Joining the "nerd" bandwagon

It was really great for me to read these two chapters because it opened my eyes to the idea of teaching aspects of English through other means besides a classic piece of literature. I guess I just get caught up in the notion that when I teach deeper reading and critical anaylsis skills, it should be based off of a piece of literature or through newspapers (because that is how I was taught). However, I love the idea of taking what our students encounter everyday in their world and using it to teach them how to critically analyze language and writing. I have to remember that not every student that goes through my class is going on to be an English teacher. Their needs and critical skills need to be developed through the means that they will encounter when they are older and out of my classroom. I fully believe that a student can learn so much through a piece of literature that we as English teachers love and appreciate, and these works should not be taken out of the classroom; however, I have been challenged by this reading to mix things up by bringing in elements and "everyday" examples to teach our students through means that they encounter in their everyday life and will continue to be influenced by in the future. By looking at the language and meanings in advertisments, statistics, and other media, students can look back on this part of learning and realize just how it important and beneficial is this part of their education.

I also just wanted to mention how I was reminded of the importance of keeping in mind what technology we expect to have alongside our lessons and assignments. I never really considered the importance of making sure that when we incorporate technology into the classroom it should enhance what we are teaching, and that we make sure every student has the same opportunity and resources available to them. I think it is really important that we as teachers keep in mind that not every student may have a computer at home or that the resources they need are right at the tip of their fingers. Yet, at the same time, I will be willing to let any student teach me the ways of technology because I already feel that I am behind the times in this area, and I definitely hope that technology can be used to expand aspects of English and my students' thinking.

I'm a nerd, too.

I guess I'm a nerd too for posting on the blog so early. Oh well.
Anyway, on to my reaction about the reading...
As for chapter 9 of MTJ,I am all for incorporating technology in the classroom. I think it's a great idea because it adds important diversity into the curriculum and it also allows kids to become familiar with vital aspects of today's society (i.e. the internet). However, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that technology will always be readily available for us to joyously integrate into our lessons. Some of the districts in southwest Missouri astound me at how dated they are when it comes to technology. I have subbed in schools where technology is more of a joke than a requirement...it's sad, but some districts just don't place a priority on it.
I enjoyed reading about all of the variety we have when it comes to possible online curriculum (blogs, webquests, chat rooms) but are we really ready to require stuff like this outside of the classroom? Stacey said that class time would be a good way to incorporate online activities in education (and I agree), but I don't think many districts are at a place where they can realistically require it outside of the class. Lots of students still don't have regular access to the internet, especially in rural settings. I think in the next 5 years or so it will be much more realistic and common to expect class work to include online curriculum.

I thought chapter 9 of Deeper Reading was interesting. I don't really have much to comment on though....except that on page 172 it says that kids as young as 6 months can recognize corporate symbols and my daughter is a testament to that fact. When she was eating baby food she knew the "Gerber" symbol and the baby's face on the label. She would get so excited when she saw that label and the baby's face.

Have a good spring break!! I teach my lesson next week and I'm a little nervous...

spring break is here-- post early!

First off, i really enjoyed Valerie's in-class lesson that incorporated media literacy into the classroom. Until recently, i didnt exactly know what media literacy was, but now that i have had some experience with it, i have been enjoying it. Chapter 9 had some really great information about media literacy also. From incorporating media and technology into the classroom a lot to just a couple times throughout the semester, the ideas were great. Although I enjoy the blog for this class, i have a difficult time thinking that it would be just as effective in a high school classroom- especially where i am from. Unless there was classtime given to student every week to blog, they would not be able to complete the assignment. I think the other ideas such as an in-class webquest or reading e-books would be effective, but i have a difficult with the blog in a high school classroom. Also, i think the part about the films is important. Although most of the information was common sense, it is important to be reminded of the obvious things sometimes. Don't make students watch long boring movies, but instead use specific clips; don't use inapppropriate language or scenes, but also dont restrict the meaning of the film. I think these and other ideas are important when showing a high school classroom a film. I remember when my high school teacher took 10 minutes out of class to show us the Simpson's take on Edgar Allen Poe and I can still connect them together. This was a quick, interesting clip that got students involved in the reading and it was really effective. Well- I guess it is time for spring break now! Everyone have a good one and see you in a couple weeks!

Chapter 9

You guys probably think I am nerd for doing my blog so early, but I have so much other stuff to do over Spring Break, I just wanted to make sure that I got it done. I felt like I really identified with what Gallagher's message was in Chapter 9. The questions that he poses at the end of the chapter on page 196 really got my mind going. "Do you believe our students are graduating adequately prepared to read the world at a deeper level?" "What will happen to students who leave school unprepared for the literacy challenges that lie outside the curriculum?" "What is more important ten years from now: our student's remembering the key literary elements in The Great Gatsby, or our students being able to make sense of a ballot initiative?" I want to do my in-class lesson about deeper reading, so this got me thinking about what I would say. I like how he provided some real life instances and incorporated them into the classroom. I especially liked the "Real-world Euphemisms" that he used on page 169-170. It was fun for the students, but it also got them discussing what it meant and how English is incorporated into the real world. On page 181, he also talks about a project he did where he had his students turn in interesting real life newspaper articles. He treated his students to lunch if they submitted the best articles, and i thought that was really cool. The students used deeper reading to find interesting articles, and then got rewarded with food. Can't get much better than that.

Chapter 7

Although I have no doubt that the traditional model was the one used most commonly in the past, I'm pretty sure that the new model is very commonly used in today's classrooms. It fits this whole new constructivist approach to teaching, i.e. one in which the student directs their own learning and the teacher is more of a facilitator and mentor rather than a dictator. I think it's pretty common for most high school English classrooms to have projects in which the students must choose their own topic, participate in collaborate learning, and do extensive revisions.

So while this information in the chapter wasn't exactly earth shattering, I do love the ideas. I feel like I could use as many ideas as I can possibly get and I like most of the prompts. I also love the multi-genre paper. I'm actually not familiar with that at all--we certainly never did anything like that when I was in school--and it sounds like a fantastic idea. Kids are so creative these days with all the media and Internet outlets for self expression that I'm sure they'd love something like that. I'll be looking into that further.

"Writing and Rewriting" + "First Draft Reading"

I really thought that the New-Model of Teaching Writing was a huge step up from the traditional method. I can remember being in high school, and during my freshman year, all of the writing that we did in class was structured by the teacher from point A to point B. We were given a topic by the teacher, the teacher decided that you needed a certain amount of sources, quotes, paraphrases, etc., and the teacher decided every structural component of the paper. All we did as students was find information for our paper and write it. The lack of choice that we were allowed when it was time to write papers really made it hard to stay focused on writing, because there wasn't any interest in what we were writing about.

I really like the fact that the new model offers so much choice from the students; if you think about it, giving so much freedom to the students takes a lot of weight off the teacher as well, because the teacher doesn't have to come up with topics for 25-30 students. I understand the need for the predetermined topics for the Writing on Demand, but students need to have that choice for their writing most of the time to keep them interested in writing.

I also like that Christenbury provides instructions for Writing/Revision Groups. That's something I'll use in my own classroom.

I really enjoyed Chapter 4 of Deeper Reading as well. There are so many useful strategies in the chapter. I think my favorite was the color coding. The only problem I could see with that is having students color code can become very time consuming, and if you're using textbooks, it doesn't really work out.

Timed Writing

In AP English I remember writing a LOT. My teacher, Ms. Hogg, would assign timed writings at least twice a week to help prepare us for the exam in the spring. I hated timed writing days and I often questioned the necessity of the pressure. In chapter 7 of Christenbury I found easy solutions to help prepare students for timed writings. Page 219 lists 5 prompts to help guide a student's thoughts about the writing topic. I found numbers 1, 4, and 5 to be most helpful. Number 1 explains that the writer must question himself/herself decide which arguments that he or she could make about the topic based on personal knowledge or experience. Number 4 suggests that a student concludes which strategy (compare/contrast, cause/effect, etc.) of writing would best correlate with the writing prompt. The last, number 5, requests that the writer look at the question and decipher in which way to approach writing the answer. These three steps help the student focus on writing to the question by providing specific answers.

When I read the section "Dealing with Time" I gathered useful tips for my own writing. The steps mentioned in this section could be modeled in a classroom to help students. The modeling would be beneficial for timed writings in class, and the steps could also provide a process of writing for students when they are writing at home.

Chapter 7

I think that Chapter 7, Writing and Rewriting has some very interesting points. I was really interested in what Christenbury said about the traditional model vs. the new model of teaching writing. It seems to me that the new model is built for student success in writing, not just an end product for the assignment. If we can step outside our own "time" limits that we think should about how long we take on a particular writing assignment in class and really focus on making our students better, we, the teacher and the students, will be happier with the end result. From what I have observed over the last two years in which I've been in and out of the classroom, students need confidence and support, not to ripped apart for every single error in their paper. I think that we can save the proofreading and editing until the very end (unless there is an unreasonable amount of mistakes or the same mistake is made multiple times, like Christenbury refers to on page 227) and we should really focus on what the student is saying or attempting to say and help each student develop that and show them that what they have to say does matter and they do have opinions and ideas of their own.

I love the idea of the teacher-and-student or students themselves developing the topic of a writing assignment. I think that if we give students options, it not only shows trust and builds the teacher-student connection, but if a student can write about something they see as relevant or interesting they are more likely to spend a little more time on the assignment. This is not to say that there might be times in my classroom where I feel like giving my students a particular topic is the only way, but hopefully even within a specific topic, I can still find a way to giving them options in direction in which they can take the assignment.

I also see the idea of a writing portfolio, like discussed on page 232, being something I will use in my classroom. That way my students and I can see the progress in which they make over the semester and/or year.

I think that in the Deeper Reading chapter, there are multiple examples of ways in which we can help our students in developing their writing assignments. Focus groups, character charts and trouble slips were a few of the activities that I hope will be very effective in my classroom.

Chapter 7

I want to start this blog post by saying I have never had a text book that I enjoy as much as Making The Journey. It is so refreshing to have an author that actually makes sense and can teach me something without giving a sermon or just being plain boring. I admit that I have been getting frustrated with a lot of my education classes and the texts they choose for us. This is one book I am actually not going to sell back.
Having been educated completely in he traditional model of writing it is refreshing to see some ideas for different techniques to interest students in writing. In my high school all of my writing classes were exactly the same, four major papers due throughout the semester written off of the exact prompt the teacher gave us. To say this was extremely boring for anyone with the slightest bit of creativity would be an understatement. That is why I love this chapter and the ideas for allowing students freedom in their writing choices.
I see little benefit in making students write about things they could care less about, because let's face it, if they aren't interested they are going to put zero effort into the assignment (as I've been noticing in my field experience). But as soon as we give them a choice and let them roll with their own ideas, it's amazing how much more interesting and focused their writing can be.
I am also a strong believer in specific rubrics and writing portfolios that allow the students to make changes throughout the semester on any of their papers they think they can improve and once again Christenbury gives great ideas on these subjects as well. This book is a breath of fresh air for me and I was definitely in need of that!

Chapter 7

After doing this reading I cannot help but relate all of my education classes, and even kind of get them confused with each other. The "traditional model" of writing sure does look a lot like the "official theory of learning" I just learned about in Dr. Jones EDC 350(?) class, and the use of collaboration in the "new model" really resembles the use of collaboration that Dr. Weaver has been talking about in ENG 520. I'm started to sense some sort of re-occuring theme going on here...or perhaps a conspiracy.

Personally I was raised in the "Executive Approach/traditional model/official theory of learning," in which we used 3 point 5 paragraph essays and papers written on one boring teacher chosen topic with almost no collaboration. I wonder if my writing would be less boring had I been taught the ways Christenbury discusses (214) in which students have say in their topics, prewrite, collaborate, and revise.

In "the numbers game" section Christenbury suggests that collaboration can help the teacher out by saving him/her time, and while I think that it's important to have multiple sets of eyes on a paper, and that this suggestion may be a helpful side-note in collaboration, I have to say that teachers need to be sure that they're not abusing this, or relying on it.

The section on "conferencing with students" also stuck out to me as an important one. In my practicum experiences I have observed and been a part of multiple short teacher-student writing conferences, and I think that they are not only possible, but vital. It is not cheating or giving answers out when a teacher asks a student writer questions, instead it is simply another form of collaboration. The goal of evaluating writing isn't to see how well students write and then grade them on it, the goal is to help the students become better writers.

An uninteresting title

Christenbury is one of my favorite teaching texts ever. No, seriously. I loved this chapter about teaching writing. I loved her ideas, especially about group feedback. It pretty much confirmed and supplemented what I already assumed about writing instruction.

Here's a question - do you think it would be better to integrate literature and writing every year of high school, or to teach some years more writing-intensive and some years more lit-intensive? I don't think they should be isolated - how can you teach writing without reading anything? But some days I feel that I want to focus on each a bit more - that it's too much to squeeze in during one year.

I didn't really get a lot out of Gallagher. To me, his activities and reading strategies seemed a bit shallow. I realized that students have to comprehend what they're reading in order to go deeper, but the fill-in outlines reminded me of horrible civics classes that didn't teach me anything. But to each his own, I guess.

On Autopilot

The introduction to the Deeper Reading chapter seems like a scene from my life! I often drive down to Springfield from home and with everything that is going on in my mind...I look around and realize that I had already driven 100 some odd miles without any recollection of how I got there. This is exactly like a teacher and Gallagher makes a good connection between that and reading papers. Sometimes you can be totally involved in reading one student's paper and then not at all in another's. This isn't really fair to the students, but it still happens. Whether we, as teachers, are completely involved in the drafting process, we must completely immerse our students in their own writing. Some of the ideas present in this chapter seem that they would work really well. The ways for students to understand and retain information from texts that they are required to read are really helpful though. I think that character charts would work really well, if the students did the work. We have a character chart in my field experience right now for To Kill a Mockingbird, but students don't always fill it out the way they are supposed to. If they were more willing, they would probably get more out of the assignment, but students don't always, if ever, think that way.

These two chapters are very intertwined. It is interesting to see that both of the writers have similar ideas regarding the writing/rewriting and draft process. The key point in both of the chapters is to create student involvement and really get them interested in their writing. I think this is really important and agree completely with all the points. I thought the part about the multi-genre writing was interesting also. The papers that we graded incorporated this, but not effectively. I thought that the poems, charts, information, etc. was just thrown into the paper to meet the requirements. Although this was only their second draft, i figured that they would know how to incorporate them a little better. I think multi-genre writing would be very effective if used correctly. Finally, the part about grammar and information in the paper is important. Some teachers focus too much of a grade on solely grammar, but what is important is what the student has to say. I love grammar and, unfortunately, focus on that often when I am reviewing the papers. I really need to focus more on the information, rather than mechanics. As usual, these chapters really pointed out some great points....that's probably why we are reading them!!!

Ode to Writing

I have always felt much stronger on the writing side of English than the literature side, so chapter 7 was encouraging. I was thankful that Christenbury commented on the "recursive" aspect of writing and how the process looks differently for each student and for each assignment. I, of course, grew up being taught that the 5 paragraph paper was one and only way to write which greatly stifled any creativity that I wanted to bring to the piece. I was the student that would write my "rough draft" by taking the final draft, messing it up, crossing words out, circling things and turning it in. I always wrote my outline after writing the paper. All of this was because my process of writing doesn't happen in draft form. I write, revise, edit, etc. as I go. I sit and mull in front of my computer, staring at the same paragraph over and over until something comes to mind. After a new paragraph, I read back through the paper as a whole to make sure it all flows together. By the end of my I-search, I had practically memorized the first couple of paragraphs. But that is how I write. And I need freedom for that to be my means of writing. Some students do better to throw some words on paper and then revise from there. But I think that Christenbury was right that students need to be able to go through the stages of writing on their own and that as teachers, we need to simply encourage the process.

I also liked how she talked about writing groups. She gave some very practical guidelines and ideas to make it work the way its intended to work. I participated in too many groups where students wrote "good job" and that was it, not giving any sort of advice because they were afraid to say anything constructive. I often felt inadequate to tell a peer how to change something because, afterall, I'm "not the teacher." But I really liked some of her ideas and will try to utilize them in my own classroom. I think the overarching idea of students learning to write for an audience beyond the teacher is an excellent way to make writing a bit more "real life" for students and a writing group helps facilitate that.

Chapter 7

I just finished reading chapter 7 and started thinking about writing assignments and what they mean to the average student. Personally when I first started college I loved to write. I would write for fun on a regular basis and truly enjoyed many of my assignments in my early composition classes. Usually these assignments had interesting tie ins to the topics that we discussed in class and formatting was a small portion of the overall assignment. Now I'm a senior in college and I can honestly say that I HATE writing. I feel like each assignment makes my writing worse and I see my assignments as obstacles to get through rather than enjoyable learning experiences. It is my hope that when I start teaching my students will never feel about writng the way I feel right now. I think that it is important to do what Chritenbury said and give assignments that are engaging to students and relate to their lives. I don't want the writing in my class to be an obstacle.

The Endless Cycle...Writing and Rewriting

I think that Christenbury has some very good ideas in Chapter 7. I liked the connection aspect, when grading and responding to papers, to be one of the more profound. Students enjoy seeing that teachers can relate to them. This includes responses to their papers.

In my field experience, the students were amazed that I played a YouTube video for part of their lesson. It was if I was incapable of such "hipness," and they were baffled how someone as old as me could know about YouTube.

With paper responses it's the same principle. They love the fact that we can connect with something they written. It gives meaning and depth to their paper, and builds their self-confidence and pride.

I also liked the realism of the section entitled, "The Numbers Game." It is very telling that instructors back in 1912 had the same problems we do. How can we possibly tend to the needs of so many writers in our class with the amount of papers written, hours in the day, and only us to grade them? Peer editing is a great solution though not infallible. My field experience also taught me not to abuse this. "Some" teachers are misusing this, or incorrectly using this method, to have the students replace the role of the teacher. The teacher then grades the final draft, ultimately trumping anything the peer groups have established. This seemed both lazy and unproductive to me. Let's not let ourselves fall into the trap of "just getting through the day."

~Stan