Week 5

In Chapter 4 of Writing Essentials, Routman introduces the optimal learning model for writing. This model has four phases and starts with the teacher demonstrating to the class and gradually as the class continues through the phases of the model, the responsibilities for writing will be handed over to the students. In order for this model to work the teacher must first create a safe learning environment for their students to feel comfortable enough to share ideas and take risks. Once this classroom environment has been established, the teacher begins the model by demonstrating to the class by writing their ideas and saying them out loud to their students allowing them to see how ideas are created. The second phase of the model has the students participating in the demonstration by sharing ideas, and collaborating together as a class, the third phase requires the students to practice what they have just seen demonstrated by the teacher with guided help during this time, and the last phase of the model has the students writing independently and practicing what they had learned through the lesson.

I think this model is a very powerful tool to use as a teacher during writing. I believe it is so important as a teacher to have a classroom that students feel safe, relaxed and able to share their thoughts and opinions out loud without feeling judged by other students. I also think it is very powerful to have the teacher demonstrate what is expected of the students before having them practice it on their own. Writing can be a very difficult subject for many students and one of the hardest parts about writing is knowing what is expected of you as a writer, or formulating ideas and putting these ideas down on paper. I have always been the type of student that needs to see examples of what is expected of me, this way I have a clear idea in my head, instead of worrying while I am writing if I am on the right path, or if i have completely misunderstood the directions.

Writers Workshop is something that is used in the Seattle Public Schools, and mirrors Routman's optimal model of learning. In Writer's Workshop, students are called over to a meeting area, where the teacher stands in front of the class with his/her whiteboard behind them. The teacher will introduce the day's lesson and then demonstrate the lesson in front of the class. The teacher will formulate his/her ideas and write them down, as if they were doing this on their own and not in front of a group of students. Together the class will either come up with an example of the lesson, or they will watch as their teacher creates an example for the class, and the teacher is expected to show themselves struggling as a writer though this example. Then the class is asked to go back to their seats and begin writing with the teacher walking around the class and helping the students further formulate their ideas or work on their writing pieces. The students will then continue to work on their pieces of writing during the following lesson and eventually the students will choose what stories they want to correct and make final drafts of on their own. Then the class will have a "celebration" sharing these drafts and the stories will be "published" in the hallways for others to write comments on.

I plan on using this model in my classroom, I like the idea of having the whole class formulate ideas and brainstorm before sending them off to tackle the writing on their own. I think that by working together as a class, students may think of things that they may not have thought of on their own, and they may feel more comfortable about the assignment. Writing can be very daunting for many students, myself included, and by using this model the responsibilities as a writer are slowly passed over to the students by the teacher. I believe this would help alleviate anxiety and give the students a chance to have more fun writing, and hopefully over time the students will begin to enjoy writing and not see as it a struggle.

Another powerful point Routman made in this chapter was for teachers to hold high expectations for their students. If students are held to these expectations chances are they will rise to the occasion, and through using this optimal model of learning the teacher can give the students clear examples of the expectations and will help the students by first demonstrating these expectations and then slowly handing over the responsibilities to the students so that the students do not find these high standards to be daunting.

Kittens Inspired by Kittens!

This video is one of my favorite videos that I have come across on You Tube. Not only do I love cats myself but I think this is the perfect example of an emergent reader. Although the girl is too young to read the words on the book, she is doing what so many other children do at her age and making up the words on the page, making it into a little story. It is absolutely adorable! This video will make you laugh and appreciate children and their beautiful imaginations. Enjoy!

Literacy Week 4

In Chapter 3 of Writing Essentials, Routman encourages teachers to explore themselves as writers and think about their own writing experience. While reading this chapter I started to reflect my own experiences as a writer. When I was in elementary school I used to love writing, I remember writing chapter books about the Saved By the Bell TV characters in my own spare time. (I actually still have them saved) but then somehow as I got older, writing became less fun and more of a struggle. Creative writing turned into research writing, and instead of our works of writing being celebrated, they were marked up with red ink and critiqued. I remember I began to get anxiety when I turned in my papers (especially during college) because it seemed that every teacher or professor I had expected something different from my writing, and had no hesitations critiquing my work. While some of their critiques were helpful, it also broke down my confidence and instead of being the confident creative writer I was when I was young, I became the anxious writer who would visit the writing center for every paper, and would hold my breath when receiving my grade back from that paper.

In the first few chapters of Writing Essentials, Routman encourages teachers to celebrate student's work, and to also let the students see thier teacher struggle with writing, or watch them in the writing process. In Chapter 3, Routman poses a few questions that will help teachers show their students how they go through the writing process, so that their students may be able to become better writers by seeing how others cope with things such as writers block, or creating ideas. One of the questions for teachers to reflect on is the what exactly do you do to plan, to get started, to continue when you get stuck, and to complete your piece? Since I have anxiety when it comes to writing work that is going to be turned in, I have to brainstorm and almost have an epiphany of what I am going to write about. I know that sounds kind of silly, so I am going to give an example of this, and this would also be an example I might tell my students if I was teaching a middle school writing class, (I would not use this with my second graders). When I was applying to Education Programs the applications required personal essays, and one of them was basically the question of "Why do you want to teach?" I thought long and hard about what I was going to write, and was stuck on how to put into words my thoughts. Then one night at around 3 am, I woke and it came to me! I was going to call the personal essay The Game of Life and I was going to talk about how when I was young and played Milton Bradley's The Game of Life, I would always cheat and steal the teacher card as my profession. Then as I got older I realized that in my real "game of life" that I wanted to teach, and it was something that I had known all about myself since I was little. This is the basic idea that came to me in my sleep and of course I woke up, grabbed and pencil and pen and wrote down everything that had come to my mind during that time. Then I went back to bed and over the course of the next couple of weeks, when I would be doing my daily runs around Greenlake or I was at the gym, I would focus on how I was going to write the rest of this paper. Running for me is a way that I can brainstorm my thoughts for papers, and most of the papers I have written I have developed during my morning runs.

I realize that some of my students may think this is weird that I randomly think about my paper's topics and have ideas come to me while I am working out, but these are times for me when I am able to reflect and think about those kinds of things. I think that this may be helpful to some students who think about school as they are going to bed, and they can maybe start to make it a habit of reflecting on their writing or homework before they go to bed. People brainstorm ideas in all different ways. Once I have brainstormed my ideas I like to bounce them off of my friends, family, and fellow students to see if my ideas are going in the right direction (since I do have anxiety about my ideas being way off base). I think that students should recognize that they can help each other with ideas about their writing and maybe they can inspire one another to be better writers and help each other a long the way. I do realize that sometimes having partners to bounce ideas off of could stump creativity, but I'd like to encourage my students to be positive to others ideas and hopefully this would not be an issue.

Another question posed by Routman to consider is the writing process. I am the type of writer that needs to be inspired first, and I try to get my rough draft down on paper and then leave it for a few hours/days depending on my deadline. I like to continually come back to my writing and revise and edit it. I also find that I get some of my best writing done in the early morning when I get up, and that I am a useless writer at night. I think that it is important to encourage my students that if they are stuck when they are writing to stop and come back to their work, and to have others look over their paper for mistakes that they may have missed in their writing, but to not get discouraged if they do try to critique their papers as well.

I think that in order for teachers to be able to teach writing to their students that they must first reflect on how they are as a writer, what worked for them when they were in school, and what did not. I think it is important to emphasize that writing for some people can be difficult and that it is a very personal process for each person does, meaning that each person has an individual process or struggle they must go through as a writer. I think it is important to celebrate student's work, and for the teacher to let the students how they generate ideas and let them know that writing is a struggle for everyone, even their teacher whom they most likely see as an expert in the area of writing.

Literacy Week 3

One of the prompts for this weeks reading asked the question Does "invented spelling" help or hinder young readers? I think this is a great question that could be debated for both sides. My opinion stands that invented spelling helps the reader. I am in a second grade classroom for my main placement and students are constantly raising their hand to ask us how to spell words. I usually do not just tell the student how to spell the word they asked me to spell for them but I try to help them break the word down phonetically so that they are may begin to do this on their own. I think that having students practice breaking words down phonetically will make them better readers since they will have to do the same thing when they are reading. I also think that it is important when students are using "invented spelling" that they eventually see the correct way to spell the word, if they have written the incorrect spelling. It is not good to let students do inventive spelling and then have them think that the way they are spelling these words is correct, since that will lead them to develop the habits of spelling words wrong.

The only thing that I have against invented spelling is that I was never taught in my early years phonics, and how to spell and read phonetically. It was always really hard for me to sound out words when I was younger, and because of my "invented spelling" I got into the habit of spelling words wrong, and I still to this day spell them wrong! "Especially" is a word that I still do not know how to spell right since I learned how to spell it the wrong way to begin with. Even the word as simple as "their" I spelled wrong for years! So I think that it is important if students are to use inventive spelling that eventually they see which words they are spelling correctly and which ones they are spelling incorrectly so that they do not develop bad habits that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. (I just spelled their wrong, and thankfully spell check caught it..wow I'm just making my point more and more clear!)

As a teacher with a class of 25-30 students who are learning how to spell, it would take up so much unnecessary time having to spell the words for each child every time they do not know a word, you could spend all day just on writing a story if you had to do that! I think that "inventive spelling" can also be a way for teachers to see who is developing phonetically, and who is still in the earlier stages of phonetic awareness. Letting the students do their best spelling is also a chance for teachers to asses where each student is at in their reading and writing skills.

Literacy Week 2

Sulzaby and Teale Article:

There were a few key points to this article that stuck in my mind, and were things that I have observed in the classrooms I have visited. For my main placement I am in a 2nd grade classroom, currently the Teacher is reading a chapter a day of Shiloh out loud to the students. After each chapter they summarize what has happened in the chapter and try to answer the question "why did this author need to write the next chapter of the book?". Once they are done summarizing the chapter as a whole they find one sentence to that summarizes the chapter. The students then go back to their seats and on a large piece of paper that is broken down into boxes of eight on each side they write the sentence for that chapter under that specific box that pertains to that chapter and draw a picture to summarize the sentence. By doing this the teacher is incorporating writing, and art into reading, making it more creative for the students and helping them with their literacy skills. Sulzably and Teale state in their article that using art, drama, and writing is a wonderful way to incorporate literacy into the classroom.

Another 2nd grade classroom I visited during my practicum made lists of what they thought was going to happen in the stories they were reading, and what actually happened. This teacher as constantly using lists to compare and contrast ideas for other subjects as well. Having students see the teacher writing the list in the front of the class was another great way to incorporate literacy into the classroom.

In addition both teachers had 20 minutes set aside each day for students to read quietly to themselves as a way to enhance their reading skills. My Master Teacher has plastic old school telephones that have the cords cut off but the students can use these to read out loud quietly to themselves and be able to hear how they read out loud. This can help enhance their reading skills because they become more aware of how they sound when they are reading out loud.

There were a few ideas from this article that I would love to incorporate into my classroom as a way to enhance my student's literacy skills. Among these ideas was having pen pals in the classroom that students can write to. It would be even more fun to have pen pals from the different classes in the grades, or maybe even to their little or big buddy in another grade. This was a fun way for students to write and enhance their literacy and socials skills. Another great idea I found in this article was having Guest readers come in and read the students. I liked the idea of the children choosing a guest and one way that could incorporate literacy even more to this idea is having the teacher write a list in front of the class of the people the students nominate to come visit. This way they are seeing the teacher writing and this simple action can help enhance their literacy skills. Then after the students have voted having someone come in, writing the Guest of Honor an invitation to come into their classroom. The students are now getting a chance to use their writing skills, and art skills as well as they can decorate the invitation. Then the fun act of having someone come in a read to them is a great way to make literacy and reading more exciting throughout the year.

Another point from the article was having the library being a focal point of the classroom, and making sure students are taking advantage of all the books offered to them. I like the idea of having the classroom library being an inviting place for students and I would love to be able to have a place for bean bags or cushioned chairs that students can sit in and read during quiet reading time.

Mason Article:

This article stressed having teachers ask questions, lead discussions before and after books, enhance their character's voices to enhance the stories being read out loud to students, and having the children interpret the text information. When reading to students' teachers should 4 types of questions, these questions helped students

1. understand the meaning of unfamiliar words

2. make predictions about the text events

3. interpret the thoughts and feelings of the characters

4. understand concepts through explanation.

After reading a story teachers should ask a series of questions to review the important elements of the story and make sure children understood these elements.

When reading informal texts the strategies for the most part stayed the same, but Mason stressed the idea of having follow up activities designed for understanding of the texts, and having children conceptually think about the information they are given through these follow up activities.

For Picture Books Mason suggested given students goals for listening to the book. In addition, teachers should extend the book topic into several post reading activities. Teachers can do this by having students draw a picture from a scene of the book or acting out a scene from the book. Having this post reading activities can enhance the understanding of the concepts of the books.

I thought that this article had some great tips for how to read different texts to students and have them interpret and understand the texts better through pre and post reading activities and comprehension questions before, during, and after the book.