Wordle

Last thoughts about my placement this semester.....

(Caution: might be a bit cheesey)

Above is a representative of my students that I worked with this semester. They differ individually by personally, talents, abilities, and more. In the last few weeks I have caught myself observing and appreciating their different sense of humor and mannerisms. Realizing their interesting traits and qualities has caused me to become sad because I will miss them when I leave. And because they are in fifth grade there isn’t even a possibility that I will see them in the halls of the school next semester because they will be moving to middle school. In the past I have always been in lower grades and I have been able to go back and visit to get my “fix” when I started to miss them. I have learned so many valuable things from my students this semester. One is that 5^th graders really aren’t that scary after all. For the most part my experience is with the lower grades of elementary school, so when I found out in the beginning of the semester that I was in fifth grade I thought they would act like middle school kids, but they aren’t. They still have their innocence and sweetness, really not that intimidating at all. I have also learned from my students that flexibility and honesty is very important. When things didn’t go right they were able to sense if I was frustrated or stressed, so with honesty I was able to tell them how I was feeling and how I felt the lesson was going so that we could work to improve the current situation. This honesty also helped me gain respect with my students. I am so sad that this week is our official last week in the schools.

Comments4Kids

Search: #comments4kids on Twitter

Then: You can comment on a wide variety of student's work found online through their blogs, word documents, etc.

Here are my comments:

http://kidblog.org/stortz/lexi71/bully-prevention-week/#comment-1187

http://kidblog.org/Powell4thGrade/claireh10/if-i-could-move-some-where-new/#comment-767

http://year6l.blogspot.com/2011/04/our-collection-of-prezis.html

Origami Cranes for Japan

Beth told my LLED class about this special origami crane fundraiser for Japan.

http://studentsrebuild.org/japan/

I was totally and completely intrigued by this idea and so that week in my collaborating teachers classroom I decided to have my students create origami cranes. This activity for them was a little bit difficult, but I believe that they really enjoyed.

Before the activity I showed my students news clippings and videos about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan so they were more aware of the needs and struggles they are faced with.

Because the activity took longer than normal it went into their recess time however, one of my students said, "I wish we could go outside to recess, but i'd rather be make these for Japan." That comment was really sweet!

Here is the aftermath of the activity!

Whole Week Lesson

For my week long lesson unit I decided to do writing workshop. The standard that we focused on was responce to literature. The week went very well and I was very satisfied with how my students reacted and responded to the readings that were presented.
First I made each of my students there own personal response to literature folders. Each day I read a story and the students responded. Before reading the mentor text each day I did a little pre-read activity where I would ask them a question or give them a situation and they were asked to draw a picture of it. For example one day I asked to my students to think of a time they felt rejected or left out, then they drew a picture of it.
Next I would read the text to the students. After reading I would introduce them to a new way to respond to literature. And then I would ask them to respond to the book I just read using the specific reponse to literature they were taught.
Everyday had a different theme. I will list them all with the mentor text below:
1.Personal Narrative, Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
2.Scary Stories, More Scare Stories To Tell in the Dark  By: Alvin Schwartz
3.Racism, inequality, KKK, Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine Bessie Smith and the Knight Riders by Sue Stauffacher
4. Parents incarcerated, Visiting Day by Jacqueline Woodson
5. Border Crossing, My Shoes and I by Rene Laniez
I believe most of the students in my class found the ghost stories day to be the most fun! Although a lot of the students found the "controversial" topics interesting and I think they enjoyed talking and writing about them in school.
After my full week of teaching we had Spring Break. After spring break we came to the schools on Thursday and Friday. So on Friday I decided to give my students an assessment from our unit. We did the pre-read activity and read the text like normal. Then I passed around a hand out to each student listing all the different ways we learned (the week before spring break) to respond to literature. Then I told them this was an assessment and they were to identify a way they wanted to respond to the literature for that day and then respond using they way they choose. I was very happy to see that most of the students did very well on the assessment. 
Even though my unit wasn't very long there were little improvements in my students. I saw some students go from only writing a few sentences to writing a page in the week or so span of time.
Actually getting the chance to implement the writing workshop in my class was very fun. I used many of the ideas, tips, and tools that were presented in Katie Wood Rays text and they were very helpful. After having taught this lesson I know for sure that I want to implement writing workshop into my future classroom!

"What happens on a daily basis in the workshop is always part of something bigger than that one day...

 "Any lesson that we teach, any conference that we have, has both a history and a future in the life of the workshop"

"Our units of study create important teaching time lines across the year"

 Units of Study

I agree that as teachers we need to have planned units of study for the year. The whole year's writing workshop doesn't need to be planned, but at least an outline of what you plan to do and for how long even if you include blank weeks for "class selected" units.

In regard to "planning" units in the writing workshop it makes me excited that you aren't suppose to plan every single thing out except for maybe the focus lesson. I like the flexibility of the writing workshop and the room it gives students to move about where there aren't any wrong answers or things to study. 

I also like that in addition to planning for specific units of study that Katie Wood Ray realizes that as we conference and look over our students work that we might find specific areas that students need help in and that we can take the time to teach these "as-needed" focus lesson. For example teaching about adjectives.

I thought the questions that Katie Wood Ray suggested that we think about for assisting in selecting our units of study, we very helpful. I appreciated her suggestion of have a unit of study on an aspect of writing that I have a strength. If I had to pick this now I definitely would pick my unit on "response to literature" and the different ways to respond. This unit would be good to implement in the beginning of the year seeing and how many lesson might involve some sort of responding to literature. I also liked Katie's idea of having two opposing grade (5th and 1st) have a literary study together in a co-genre study. I believe this would be very beneficial to both grades in having the students see how they both develop and learn. 

Lastly I liked her suggestion about have a genre study of testing. I am in 5th grade this semester and they had to take the 5th grade writing test a few weeks ago and I wondered how I would instruct my future students in how to prepare for the test. However Katie's suggestion is a great idea. To implement a writing workshop about teaching the difference between testing curriculum and writing curriculum would be beneficial. Also teaching students strategies and ways to take the writing test, I believe it would help ease their nerves.

The units of study chapter was very beneficial to me. At first I thought that the writing workshop just consisted of creating writing samples of different genres, but now I know it can be extended to more broad "units of study."

“When students are working in a relatively small space, there are bound to be some distractions”

"It’s like the difference between being a supervisor on a factory assembly line, where everyone does the same thing over and over, and being an office manager in an advertising agency, where workers are engaged in lots of different kinds of work, but all in support of a common outcome.”

"It’s like the difference between being a supervisor on a factory assembly line, where everyone does the same thing over and over, and being an office manager in an advertising agency, where workers are engaged in lots of different kinds of work, but all in support of a common outcome.”

When trying to tackle the many distractions that are present in the writing workshop I liked that Katie Wood Ray concise the main points to be presence, space, and supplies. I never realized how important the presence of the teacher is in writing workshop until Katie Wood Ray. I found it important that she pointed out that when we let our students loose to writing workshop it is not the free time for the teacher to work on other things. She describes the management of the writing workshop so well. That it is a place where many different things are happening at the same time, but it is all very productive. They all have to interact in some way. For the presence section a light bulb hit me when she spoke about how choosing not to work isn’t in option, but that we have to make sure that what were are seeing is clearly not working instead of maybe pondering their thoughts or getting ideas from other classmates. It is also important that different students in the classroom have different task or assignments within the writing workshop. This will help the flow of traffic and things. Also there need to be a routine or where things happen. For example there needs to be a sharing time area, a mini-lesson space, etc. I really like that “no talking” workshops are not allowed. I feel like it is SOOO unrealistic when one walks into a classroom and the students are suppose to be actively engaged in a project or piece of work and the room in completely silent. As Katie says it’s natural to talk to someone right next to you! I like that goal of have the workshop to be so structured that it could run itself. Lastly, I never thoughts about the importance of having all the right supplies for the writing workshop. I LOVE LOVE the idea of the sticky notes in students notebooks for teachers comments on the students work. This sounds as though it would be very effective.

“The best way to manage distractions in the writing workshop is to have plenty of attractions for students as writers”

I liked this section (although it was very small) because in talking about how the writing workshop will never feel complete, done, right, etc. A teacher will never feel like they have got a handle on it and that’s okay because that’s how its suppose to feel. I think she said it perfectly when she wrote “it’s all their different individual writing decisions that feel slightly beyond our control; it’s not their behavior that feels that way.”

Question: Can you collect writers notebooks at the end of each day or should they always be able to go home with the students?

"Talk is essential to the healthy maintenence of any writing workshop..."

"I mean, we have no idea what children might say in response to, "Tell me about how your writing is going." "

This weeks reading from Katie Wood Ray's The Writing Workshop focused on conferencing, share time, and assessing.

Conferencing

Ever since I starting walking down the road to becoming a teaching I have been all about conferencing.I have never read about through the lens of writing workshop, but I love the idea of conferencing with students. Just to get to know my students and have them connect and realize their strengths, weaknesses, areas of improvement, etc. 

In regards to the writing workshop...First I really like how Katie made special mention that it is important that to sit with the the student at their desk, in their environment and not have the student come to the teacher's desk. Having student's come to the teacher's desk is the usual format that I see in classrooms when teacher's have any type of conference with student's. I have even been apprehensive about conferencing in the "mix of the students" because I felt as though it would disturb their precious working time. However, after reading this chapter I realize that the students would get used to the conference and once they got familiar with them, they probably wouldn't even notice, if I was conferencing with another student near them. I like that she said it lets student know "that we want to catch them in the act of doing their work."

I learned that conferencing is not about going around to students who have their hand raise because they need help. "The purpose is to teach." I like that Katie emphasis the important nature of independence in the writing workshop. That most problems student's face can be taken care of on their own. 

Katie did a good job of reassuring me about conferences when she shared her fear about, possibly not being able to meet with each student all the time because that would be my first fear. That I wasn't conferencing with the right student that needed it that day or that week. Her advice about teaching them independence and that even one conference is more than I ever had, was comforting.

There are parts that make up a conference: research, decide, teach, and make a record. I will share a few things I find insight about each. 

In research, where it is the students responsibility to talk and the teacher responsibility to see how things are going for the writers, I liked Katie's tips on how to get the "no-talker" to talk. My favorite was when a student says "I don't know" you can respond with "tell me what you don't know or what you are struggling with." I like this for because it lets students know what there is never a wrong answer and that even if you feel you don't have an answer there may be a reason for that.

In deciding what to pull from the writer's talk I had a realization that I don't know many formalities about writing, but that I shouldn't let my small fists of knowledge stop me from conferencing because I am involved in a learning process just as my students are.

I liked that in teaching, the teacher can teach something that a student already know because it is just reinforcing what the child is doing is smart.

Like Katie, I find it very vital to keep a record of conferencing that way you can track progress, improvements, plan for lessons, etc. It is such a great tool that has endless amounts of benefits.

Share Time

"A predictable time we plan to bring everyone together for just talk about writing"

This is such a great way to build classroom community. Where students are able to share their work with other students to support each other, to get feedback, and possibly to gain empathy toward each other in the classroom.

I like the idea of sharing in partners or small group (simple response share) because I agree with Katie that when you read something in it's entirety it is like publishing because you don't want to share that piece again because everyone has already heard it. 

Survey Share sounds neat! I think with this you could have student come up to the board and you could create a wordle to really see if there are any trends in the students responses.

Student-as-Teacher Share sounds really fun! This is a great way to sort of "spotlight" different writer's in the classroom. You could even use this as a good "teaching" opportunity for the students.

Assessing

I do believe that assessing and finding curriculum through questioning was a great chapter, but I am sort of burnt out on responding to this weeks reading so I am going to leave you with two quotes that I believe sum it up...

Asking students questions is a form of assessment "because they provide us with critical information about how writing is going for our students." 

But they also provide curriculum because "the questions themselves teach students important ways to think about their writing and about themselves as writers."

"Our questions show students very clearly what we value in their work as writers, and they model way in which we hope students will learn to talk among themselves as writers."
AMEN.

"If I locked my students in my classroom..."

“If I locked my students in my classroom and stood outside the door, what could they learn about writing without me even being there?”

This weeks readings in Katie Wood Ray’s The Writing Workshop help calm my NERVES about how to TEACH, using CURRICULUM and WHOLE CLASS involvement. I feel a little bit more confident about executing this in a classroom. The idea is becoming more real.

“These are places where you can look at things, try things out, read things, touch things…You learn in these places because you are surrounded by things to learn from.” Thing statement is so powerful because I believe as teachers we need to provide students with an environment wherein they can act as FREE AGENTS and in doing so they need the proper materials and resources. When surrounded by things to learn from one’s brain can be constantly stimulated with new ideas and thoughts about their writing.

“Either we can be walking, breathing, talking examples of all we advocate for our students, or we can have them sitting around wondering why we are trying to get them into something that we are obviously not into ourselves.” I CONNECTED with this statement because when I was in Elementary School I asked myself that very question many times, why am I doing/learning this when my teacher doesn’t seem to care about it? When I saw this in my teacher(s) is left me very UNMOTIVATED to do the work they were asking me to do. If I had, had a teacher that walked and talked what she taught because she had been there, then I probably would have been more willing to try harder/give it my best. That is one thing that I look forward to in being a teacher…being able to RELATE to my students. Be a teacher that is able to look at things through her students eyes, not just through empathy, but through ACTUALITY and AUTHENTICITY.

I was wondering if a teacher was suppose to write during writing workshop? My question was answered in this reading. Katie said, “I teach during writing workshop-from start to finish.” After she explained how she taught through the focus lesson and then one-on-one that made more sense. Although, the planning side of teach through one-on-one conferences make me NERVOUS because you can’t really plan because you don’t know what the student is going to say. So I guess a question for this would be how can I get myself as prepared as possible for student-teacher conferences?

I like the idea of having homework as the student’s “WORLD WORK.” Thinking, looking, analyzing the world around them and writing their thoughts/feeling/etc. into a notebook. Perfect HOMEWORK!

"Writing is like going Fishing..."

"Writing is like going fishing...when you do it you're just fishing and it's very much a state of being and doing that separates you from any other activity"

I feel as though I all of a sudden have a passion for writing that I never had before. After reading chapter 1-5 of The Writing Workshop: Working through the Hard Parts (And They’re All Hard Parts) by Katie Wood Ray I have a new idea and inspiration for writing.

In the beginning on chapter 1 I initially identified with the Katie when she talked about how teachers “think” they have a class where writing workshops take place, but really they just have their students dance through the writing process. And usually the students don’t really dance, they drag their feet because the writing process is not about discovery or learning to be a writer, it’s just BORING. I connected with Katie because this is how I remember writing to be in Elementary school, very strict and structured. Although in my third grade class I remember having a writing journal wherein on Friday we had “free write” time where we could write whatever we wanted and that was my FAVORITE time to write.

                “As teachers we really do not have the right to make this decision for students.” AMEN SISTA’! One of the things I have enjoyed while being in the Elementary Education Program is that most teachers assign specific topics or pose certain question such as; what is your philosophy of teaching? But I am not give a direct to take that in, or a specific limit on how much I HAVE TO WRITE, it is all very free. I understand that given the specific topic is a little limiting, but it is refreshing to know that I don’t have to STRESS over writing what I think my professor wants me to write. This is how I would love writing in my future classroom to feel and look like.

                I enjoyed Katie’s thoughts on how incorporating writing into other curriculum is not enough it needs its own space. For example she said, “I believe reading and writing, as content areas, are different from other because they are thing you do, not things you know.” I had never thought about this before. Before reading this book I thought that students doing writing throughout day in other content areas was just enough, but now I realize that I was VERY wrong. Writing IS A THING YOU DO, not a thing you know. It really wouldn’t make sense to say “I KNOW WRITING” rather “WRITING IS SOMETHING I DO.” So I wonder how I evoke this message to other teachers who still think the way I USED TO THINK?

                I have never really thought of myself as a “writer” but after reading chapter 3, I am thinking a little differently. I liked Katie’s analogy of asking herself if she considers herself a cook because she spends a lot of time cooking. I, too spend a lot of time cooking and after reading Katie’s analogy I might consider myself a cook, but it is a little more difficult to consider myself a writer. Although after reflecting on all the different types of writing I do, I believe I do consider myself A WRITER. Must all successful teachers think of themselves as writers?

                I like the idea of setting a TONE in the classroom of writing. Have the students view the teacher as a writer because she is just a fluid in the classroom as the students as. In my future classroom I do not envision myself to be separated from my students instead I want to look like one of them, fully engaged in the “activities” of the classroom. Applying this to the writing workshop I like that the teacher should be writing also and that the students should know and be able to describe their teacher as a writer. The she/he has had good days and bad days as a writer too.

                The last two things I enjoyed from Katie was the RITUAL of having writing workshop mirror the routine of lunchtime. I too believe is consistency. Also I LOVED the idea of having a Publishing Party where people outside the classroom are invited and students are able to share their work. This would be a great way to HONOR the student’s hard work that they produced in the writing workshop. It would also show the students how much the teacher VALUES their work.

Assignment Excuses

Tonight when I was going to read and blog for my assignment my grandma-in-law was admitted to Athens Regional, so we went to visit to make sure she was okay.

Tonight when I was going to read and blog for my assignment I remembered that I hadn't finished my map assignment and well that sort of sounded more fun

Tonight when I was going to read and blog for my assignment I remembered that I needed to start filling out my Student Teaching Application

Tonight when I was going to read and blog for my assignment I got too tired and fell asleep....

No excuses, tomorrow it WILL be done!