Free write

For my free write blog post I really wanted to talk about how much I enjoyed looking at everyone's different lesson plans on characterization. I feel I am slowly but surely starting to get a feel for how to really structure a class when it comes to creating lesson plans. I never realized how much time and effort it takes for teachers to really make sure they have their students attention. However, this particular module I really enjoyed looking up different lesson plans for characterization. Characterization I feel can be really fun when doing lessons with elementary school kids. When reading, kids are always looking out for their favorite characters. Characterization lets students reflect about why they like certain characters in the book. It gives them the ability to compare how they are similar to the characters they picked. It helps student's even realize a little bit more about themselves. I am really looking forward to creating our own module next!

Guiding Young Students' Response to Literature

I decided to read the article titles, "Guiding Young Students' Response to Literature", by Patricia Kelly. After reading this article, I noticed that I learned a lot different types of responses to literacy just by taking this EDU307 class. In the article, Kelly mentions how she likes to read books to her students that they enjoy so they can act out different scenes of the book. I noticed by the article that it is very important to keep the children interested in what they are reading. However, along with the author, I learned a different approach to children responding to literature. For example, Kelly learned when studying children's literacy, three issues that the students should look for when reading. "(a) what was noticed in the book, (b) how we felt about the book, and (c) how the book was related to 
our own experiences." I feel these steps can relate open a child's interest when discussing the book. When Kelly, tried this prompt on her third grade classroom, she was pleased to find the students reacted extremely well when reading their books. I enjoyed seeing the results of the teachers classroom when learning about different approaches to children's responses to literature. Kelly began to notice after taking part in the Bleich's prompt, the students were very open to their peers. The students shared their reflections about the story "Cinderella," and were commenting on each other's reflections, for example, one student responded to their peer with, "That's what I was going to say." As a future teacher I have no doubt that Kelly, felt accomplished and very excited that not only was her new approach working with responses to literature, but their students were very interested in the topic being discussed. 

Revising

Revising for me is always kind of tricky in a way. When it comes to revising other student's work, I always make sure that I give them HELPFUL feedback. One thing I hate when other students revise my work is when they tell me its good and hand it back without saying anything. One thing about writing is it can always be better. Destructive criticism is always helpful, because if your professor is reading and grading your paper, you want it to be the best it can be. Revising your own paper can be a little tricky. For me, sometimes I don't know whether to keep certain things, get rid of it, or try and change it. However, that's the point of revising. When you get a paper back, you're able to revise it and make your final paper ten times better. I really enjoy in my English class that I'm in now, that my professor reads our first drafts and gives us three tries to revise our papers. He has our peers read and revise our papers, while he also revises it. Then we are able to revise it ourselves for our final draft. Revising is critical in creating your best work and seeing mistakes you might not have seen when you created your first draft.

Drafting

All I have to say is...thank goodness for drafting. As a college student when you have 5 papers, a midterm, and a test, due in one day drafting is your best friend. I always try my best when first doing a paper because the better I do the least I have to really edit. However, I love creating drafts because I know if i mess up I can still always fix it. I am so thankful that rough drafts are due before final drafts because it gives me a chance to really look over what I've written. Also, when I get back a draft I am able to see how I can improve on my writing and what I could have done better.  It's important to have drafts when writing because ALL writers make mistakes. Even some of the best writers mess up with grammar, organization, basically anything. Drafting helps you to see mistakes you might not have seen when you first wrote a paper. I really REALLY am thankful for the drafting process.

Prewriting

Prewriting is a great tool to use to really organize your thoughts in a way that is easiest for you. The easiest for me I find is first creating topic sentences for each of the paragraphs I am going to be writing about. This will help me to create more ideas under the topic sentence. I also find that using diagrams such as a t chart if im writing about the similarities and differences is very helpful. However, as much as I don't want to admit it prewriting is something I don't do very often. For me, writing my thoughts in one try and creating a draft is easier for me. However, I was forced in high school during my English classes to always prewrite which helped me, but since its not really pushed in college I don't use it as much as I should. This doesn't mean I will tell my student's it's not useful because it is. Prewriting can be very helpful for students especially because sometimes elementary school kids struggle with getting their ideas written out on paper. They know what they want to say but have trouble writing about it. Venn diagrams, t charts, and other organizational tools will be stressed for my students to really get their ideas out on paper.

Writing in General

Writing in general has always been one of my strongest subjects throughout my life. During elementary school I loved writing and reflecting about stories I've been reading. However, throughout high school I began to lose how much I really loved writing. I wasn't able to do really "free write" as much as I wanted too. My high school offered many electives however, writing was not very popular in my high school. When I took my SAT's I knew I would score well in writing and reading. My scores looked like two completely different people took the test. I scored very low in math and sky rocketed for reading and writing. I knew after that I had to do something to incorporate my education with writing. I decided to minor in creative writing and so far I have really enjoyed the classes I've been taking to fill my concentration. I've taken three English courses so far varying from fiction and poetry. Now, I used to really enjoy fiction writing over poetry. However, after this semester I realized that analyzing poetry has been really enjoyable for me. I like the idea that there is no right or wrong answer, it's all about how you analyze the poem. I like that there are always so many chances and opportunities with writing. You are able to organize your ideas before hand to really create a good piece of work draft, edit, and revise. Although, I don't think I was really supposed to write about my personal opinion about writing, I find that writing can be very personal to me. When my mom passed in high school, writing was always my get away. It was a way for me to write down all my thoughts, sadness, and anger, in a non physical way.

Writing workshop 3

I chose to write about the writing workshop number 3 about short term goals. I really enjoyed learning about how important it is to set goals with your students, getting your students to enjoy and love writing, establishing a good environment, and creating manageable classroom management. I knew before reading this article I knew these were all really important in a classroom but to the extent I wasn't really sure how you would apply it to your classroom. For example, teachers create a curriculum which is our "long-term goal," but according to the article, it's important to make short term goals with your students. This includes creating goals in the beginning of the year or even shorter the beginning of the week, and then seeing if the student accomplished that goal. I also enjoyed reading about establishing a good atmosphere helps the students write better. I learned a lot from this article that creating a good atmosphere is more than just making sure students are supportive of each other. There is a lot more the teacher can do to create a good environment with the students in a classroom. The article suggests, a very important strategy such as writing with your students. Nothing helps students more than sitting down with them and being a model for them. They are able to learn a lot more from teachers when they are given one on one time to really see how they can better their writing.