working then if we had been working in the computer lab or the library.
Since I had two very different groups of students who were at two very different levels, it was hard to allow one group to do one thing when my other group couldn't. Even though my gold group was capable of creating a pod casts or a blog page for example, I didn't want my green class to wonder why the other class got to do those things when they couldn't. I just knew that at the level that they were at, that they weren't ready to learn how to create those type of things on the computer. Looking back, in order to make the digital writing workshop more successful, I would need more time with those students so that I could spend the time teaching the digital world to my green class. I would have loved to teach them how to create a blog page so that they could go online and write journals to me about the books that we read. I would have also liked to posts wikis so that I could have posted questions for homework that they would have had to go answer. I feel that if I would have had more time to accomplish this with my green class then I wouldn't have had to hold the gold class back and my digital writing workshop could have been successful.
The one thing that we had in place in order to begin our digital writing workshop was a classroom set of laptops. The computers were shared within the grade level so they weren't for our classroom personally, but it was very useful to rent out the cart and have each student have their own computer to work on within the classroom. There was no need to travel down to the computer lab or the library to work on our writing pieces every time we needed to write. We were able to stay right in the classroom and work with the students individually in a more comforting environment for them. I also seemed to notice that it was a lot less distracting staying in the classroom and working then if we had been working in the computer lab or the library.
Since I had two very different groups of students who were at two very different levels, it was hard to allow one group to do one thing when my other group couldn't. Even though my gold group was capable of creating a pod casts or a blog page for example, I didn't want my green class to wonder why the other class got to do those things when they couldn't. I just knew that at the level that they were at, that they weren't ready to learn how to create those type of things on the computer. Looking back, in order to make the digital writing workshop more successful, I would need more time with those students so that I could spend the time teaching the digital world to my green class. I would have loved to teach them how to create a blog page so that they could go online and write journals to me about the books that we read. I would have also liked to posts wikis so that I could have posted questions for homework that they would have had to go answer. I feel that if I would have had more time to accomplish this with my green class then I wouldn't have had to hold the gold class back and my digital writing workshop could have been successful.
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