Journal Article

I found a great article titled, "Helping Writers Find Power," in Education Leadership (v.63 no.5). This article talked a lot about what we discussed in class on Wednesday. The author, Jeff Anderson, gave many great ideas about how we, as teachers, can engage our students when it comes to writing and grammar. He talks about how students that may struggle with writing often feel frustrated and unsuccessful, making them not want to write again. He outlines three essential process that he has found to be very valuable in the classroom. These are: value what students have to say, love their errors, and foster their knowledge of language conventions through visual reminders of underlying grammar problems. He believes that what makes older students dislike writing so much is the way teachers in the past have focused on correcting grammar conventions rather than really seeing the content of their writing and creativity. He suggests always saying something good about the students writing first, before anything else. He also believes that errors are part of growing as a writer, and that making errors means that they are actually thinking. He suggests making a wall with common grammar problems, so students can look up and correct their own mistakes along the way. He feels that visual reminders of grammar work better than anything else, and therefore the wall chart is a great tool. This article is full of interesting ideas and suggestions! I encourage everybody to take a look at it!

"Image Grammar" response

I really enjoyed reading the first twelve pages in the "Image Grammar" text. I learned so much about writing that I was never introduced to before. The different techniques they suggested for improving writing seemed to be pretty simple, yet make such a difference in the final product of the writing. I was surprised at how much the writing actually changed when just one or two words were added to a paragraph. One thing I kept thinking was how easy it would be for students to incorporate these techniques into their own writing. I also liked how the author compared writing to painting, explaining how the writer must show the reader what he/she is trying to convey rather than just telling them. By using vivid, descriptive images, the reader can actually picture the scene in their head. I really like this text, I feel that it gives us some really good ideas that we can not only incorporate into our own writing, but use in our classrooms as well. I look forward to to putting some of these techniques to use in my writing.

Indy Teach Outline

The book I am doing my individual teaching on is titled, "After the End: Teaching and Learning Creative Revision."

Main Ideas:

• Revision does not have to be the "traditional" task of editing and re-doing your writing
• Revision can actually be fun and creative
• I plan to teach new ways of using revision in the classroom, using the concepts from this text, and how we can apply them to our own classrooms.

Instuctional Interests:

• First, I am going to introduce some news ways of doing revision in the classroom
• Next, I would like to actually do some creative revision with some of our own work. This will give us a better idea of how to use these ideas in your classrooms.
• I plan to take a few of the ideas and talk about them, since there will not be enough time to cover everything.

Possible Questions:

• What is "revision?"
• How can we use the ideas from the text to make revision fun, enjoyable, and helpful for our students?
• How do you plan to use these ideas in your own classroom?

Activities:

• Revise our own writing using some of these strategies the text suggests
• Explore a few different strategies and see which ones we feel would work best in a secondary classroom.
• Discuss the pros and cons of the different strategies

Response "The English Teacher's Red Pen: History of an Obsession"

I found this article to be extremely interesting. The whole time I was reading this, I found myself nodding my head in agreement. I cannot tell you how many times throughout high school, as well as college, that I have gotten a paper back that was marked all over with negative comments, circles, and lines through things. I feel so discouraged when this happens, that I don't even have the desire to actually look through the paper. Just think, if teachers put as much time into praising students work as they did correcting grammatical errors, students would feel much better about their writing. I feel that this is one reason why students dislike writing so much, it is no longer about expression and creativity, but rather about if they spelled everything correctly and made no punctuation errors.

Thinking back to my pre-internship last year, I am automatically reminded of my mentor teacher, who was a prime example of a teacher that marks every little error with a big red line through it. Handing back students papers was heartbreaking, as all I would here was sighs of disappointment. The thing is, this is not really helping students at all, it is only discouraging them from ever wanting to write again. What ends up happening is that students give up their creativity, instead spending so much time a correcting little mistakes that their own voice never comes through in their writing.

During high school, I had one English teacher that would give us our writing assignments back with many positive comments, and very few corrections. She would simply write that there were a few spelling or grammatical errors, but instead of correcting them for us, she would encourage us to go back and see if we could find them.

All in all, I feel that we have to encourage self expression and creativity in writing, instead of looking for meaningless mistakes. This will empower kids to write, and they may actually enjoy writing.

I am From

I am from sandy beaches, church every Sunday, and a big extended family
I am from road trips and family vacations
I am from BBQs in the summer and hot chocolate in the winter
I am from campfires and burning leaves
I am from "get off the phone," and "stop fighting with your sister"
I am from pom poms and GO W.O.
I am from team dinners and 6 a.m. Saturdays
I am from New Kids on the Block and stirrup pants
I am from love
I am from my family

"Starting to Write" by Murray

One passage that really stood out to me was at the beginning of the second chapter in the article by Murray. I really liked how Murray talked about writing without preconceived ideas. He talks about how ideas are finished, and that his job as a writer is to allow the reader to simulate their own thinking. He also talks about practicing inconsistency and how ideas, in a sense, are consistent. I found it really interesting when he talked about the dangers of knowing the conclusion of your writing. He talked about how some of the best material comes as a surprise.

I found this interesting because, as a student, I have always felt that I needed to have a firm idea before I can begin writing. I also feel that sometimes, coming up with the initial idea is the hardest part. Putting your thoughts down on paper without having any ideas beforehand seems like it could lead to a lot more possibilities. I found this article to be very interesting, as it made me stop and think about my own writing and how I could change, as a writer, in the future.

Donald Murray

1.) As Murray says, being a writer is the process where you tell yourself the story of your life, and see you life in writerly ways such as: recording images, fragments of conversations, observation of what is and what should be, making connections, making story from chaos. Being a writer means you are, in a way, re-visiting and re-creating the scenes of your life by writing them down on paper.

2.) "Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind him" (Catherine Drinker Bowen).

I feel that this quote really explains what writing actually is. When we write, we pull a little bit of ourselves into the story. Whether it be memories of our lives or characteristics of ourselves or somebody we know, a little bit of ourselves is often seen in the stories we write. Often, the writer may re-live events through the process of writing it down, therefore experiencing it twice, as the quote explains.

Best Practice Teaching

1.) Best Practice Teaching can be described as "good teaching," or teaching that is student-centered and takes a progressive approach to teaching and education. Best Practice Teaching includes seven stuctures. These structures are reading-as-thinking, representing-to-learn, small-group activities, classroom workshop, authentic experiences, reflective assessment, and integrative units. Best Practice Teaching includes using a less traditional approach to teaching, instead moving more towards a progressive classroom.

2.) Once again, Best Practice Teaching incorporates seven structures: reading-as-thinking, representing-to-learn, small-group activities, classroom workshop, authentic experiences, reflective assessment, and integrative units. Further more, Best Practice Teaching encourages using methods such as hands-on learning, choice for students(allowing them to pick their own topics, books, etc), emphasis on higher order thinking, delivery of special help to students in regular classrooms, etc.

3.) Best Practice Teaching is not whole-class lecture, rewarding silence in the classroom, "seatwork," rote memorization of facts, tracking and ability grouping, promoting a competitive classroom atmosphere, reliance on standardized tests, etc.

4.) Best Practice Teaching could be incorporated into the English classroom in a variety of ways. For example, providing a text set and letting students pick their own books or topics, providing students with the opportunity to work with a variety of genres, including a multi-genre project into the curriculum, allowing students to present their work in a variety of ways including writing, graphics, orally, etc.