Literacy, Week 9

Elbow describes in his article Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting out the Three Forms of Judgement how evaluating students work can be more beneficial to the student than grading or ranking the student. On page 191 of his article he gives 6 points for evaluating criteria. While reading Elbow's six points of criteria I could not help but see the parallels between that and the six traits for writing described by Spandel which are ideas and content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. The six points of evaluating criteria address every trait.

In Routman's Writing Essentials she gives model rubrics that can be used in grades 1-3 and give the students a chance to see what they are being graded on and what is expected of them. I really like the idea of having a rubric that the teacher can go over with the class. I think that giving students a clear idea of what is expected of them will help them understand why they received the grades that they did. I was just recently in a 2nd grade parent/teacher conference and one of the parents I observed had commented on how her child is very competitive and knows all the grades of his classmates and where he falls on the continuum. This student gets very upset with himself because he is a lower reader and feels like he is as smart as his classmates. While my teacher never told the other students what their grades were, this student just simply asked his classmates and they told him. I am even guilty of this, I like to know where I fall on the grading scale, and often get upset when I find out people did better than me, and of course feel better when I hear people did the same or even worse than I did. Grading is hard, I have always hated receiving my grades on tests, papers, and homework. Getting a bad grade can mess up your day or even week. I completely agree with Elbow's ideas of how grading is not positive for students and I really like the ideas that he presented in his paper. I think that evaluating student work, and taking the time to like what they write before reading it, and having the students like their work first before they feel like they have a ton of things to change can help make them better writers and make the classroom a more positive place for students to learn and grow.

Giving the students a clear expectation by using a rubric and evaluating their work as well as teaching them to like their work first can make more some powerful writers and will help these student more than giving them a passing grade.

Literacy Week 8

In Chapter 9 of Writing Essentials Routeman discusses conferencing with students in both the group and individual setting. Today in my dyad placement I had the opportunity to conference with a few students. The students are working on a genre fiction piece, and for the last few weeks they have been planning their scenes, and began drafting today. During two periods, I had the chance to sit down casually with a few of the students and work on their drafting. I started out the conference by telling the student that I would read their draft back to them and ask them if sentences made sense and the idea of the story was clear to them as the reader. I also asked the students to listen in on the setting of their story and think about where they could add or delete words to make the story make more sense. I then read the story to them, and had them chime in on sentences that were written wrong, or did not make sense. When they were having a time struggling I would ask them questions hoping that they would come to the conclusion that I was thinking in my head without just saying "why don't you write this instead of this..". I wanted them to be able to see how a good writer thinks.

Some of these conferences worked really well, and used a few of the helpful responses that Routeman gave on page 230 - 231. One conference in particular did not go as well as I had hoped, I have a girl in my class who is very set in her ways and thinks that her writing is amazing, she has told me before that she has a specific "style" of writing and is unwilling to change anything. Now I am not saying that her writing is not amazing, but she is in 8th grade, she has a difficult time with punctuation, spelling, organization and making her thoughts and ideas clear to the reader. I sat down with her today and told her I was going to read her first draft of scene 1 to her and see if there was anything we could add, and if the sentences made sense. I was hoping that by reading the story out loud and asking some thoughtful questions to her as a reader she would be able to see what parts of her story she needed to work on or things in her story she needed to clarify. Instead she got defensive when I misread her poorly misspelled words, or when the grammar of her story was wrong, even though she had written it that way! She also got upset when I asked her questions about her story to clarify things such as who was running up the hill, and who was giving Lola her lunch. I tried telling her that I know she is protective of her writing, and doesn't really want to change things, and went on to say that even though parts of her story make sense to her because she is the writer that some things don't make sense to me as the reader. Routeman also states that when conferencing it is good to start off with a positive remark, give some criticism, and then end with something that they can work on. I tried really hard to make sure that I began with a positive thing about her story, and showered her with positive feedback since she was so defensive about the suggestions I made or questions I had asked her for clarification. It ended up being a good conference, and was definitely a learning experience for me. I really enjoyed getting the chance to conference with a few of the students and I found it to be a positive and helpful experience for both the student and myself. Routeman offers some great tips and suggestions for how to have a successful conference and these were helpful as I was conferencing with the students.

Brown Bear..Brown Bear..

I thought this cartoon was hilarious, especially since this was one of the books that I choose to read to my kindergarden student since it had repeated rhyming patterns.

Literacy Week 7

There are two quotes in Anne Lamont's Bird by Bird that really spoke to me. The first quote comes from her chapter titled Broccoli. Lamont writes "when you don't know what to do, when you don't know whether your character would do this or that, you get quiet and try to hear that still small voice inside. It will tell you what to do. The problem is that so many of us lost access to our broccoli when we were children." (Lamont, pg. 110) The reason why I love this quote so much is that I am a firm believer in listening to your intuition, it always will lead you in the right direction. Very often when I am writing something I know if it is good or not, or I have an idea of what my readers would enjoy. I really thought that what Lamont said about people losing their intuition with childhood was a powerful statement as well. When we are children we often don't care as much what others think and follow our hearts, or our intuition. As we get older many of us try to conform to society, and along the way loose sight of what that little voice in our head tells us and instead fall victim to peer pressure. I like that Lamont points out to listen to your intuition when writing. Lamont goes on in the chapter to make the point that your "broccoli" allows you to be having a bad day when writing and if you are just using your rational mind to guide you, you will have a very difficult time writing, but the blessing with your intuition or your "broccoli" is that it allows you to write even when you are having a bad day, letting that little voice come forward and not be drown out by your rational mind may let you get more work done than you actually think. Lamont also makes the point to double check your intuition and make sure it's not your mother speaking to you, meaning any negative voices that may be bringing us down. She reminds the reader that there is a difference between your "broccoli" and your mother, and not to let your negative thoughts get mixed up with what that little voice in your head tells you. Make sure to keep your "broccoli" and your rational mind separate, and it will make writing so much easier.

And I can finally breathe..

During my September Experience I did not have the chance to teach a lesson. I had no problem with this since I was still trying to wrap my head around everything I was observing, and I think that I needed those three weeks to transition myself from the idea of just being a student to being a student teacher, which is a big jump. For the last year that I have been in school, the classroom was something that we just talked about, it was abstract, and stepping foot in my main placement made the classroom a more concrete idea. I now had children that I could observe their learning and discuss with my classmates and master teacher. I was overwhelmed to say the least. Then just as I was finally feel good about my little second graders, I was uprooted and moved to a middle school. It was a huge transition for me. I once again felt awkward and had to establish myself once again as a teacher to these students. My middle school class was more difficult to win over than my second graders. In addition I had the requirement of 4 lessons to teach looming over my head. I was full of nerves, and the fact that I was having a power struggle with one of the girls in my middle school class did not make matters better. My Master Teacher has a group of "problem" children that make it hard at times for her to teach the class, I was terrified that they were going to eat me alive. In addition, I realized that these students smelled fear, so I had to come off overconfident to trick them. The week before I was scheduled to give my first lesson I had a run in with one of the "problem" girls in the class, she flat out told me that she did not have to listen to me and to get out of her face and not talk to her anymore after I had asked her to go back to her seat since she was being a distraction. My Master Teacher made sure that the girl was punished for disrespecting me, but I was nervous all weekend about how she was going to be to me come Monday when I had to teach the class. I had spoken to Jean Eisele about this girl, and had asked her for some advice. Jean asked me if I had taught a lesson yet, and I replied "no" and that's when she informed me that once I get one lesson out of the way I will feel so much better and more confident. Jean, of course, was right. Monday I was giving myself a pep talk before class and the lesson went well. The girl even was listening and doing her work. Getting that one lesson out of the way, and standing up in front of the class made the transition from student to student teacher real, and I finally felt it. I now have three lessons under my belt and I am starting to feel more confident in the classroom. Breathe in..Breathe out..