The first three hours that I am in my classroom is the literacy block. We do literacy activities for three hours, and I have never seen writing incorporated into this time. I know that there is a "writing lady" that comes in once a week to work with the students. They write one to two sentences in their writing journal, which I try to look at each time I am there. I think it is great that the students are able to work with her on writing, but I do not think that they should only be writing during this one hour per week.
Sometimes the students are asked to turn their papers over and write a sentence if they finish their work early. The students always feel very uncomfortable doing this, and almost every one of them complains or immediately says that they can't write a sentence. I think that if the students were asked to write more often they wouldn't be uncomfortable attempting to do so. I think it is very important, especially for this age level, that students expect writing to be a part of their daily routine. As kindergarteners, they should be encouraged to share their ideas (and do they have a lot of ideas!) on paper. Here, they can explore and tell stories, two things that they all love to do. But instead they are afraid, and most of them groan when they hear that the "writing lady" is coming. So, what is really not working as far as writing instruction in my classroom is that it is almost non-existent in their daily schedule.
What I do think is working though, is that when students are asked to write, they are encouraged to draw a picture first. This helps them to plan what their sentence (or sentences) is going to be about. A lot of kids hear that they have to write and they quickly respond that they don't know what to write down. Allowing them to brainstorm with a picture is a great way to get ideas flowing and spark imagination. From there, they can write about the idea that the drew, making it a little easier to make a concrete sentence.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Writing Evaluation in my 3rd Grade Class
I asked Yosany to write about a scary time in her life. The only thing I helped her out with was the spelling of some words. After collecting her writing sample at the end of 20 minutes, I noticed many things wrong with her short story. Yosany wrote about being scared of a cat. It took me a while, however, to figure this out from her story. Her story did not have enough detail to figure out what she was trying to write about.
Yosany’s writing lacks a clear organization. For example, Yosany did not begin her story with a creative opening. My CT had just gone over how to make the opening of a story interesting and Yosany quickly forgot about all of this when she began to write on her own. She wrote her story in a way that she felt the reader knew about her house. For example, she wrote, “I was looking for Jennifer and Jason where the plants were.” The reader has no idea where the plants are at her home, and the reader also has no idea who Jennifer and Jason are. She could have added in a couple more sentences describing this with detail.
Secondly, the paper was very hard to understand from the viewpoint of someone who does not know about Yosany’s home life. She mentioned characters without introducing them. In her paper, she talks about a cat, but the reader has no idea whose cat is it, and what really made he scared of the cat. She then jumped to a completely different topic in her paper which shows how she has a lack of cohesiveness. Yosany then writes about a girl who she was calling to get help. She did not tell anything about this girl and that left the reader very confused. Finally, the last sentence of her story ended with, “The girl helped me feel better, she said maybe he was drunk.” This sentence made me laugh but I still was very confused on why she even mentioned this in detail when she didn’t describe anything else in detail.
In terms of conventions, Yosany seemed to have a good grasp on her mechanics. She only had one spelling error, and her punctuation was all correct. She made sure she always capitalized the first letter of every sentence, and ended them with periods at the right spot. She even used commas in the right spots.
Even though Yosany’s paper was hard to follow, and lacked detail to explain her thoughts, some of her sentences were very well written. For example, she wrote, “The weather was foggy and warm from winter.” This sentence was very descriptive when talking about the conditions outside. She did not just say it was warm. She allowed the reader to picture this setting in their minds. She also wrote, “I ran in side and told the girl to come quick.” Even though the reader has no idea who she is talking about, the sentence makes the reader actually picture Yosany running for help.
Out of the 6 traits of writing, she did not complete the ideas, organization, and sentence fluency. Her ideas did not clarify the main theme and the message. Her ideas were also not written in a logical manner. Her writing was hard to follow, and her events were not logically sequenced. Many of her sentences were hard to understand because they did not flow together. However, her conventions were very good along with the description in some of her sentences. I could hear her voice throughout the paper even though it was hard to comprehend. Her word choice was not too bad, but she could have challenged herself a little bit.
When look at the stages of writing, Yosany’s paper was definitely a draft. She did not convey her ideas through the pre-writing stage, and definitely need lots of revising and editing. If she had someone helping her edit this paper, I am very confident that she would be able to write a well written story.
As a teacher I could provide scaffolding. During our brainstorming step I would ask her what she wants to write about. After she described her story to me I would repeat what she tells me she wants to write about. By repeating what she said, I can show some hesitation during the parts that I was unclear about. This would clear up some confusion because it would allow her to explain the story with more detail which she could make sure she wrote about in her paper. Then during the editing step, I would make sure to ask her questions throughout her writing when I was reading over it to make her explain things with more detail. By asking her these questions she can see that the reader is going to be confused if she does not clarify it with more detail. Finally, when she has finished editing her paper, I would read it to her. I would pause at the points I was confused and allow her to elaborate on her ideas. This was she can polish off her paper with those last missing details and form a final draft
By assisting Yosany in the writing process, I would be able to teach her what steps she can go through on her own when I cannot be there to help her. She would learn what questions to ask herself during the editing process, and realize when she needed more detail, and when to clarify her ideas. During my activity I am going to have Yosany write another short story on a picture book. I will help her through the writing process, and this way, I will compare the two writing samples and see if I notice the improvement in the sequencing of her stories.
Yosany’s writing lacks a clear organization. For example, Yosany did not begin her story with a creative opening. My CT had just gone over how to make the opening of a story interesting and Yosany quickly forgot about all of this when she began to write on her own. She wrote her story in a way that she felt the reader knew about her house. For example, she wrote, “I was looking for Jennifer and Jason where the plants were.” The reader has no idea where the plants are at her home, and the reader also has no idea who Jennifer and Jason are. She could have added in a couple more sentences describing this with detail.
Secondly, the paper was very hard to understand from the viewpoint of someone who does not know about Yosany’s home life. She mentioned characters without introducing them. In her paper, she talks about a cat, but the reader has no idea whose cat is it, and what really made he scared of the cat. She then jumped to a completely different topic in her paper which shows how she has a lack of cohesiveness. Yosany then writes about a girl who she was calling to get help. She did not tell anything about this girl and that left the reader very confused. Finally, the last sentence of her story ended with, “The girl helped me feel better, she said maybe he was drunk.” This sentence made me laugh but I still was very confused on why she even mentioned this in detail when she didn’t describe anything else in detail.
In terms of conventions, Yosany seemed to have a good grasp on her mechanics. She only had one spelling error, and her punctuation was all correct. She made sure she always capitalized the first letter of every sentence, and ended them with periods at the right spot. She even used commas in the right spots.
Even though Yosany’s paper was hard to follow, and lacked detail to explain her thoughts, some of her sentences were very well written. For example, she wrote, “The weather was foggy and warm from winter.” This sentence was very descriptive when talking about the conditions outside. She did not just say it was warm. She allowed the reader to picture this setting in their minds. She also wrote, “I ran in side and told the girl to come quick.” Even though the reader has no idea who she is talking about, the sentence makes the reader actually picture Yosany running for help.
Out of the 6 traits of writing, she did not complete the ideas, organization, and sentence fluency. Her ideas did not clarify the main theme and the message. Her ideas were also not written in a logical manner. Her writing was hard to follow, and her events were not logically sequenced. Many of her sentences were hard to understand because they did not flow together. However, her conventions were very good along with the description in some of her sentences. I could hear her voice throughout the paper even though it was hard to comprehend. Her word choice was not too bad, but she could have challenged herself a little bit.
When look at the stages of writing, Yosany’s paper was definitely a draft. She did not convey her ideas through the pre-writing stage, and definitely need lots of revising and editing. If she had someone helping her edit this paper, I am very confident that she would be able to write a well written story.
As a teacher I could provide scaffolding. During our brainstorming step I would ask her what she wants to write about. After she described her story to me I would repeat what she tells me she wants to write about. By repeating what she said, I can show some hesitation during the parts that I was unclear about. This would clear up some confusion because it would allow her to explain the story with more detail which she could make sure she wrote about in her paper. Then during the editing step, I would make sure to ask her questions throughout her writing when I was reading over it to make her explain things with more detail. By asking her these questions she can see that the reader is going to be confused if she does not clarify it with more detail. Finally, when she has finished editing her paper, I would read it to her. I would pause at the points I was confused and allow her to elaborate on her ideas. This was she can polish off her paper with those last missing details and form a final draft
By assisting Yosany in the writing process, I would be able to teach her what steps she can go through on her own when I cannot be there to help her. She would learn what questions to ask herself during the editing process, and realize when she needed more detail, and when to clarify her ideas. During my activity I am going to have Yosany write another short story on a picture book. I will help her through the writing process, and this way, I will compare the two writing samples and see if I notice the improvement in the sequencing of her stories.
Listeners vs Thinkers
I have had the opportunity to see a lot of writing in my classroom since it is an upper level classroom they normally have a written portion to most of their assignments. We do not have a formal structure on how to teach writing in our classroom rather it seems that the room is run by trial and error. Our teacher tells the students to get out paper and to write about the topic. Once they have written about the topic they are allowed to share their assignment, turn it in, and never look at the paper again. Recently our students have been working on this project called Calberry where they had to work through the entire writing process from outline to final product. This could have been a great learning experience had the teacher used mini lessons to help the student’s structure and learn about writing. What our teacher and sub did however was tell the students what they did wrong and fixed every mistake the student made on their paper, the students went back to their desk and went on to the next step. I do not like the style of teaching writing where the teacher makes all of the corrections for the student and hopes he/she learns by looking at the corrections, at this point we are creating listeners instead of thinkers.
What I mean when I say we are creating listeners instead of thinkers is that by telling a student what to do their entire writing career they are not thinking on their own. I can best explain this concept by using a sports analogy. (sorry for you non sports fans) When you are at hockey practice the coach of the team can show you a general concept and let the players figure out the specifics with guided help when needed. The other option is that the coach can yell, “Pass the puck to Katie, Katie pass the puck to Kelly, Kelly shoot the puck” soon the players are going to stop thinking and just listen to what the coach has to say all the time. However once you get into a stadium with 75,000 screaming fans the players on the ice no longer can hear the coach and they do not know what to do because they haven’t thought on their own before.
What I want to do as a teacher is get my students to think on their own and interject when they need help or cannot solve the problem on their own.
What I mean when I say we are creating listeners instead of thinkers is that by telling a student what to do their entire writing career they are not thinking on their own. I can best explain this concept by using a sports analogy. (sorry for you non sports fans) When you are at hockey practice the coach of the team can show you a general concept and let the players figure out the specifics with guided help when needed. The other option is that the coach can yell, “Pass the puck to Katie, Katie pass the puck to Kelly, Kelly shoot the puck” soon the players are going to stop thinking and just listen to what the coach has to say all the time. However once you get into a stadium with 75,000 screaming fans the players on the ice no longer can hear the coach and they do not know what to do because they haven’t thought on their own before.
What I want to do as a teacher is get my students to think on their own and interject when they need help or cannot solve the problem on their own.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Writing in my First Grade Classroom
It was not really until this semester that I began to see writing instruction in my first grade classroom. Previously writing only focused on practicing handwriting and the different letters of the alphabet, but now as students have progressed my CT has moved into writing sentences. She began scaffolding writing by just having students practice writing words, then putting words together into sentences, then reinforcing capital letters at the beginning and a punctuation mark at the end. Slowly students are being asked to write more than one sentence and oftentimes these sentences are related—in this way, they are moving towards writing paragraphs. As for instruction, I haven’t necessarily seen direct instruction for sentences because I am only there once a week. But my CT does give them a lot of practice and she has even begun working with them on making rough drafts, then editing these rough drafts into a “final copy”. This is obviously less in-depth than the writing process discussed in Thompson but it is getting them more used to the idea of fixing and changing their writing so that when they start to learn the five steps of the writing process it will not be so strange for them. I think this scaffolding is really working with the students in my classroom and I feel like their writing abilities have definitely improved over the course of the semester.
One thing that I do not feel is working well in my classroom is issues with spelling. The students in my classroom get so caught up on spelling that they fail to produce any writing. I think my CT could implement or model more independence-building strategies. For example, she could reinforce to students to use the word wall when they are writing. In addition, she could model how to sound out words and even show the students that correct spelling is less important than getting our ideas out onto the paper (so modeling making mistakes in her own writing in front of the classroom). One thing I have never seen her do is use the overhead to demonstrate writing with her students. I am curious whether or not she does this when we aren’t there. However, I do think that most of the time spent on writing is teacher-directed and I feel that perhaps she should start moving into more student-directed writing (having them pick their own topic and work more on brainstorming). The students would really benefit from getting some practice with being independent learners.
One thing that I do not feel is working well in my classroom is issues with spelling. The students in my classroom get so caught up on spelling that they fail to produce any writing. I think my CT could implement or model more independence-building strategies. For example, she could reinforce to students to use the word wall when they are writing. In addition, she could model how to sound out words and even show the students that correct spelling is less important than getting our ideas out onto the paper (so modeling making mistakes in her own writing in front of the classroom). One thing I have never seen her do is use the overhead to demonstrate writing with her students. I am curious whether or not she does this when we aren’t there. However, I do think that most of the time spent on writing is teacher-directed and I feel that perhaps she should start moving into more student-directed writing (having them pick their own topic and work more on brainstorming). The students would really benefit from getting some practice with being independent learners.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
New Literacies Reflection
For my New Literacies Project I chose to do a scrapblog about visual literacy. I had never used a scrapblog before and so navigating through this took a bit of time but eventually I was able to become proficient in using this technology. I had some technical difficulties and had to contact their web-help, but was able to get my blog completed. In order to use this program you need to have a basic understanding of the internet, knowledge of how to upload photos, as well as time, just to explore the technology’s many functions and applications.
As for my growth in my understanding of literacy, my knowledge has greatly expanded. I had begun with only a very basic sense of literacy (reading, writing, listening, viewing, and speaking). However after doing my own project as well as viewing others, I am now able to see and understand that literacy comes in a variety of forms and is not as limited as I had previously believed. In addition, the discussions we have had in class have also informed my new view on literacy. Literacy is everywhere and becoming literate can greatly impact a person’s daily life. For me I had always thought literacy was only something that took place inside the classroom, but learning about visual literacy helped me realized what a huge impact it has on people everyday. Where my previous definition included viewing as a part of literacy, doing research on visual literacy greatly expanded my perception of this type of literacy. It’s not just looking at pictures in a book, but it is signs, symbols, and charts, any sort of image that relays a message without using words or in conjunction with words.
Additionally, learning about a technology itself I feel is another form of literacy—“technological literacy”. There are certain skills and abilities you need to have in order to be able to navigate through a new technology. As I mentioned earlier, using a scrapblog involves knowing about the internet, how to upload photos, as well as reading and writing skills; for other technologies there may be different skills sets necessary.
If the students in my first grade classroom were learning to use the scrapblog, there are various skills and knowledge they would need to have in order to be successful. Knowledge of how to run a computer, how to use the internet and how to upload pictures are the technological skills they would need to have. They would also need to develop strong reading, writing, viewing, and listening skills in order to even navigate to the proper page, not to mention create a project using scrapblog. This technology involves typing in URLs but also typing information on a page. Furthermore it involves being able to read instructions or viewing and understanding the symbols on the webpage. This kind of learning could be incorporated into my classroom through-whole class instruction in a computer lab where we learned about the different aspects of the computer and the internet. We would also need to continue instruction in reading and writing skills, however we could practice these skills somewhat authentically be viewing other appropriate scrapblogs where students would have to practice reading and viewing images. We could then practice writing captions or short pieces of writing in order to be able to better suit the writing style associated with scrapblogs. It would take a lot of time and work but with proper and effective literacy instruction, I think students would be able to learn about and use this technology.
As for my growth in my understanding of literacy, my knowledge has greatly expanded. I had begun with only a very basic sense of literacy (reading, writing, listening, viewing, and speaking). However after doing my own project as well as viewing others, I am now able to see and understand that literacy comes in a variety of forms and is not as limited as I had previously believed. In addition, the discussions we have had in class have also informed my new view on literacy. Literacy is everywhere and becoming literate can greatly impact a person’s daily life. For me I had always thought literacy was only something that took place inside the classroom, but learning about visual literacy helped me realized what a huge impact it has on people everyday. Where my previous definition included viewing as a part of literacy, doing research on visual literacy greatly expanded my perception of this type of literacy. It’s not just looking at pictures in a book, but it is signs, symbols, and charts, any sort of image that relays a message without using words or in conjunction with words.
Additionally, learning about a technology itself I feel is another form of literacy—“technological literacy”. There are certain skills and abilities you need to have in order to be able to navigate through a new technology. As I mentioned earlier, using a scrapblog involves knowing about the internet, how to upload photos, as well as reading and writing skills; for other technologies there may be different skills sets necessary.
If the students in my first grade classroom were learning to use the scrapblog, there are various skills and knowledge they would need to have in order to be successful. Knowledge of how to run a computer, how to use the internet and how to upload pictures are the technological skills they would need to have. They would also need to develop strong reading, writing, viewing, and listening skills in order to even navigate to the proper page, not to mention create a project using scrapblog. This technology involves typing in URLs but also typing information on a page. Furthermore it involves being able to read instructions or viewing and understanding the symbols on the webpage. This kind of learning could be incorporated into my classroom through-whole class instruction in a computer lab where we learned about the different aspects of the computer and the internet. We would also need to continue instruction in reading and writing skills, however we could practice these skills somewhat authentically be viewing other appropriate scrapblogs where students would have to practice reading and viewing images. We could then practice writing captions or short pieces of writing in order to be able to better suit the writing style associated with scrapblogs. It would take a lot of time and work but with proper and effective literacy instruction, I think students would be able to learn about and use this technology.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Reflection
This project has taught me a lot about the different types of literacy’s that are out there for students to learn about. I pictured literacy as merely the foundation for reading, writing, and learning from what we read and write. I now know that there a multiple forms of literacy that can come from emotion to politics and everything in-between. The literacy’s project has made me become more aware about the opportunities for learning from everyday items; for instance, you can ask students to express how they feel using emotional descriptive words. I think the single biggest area of growth that I experienced from doing this project was opening my mind to the thousands of opportunities you can have trough out the day to educated your students in the different literacy’s.
In order to have effective literacy instruction I believe you need to have the children experience the literacy’s in their natural environment and than place the label of the literacy to the experience. As a teacher you have to be committed to the idea that you want to teach about the literacy’s and reinforce the students when the display knowledge of a literacy. For instance if a student notices something culturally different between him/her and another individual you should ask the students what kind of literacy that would be and than further discuss the differences and how the apply to class/society. I believe that as a teacher you need to design your lesson around the GLECS that you want to cover but the manner in which you do that is where you can incorporate the different literacy and the different technologies.
In order for the students to have an effective time using technology you need to have commitments form the students that they will do the task involved because it is virtually impossible to monitor computer work if it is being done at home. I have found that the students really enjoy learning about new technology and they enjoy getting out of the typical classroom environment. The students would have to be familiar with a computer or the teacher will have to create a lesson about getting familiar with a computer which in and of itself might not be a bad idea because for some students a computer could be a new technology.
In the end I really enjoyed making a website and using all different forms of environmental literacy for this project. I really enjoy using technology and it often comes really easy to me so I can see myself using a lot of technology inside of my classroom next year.
In order to have effective literacy instruction I believe you need to have the children experience the literacy’s in their natural environment and than place the label of the literacy to the experience. As a teacher you have to be committed to the idea that you want to teach about the literacy’s and reinforce the students when the display knowledge of a literacy. For instance if a student notices something culturally different between him/her and another individual you should ask the students what kind of literacy that would be and than further discuss the differences and how the apply to class/society. I believe that as a teacher you need to design your lesson around the GLECS that you want to cover but the manner in which you do that is where you can incorporate the different literacy and the different technologies.
In order for the students to have an effective time using technology you need to have commitments form the students that they will do the task involved because it is virtually impossible to monitor computer work if it is being done at home. I have found that the students really enjoy learning about new technology and they enjoy getting out of the typical classroom environment. The students would have to be familiar with a computer or the teacher will have to create a lesson about getting familiar with a computer which in and of itself might not be a bad idea because for some students a computer could be a new technology.
In the end I really enjoyed making a website and using all different forms of environmental literacy for this project. I really enjoy using technology and it often comes really easy to me so I can see myself using a lot of technology inside of my classroom next year.
literacIES
What I have come to realize through working on this project is that there is so much more to literacy learning than I had originally thought. Looking back on one of my first blogs, I wrote that "technically, I think literacy involves the understanding and application of the written and spoken word". I followed this statement by saying that literacy extends to the skills that students can be provided from an understanding of literacy. I read this post now and I realize that my thoughts on literacy were leaving a lot out. I had tried to think of literacy in a new way, but this resulted in still thinking of literacy in one way- in a very general way. Although my idea of what literacy was had grown from just "reading and writing" to also mentioning opportunity and responsibility, I was still only looking at the big picture.
Researching a new literacy, and looking at others' projects helped me to see that I was unaware of the importance of several different types of literacies. I wrote that literacy "opens doors for students", but how does it do this? If I was describing literacy only in terms of "phonetics, comprehension, fluency, etc", than how did I expect literacy to teach students about the world they were living in?
Now I know that literacy is comprised of many parts, and each part is equally important to the success of a student.
I learned from each of you, that as teachers, we need to promote and practice all different types of literacy in our classrooms.
***
Using emotion words in our classroom will make our students successful "emotional literacy" learners, but will also help them to identify and manage their feelings- something crucial to their everyday life.
Teaching our students about the environment through writing and text will help them to become "environmentally literate", but will also help them to make decisions that could impact the future of our environment.
Through "cultural literacy", our students will not only strengthen their reading and writing skills, but will also learn about their own and other cultures. This is what makes students the open-minded people of tomorrow.
Using images in our classrooms will help our students understand the visual world that they live in. When our students are "visual literacy learners" they are better equipped to navigate their world, and make connections from what they learn to their lives.
***
Put together, knowledge of these literacies make well-rounded, rich learning. Each literacy is important, and each literacy becomes more important when incorporated with another one.
Additionally, the project has allowed me to take my thinking of literacy a step further. I feel that I have a new appreciation for all that literacy is, and am beginning to think of ways that I will promote all of the literacies into my classroom. The projects gave great examples of how to do so, and will be wonderful resources to use when planning to teach literacy in a future classroom.
Researching a new literacy, and looking at others' projects helped me to see that I was unaware of the importance of several different types of literacies. I wrote that literacy "opens doors for students", but how does it do this? If I was describing literacy only in terms of "phonetics, comprehension, fluency, etc", than how did I expect literacy to teach students about the world they were living in?
Now I know that literacy is comprised of many parts, and each part is equally important to the success of a student.
I learned from each of you, that as teachers, we need to promote and practice all different types of literacy in our classrooms.
***
Using emotion words in our classroom will make our students successful "emotional literacy" learners, but will also help them to identify and manage their feelings- something crucial to their everyday life.
Teaching our students about the environment through writing and text will help them to become "environmentally literate", but will also help them to make decisions that could impact the future of our environment.
Through "cultural literacy", our students will not only strengthen their reading and writing skills, but will also learn about their own and other cultures. This is what makes students the open-minded people of tomorrow.
Using images in our classrooms will help our students understand the visual world that they live in. When our students are "visual literacy learners" they are better equipped to navigate their world, and make connections from what they learn to their lives.
***
Put together, knowledge of these literacies make well-rounded, rich learning. Each literacy is important, and each literacy becomes more important when incorporated with another one.
Additionally, the project has allowed me to take my thinking of literacy a step further. I feel that I have a new appreciation for all that literacy is, and am beginning to think of ways that I will promote all of the literacies into my classroom. The projects gave great examples of how to do so, and will be wonderful resources to use when planning to teach literacy in a future classroom.
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