Week 12

I can't believe this is the last blog! This semester has flown by! I have really reeally enjoyed this class. I've learned so much. I'm sad that this class is coming to an end. This week we met with our writing partners and shared our rough drafts for our published writing. I decided to write a book of poems. I'm really enthused about it and I can't wait to share. Also this week we worked on our digital stories. Linda showed us an example of a few stories. One that I really liked was about a first year teacher. I can see how digital stories can be useful not only for my students to use but for me as well. My group and I decided to make a digital story about a day in the life of an education student. We had a lot of fun thinking of ideas and taking the pictures for our story. I think that it's going to be pretty funny and I hope the class thinks so too!

A preview from our digital story!

Week 11

I really enjoyed class today. My favorite part was the writing analysis. I really loved my kidwatching students' writing sample so I'm going to share:

On Saturday I woke my mom up. and Whele She wus getting awt uv Bed I wigalld my tooth awt. It did not hurt a but. My mom had a plow I was going to yos but I did not want the tooth fery to cume.

Um, ADORABLE! Reading my kidwatching student's journal is the type of thing that really excites me for my future as a teacher. I can not wait to be able to read cute compositions like this every day. I really enjoyed analyzing the writing samples and figuring out what I would do to help my student improve her writing.

My other favorite part of class was reading our photographs from the community. I brought in a photograph of the street corner by my house. I wanted to show how dark it is at night. I hate walking home in the dark from class. There is only one street light on the block. I find myself frequently looking behind me to make sure I'm not being followed. Simply looking at this picture inspired me to write a journal entry. I'm really getting some good ideas to help foster some good writing with my future students.

Week 10

MGRP week! This week we presented our MGRP projects! I thought everything went well. I really enjoyed listening to everyone's projects. I learned a lot about so many different things such as Kendra, Peyton Manning, Single-Parent families, being a vegetarian, Coco Chanel, etc. I learned a lot about my classmates today and how we all have so many different interests! Everyone seemed really passionate about his topic. The only problem was that I didn't get to see the projects that were being presented at the same time as mine.

Week 9

Last week during my field experience we were helping the kids write personal narratives. Each student was given small pieces of paper which started with a sentence "When I was 2 I...", "When I was 3 I..." and so on, and so on. It was my job to revise their finished sentences. I LOVED reading each and every one. Here is a memorable one...

"When I was 3 I like to put one end of my sock in my mouth and play tug-a-war with my granddad."

These kids never fail to make me laugh! I really enjoyed revising their sentences and helping them write their personal narratives. Also during the day, we had a code red drill. It was really hard to get a class of 1st graders to squeeze together in a small corner and have all of them be quiet. I could see how just a short drill like this could cause stress and tension among the classroom. To help them quiet down, my cooperating teacher read from a Ramona chapter book they have been reading together in their spare time.

Overall, I had a good day at my field experience. I am really learning more and more about the kids in the classroom through their writing. I wish I had more time to get to know them!

Week 8

I loved class this week! Even though I couldn't really relate any of the invitations to my topic, I enjoyed the different fun ideas to help foster good writing. I started out at the table with different objects. I chose to write a poem about a shell and it's different shapes and sizes. Then, I moved on to the table with pictures. I found myself writing more than I thought I could. I chose a beautiful picture of a valley with rolling hills, trees, and a sky with infinite colors. I imagined what it would sound like, feel like, and look like if I was there. I came out with a really good composition. Then I moved on to the found poem table where I made a poem about flowers blooming in the spring.

Also in class this week, we did a midterm evaluation of our notebooks. It was helpful to see which genres I chose to write the most. I would like to try writing more kids quotations. I always try to remember to put the ones I remember in my notebook but many times I forget. From my peer conferencing notes, I've noticed that I am a very informal writer. I never really think about type of genre I want to write about, I just write which sometimes makes my entries a little bland and repetitive. By the end of the semester I hope to mix it up a little more with more genres.

Week 7

In class today, we worked on our Multigenre research papers. After writing our drafts for homework, we were able to have a peer conference with another person. Jenn and I teamed up and read our papers to each other. We were both able to give each other good suggestions. Afterward, Linda gave us newspapers to look through and asked us to find some genres. WOW! I haven't even thought about all of the possible genres in a newspaper. Basically, no genre is left out! There were even some genres that I have never even thought about before. Doing this activity realllly helped me understand what kinds of genres we could use for our papers. This could be a really great activity that I could use in my classroom as a future teacher. After that, we were asked to pick a genre that talked about from the newspaper and create one with our partner. Abby and I worked together on this because our papers both were on sports. Naturally, we wrote a sports article together. After today, I am really excited about getting started on my multigenre paper and to make use of the resources we were provided. I really like www.prezi.com. It looked like a really cool tool to use for this type of project. Overall, after this class I'm starting to feel pretty confident in my multigenre research paper.

Week 6: Multigenre Research Paper

This week in class we focused on our Multigenre research paper. I wasn't sure about what I wanted to do at first, but yesterday's class really helped. I decided to do my multi-genre research paper on Steve Prefontaine, a famous athlete of the 1970's. He is someone I have known about and idolized as a high school athlete but I would like to learn more about his life. During class, we did an exercise with writing questions on post-it notes. We then divided the post-its into the categories "Need to Know", "Nice to Know", and "Essential." These really helped me with starting my rough draft paper since I already knew what I had to research. While researching Prefontaine, I was able to focus on coming up with genre ideas for my project.