I found the reading for this week about technology and the three core concerns involved with using technology in schools very interesting. I am by no means a highly technological person, having admitted to the cohort already during Doering's class that on a scale of 1 to 10 for technology ability I would rate myself a 1. That being said I am extremely apprehensive about introducing technology and computers into my English classroom. I am horrible at trying to figure out how to use computer programs and other things similar to that and I think that if my students turned to me for help with these kinds of things I wouldn't know what to do. The authors mention that becoming literate with computers is important for students' futures and I feel sorry for the students who expect me to help them with this because I'm not sure if I will be able to help them as much as they need.
I was also a little disappointed in the article because while they brought about the fact that many kids are at a deficit because they don't have computers the authors don't give suggestions for ways to help students gain more access to computers. The authors mentioned also that students who do again access to computers aren't always able to succeed with them because they don't have the training and preparation necessary to navigate the Internet. Again, a valid point, however the authors fail to mention how they believe this problem can be solved. I feel that this semester I have been bombarded with education problems and have been provided with very few suggestions for making education better or no success stories involving educational issues. I do agree that students need the preparation for using computers and that being part of the online community will be beneficial for them but how are we as teachers supposed to ensure that all of our students receive this opportunity?
My website for this week is an online community called SG Fireteam. It is a community that I myself belong to for adult gamers who use Xbox Live. I think it is a good example of the way people interact in an online community and I am really proud of being identified as an SG Fireteam member. It might even be a good example of the kind of online community our schools could have for students, though I will warn you since it is an adult community of gamers there might be some cussing.......
www.sgfireteam.com
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Grammar Hell
After reading William's chapter six I am apprehensive once again of the topic of grammar. I have never been a big fan of grammar learning and I didn't even know how I would go about teaching grammar to my students. I was a bit confused about what Williams was trying to get at in his chapter. He claims that most problems in writing are due to problems with usage not grammar itself. I think he was advocating for teachers to teach correct grammar usage to their students.
However, there are many students who don't know grammar at all and I still think that it is an important thing to teach. If a student doesn't know what a semi-colon is for, for example, then the student probably needs a lesson in grammar. If I have student who is constantly using commas incorrectly, then we have a usage problem and I would more than happy to help them learn the correct way of using it. I guess I just didn't understand what Williams was trying to say in his writing. He kept coming back to the fact that none of the ways of teaching grammar helps students in their writing. I would be more interested in hearing more about ways of teaching grammar that actual helped students learn. I still think that having a solid, basic knowledge of grammar along with correct usage is important. In my English classroom, though I think the aspects of writing that would be most vital to me is making sure that my students are getting their ideas out onto the paper, not whether they used the "correct" sentence structure or not.
My website for this week is a site filled with what I'm sure Williams would deem as useless grammar help and definitions.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
However, there are many students who don't know grammar at all and I still think that it is an important thing to teach. If a student doesn't know what a semi-colon is for, for example, then the student probably needs a lesson in grammar. If I have student who is constantly using commas incorrectly, then we have a usage problem and I would more than happy to help them learn the correct way of using it. I guess I just didn't understand what Williams was trying to say in his writing. He kept coming back to the fact that none of the ways of teaching grammar helps students in their writing. I would be more interested in hearing more about ways of teaching grammar that actual helped students learn. I still think that having a solid, basic knowledge of grammar along with correct usage is important. In my English classroom, though I think the aspects of writing that would be most vital to me is making sure that my students are getting their ideas out onto the paper, not whether they used the "correct" sentence structure or not.
My website for this week is a site filled with what I'm sure Williams would deem as useless grammar help and definitions.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Writing with a Purpose
While reading "Responding to Audience:Using Rubrics to Teach and Assess Writing", I found myself focusing not so much on the rubric aspect of the Memoir Writing Project discussed in the article but more on the fact that the students in the project were writing for a purpose. The writing that the students were doing was to write a diary that next years' freshman would be able to read and think about and I think having a purpose in writing makes a huge difference.
We have discussed rubrics in our teacher preparation classes before and have gone over and over assessing writing, therefore the rubric of the aspect was not that appealing. What I liked most about the Memoir Writing Project was that these students were going to actual be using their writing for something substantial. I think to many time teachers assign their students writing assignments and preach about audience and focus yet these papers are only read by the teacher, maybe a couple of peers if the teacher decides to allow workshopping in class. I think writing something that is actually going to be used will make the students more excited about writing and more conscious of the way they write.
I remember in middle school, our teachers had us all write letters to Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton. In the letters we were supposed to discuss what we liked about Minneapolis, what we wished would be changed, and then ask the mayor if she would come to our school for a visit. Writing that letter was the most exciting assignment that we did the whole year and I remember all of my friends being incredibly excited about writing it and in the end the mayor did come and talk to us about Minneapolis. My point is that writing shouldn't always have a hypothetical audience but sometimes we should give our students the chance to write for a living, breathing audience.
My website fot this week is a site students can go to for helpful writing tips:
http://www2.actden.com/writ_Den/tips/contents.htm
We have discussed rubrics in our teacher preparation classes before and have gone over and over assessing writing, therefore the rubric of the aspect was not that appealing. What I liked most about the Memoir Writing Project was that these students were going to actual be using their writing for something substantial. I think to many time teachers assign their students writing assignments and preach about audience and focus yet these papers are only read by the teacher, maybe a couple of peers if the teacher decides to allow workshopping in class. I think writing something that is actually going to be used will make the students more excited about writing and more conscious of the way they write.
I remember in middle school, our teachers had us all write letters to Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton. In the letters we were supposed to discuss what we liked about Minneapolis, what we wished would be changed, and then ask the mayor if she would come to our school for a visit. Writing that letter was the most exciting assignment that we did the whole year and I remember all of my friends being incredibly excited about writing it and in the end the mayor did come and talk to us about Minneapolis. My point is that writing shouldn't always have a hypothetical audience but sometimes we should give our students the chance to write for a living, breathing audience.
My website fot this week is a site students can go to for helpful writing tips:
http://www2.actden.com/writ_Den/tips/contents.htm
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Right to See Others Write
I really enjoyed Spandel's right number six in The Nine Rights of Every Writer, the right to see others right. I think that this is one of the issues in English writing that doesn't get discussed very much. As teachers, we hold a lot of influence over our students most of the time and I think that if we show a love of writing and what writing means to us, then our students may in turn develop an appreciation for writing.
I remember as a student in my English classes how much I wanted to see what types of writing my own teachers created and what exactly went through their minds as they wrote. Did they have problems starting a paper like I often do? Do they also sometimes struggle with sentence structure and grammar? Even though I am going to be teaching English, my writing isn't always perfect and I think I am beginning to realize that my teachers probably weren't perfect writers themselves. I think that if more of my teachers in high school and college had modeled their writing process instead of just expecting us to complete a paper, the writing process might have gone a lot smoothly for myself.
I remember in my intermediate fiction writing class during my undergrad course at the U of M my fiction writing teacher read us part of a novel that he was working on during class one day. He even looked a little embarrassed as he admitted that the piece he read was far from polished and that he had a lot of work to do before the chapter would be completed. I remember how relieved I felt to see that my own teacher also struggled with issues such as dialogue and character development. I think as future English teachers it will benefit our students if we model to them what is going through our heads as we write and that even teacher's aren't perfect writers and also need to revise and edit and rethink their own writing.
My site for this week is a website with writing suggestions from other teachers and it contains different writing prompts and lesson plans.
http://www.teach-nology.com/ideas/subjects/writing/
I remember as a student in my English classes how much I wanted to see what types of writing my own teachers created and what exactly went through their minds as they wrote. Did they have problems starting a paper like I often do? Do they also sometimes struggle with sentence structure and grammar? Even though I am going to be teaching English, my writing isn't always perfect and I think I am beginning to realize that my teachers probably weren't perfect writers themselves. I think that if more of my teachers in high school and college had modeled their writing process instead of just expecting us to complete a paper, the writing process might have gone a lot smoothly for myself.
I remember in my intermediate fiction writing class during my undergrad course at the U of M my fiction writing teacher read us part of a novel that he was working on during class one day. He even looked a little embarrassed as he admitted that the piece he read was far from polished and that he had a lot of work to do before the chapter would be completed. I remember how relieved I felt to see that my own teacher also struggled with issues such as dialogue and character development. I think as future English teachers it will benefit our students if we model to them what is going through our heads as we write and that even teacher's aren't perfect writers and also need to revise and edit and rethink their own writing.
My site for this week is a website with writing suggestions from other teachers and it contains different writing prompts and lesson plans.
http://www.teach-nology.com/ideas/subjects/writing/
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
The Five Paragraph Essay Debate
I was happy to see that the readings for this week continued with the idea of the five paragraph essay. I believe that this is a debate that English teachers need to discuss and explore thoroughly. After my initial rant against the five paragraph essay last week I have tried to take a step back and look at the issue of this format from both sides. While I still don't agree that the five paragraph essay is a good thing to be drilling into our students' heads I do see where the teachers who support it are coming from. The five paragraph essay is easily obtainable for students who have trouble with writing and is an easy way of ensuring that all of our students come out of high school knowing how to write a decent and socially acceptable form of essay writing.
However, I still don't agree that the formulaic five paragraph writing style should be the end-all, be-all of essay writing and too often most high school English teachers perceive it as just that. As Nunnally suggests in his article, the format of the five paragraph essay might be a good way to teach kids the beginning mechanics of paragraph writing, especially for those students who have never writing an essay before. But if we as English teachers are stopping after teaching students that formula, we are doing our students a great disservice. In Wesley's article she mentions a student who wants to know how she is going to stretch five paragraphs into a seven page paper. I laughed out loud when I read this because I said the same thing to my English teacher my senior year of high school.
I feel that in our English classrooms we are beating the idea of the five paragraph essay into our students' brains so much that we aren't giving them the full picture of what an essay can and should be. While the five paragraph formula can be a good stepping stone to great essay writing by our students it should never be the end of essay writing in our English classrooms. We should be ensuring that our students continue to grow, experiment, and explore in their essay writing. We need to make sure that our students understand that the five paragraph essay is just the starting point for all the possibilities they can have in their writing.My website for this week is the ABC of Academic Writing and Essay Writing. The website provides definitions and helpful hints for writing essays and could be a useful resource for students. The site doesn't mention the five paragraph essay format specifically which is why I chose it.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
What's an English Teacher to Do?
While reading Vicki Spandel's The Nine Rights of Every Writer I found myself becoming frustrated with the content inside it, especially while reading right number eight, "the right to go beyond formula." Now, before I get into the argument that I have, I must state that I do agree with many of the things Spandel states in this chapter. I do agree that formulaic writing is boring and an "easy fix" for struggling writers. I believe that to be a good writer doesn't necessarily mean that the students have to follow a preset formula where in they simply fill in the missing comments in order to create an acceptable essay. I believe that as an English teacher I will want to encourage my students to take chances with their writing. To explore new ways of explaining and expressing their topics. I want my students to display passion and complexity and growth in their writing.
I suppose that my frustration with the Spandel chapter is that it isn't practical or realistic for the high school English classroom. I am student teaching at Washburn High School in Minneapolis in Ms. Blair's eleventh and tenth grade English classes. For the past two weeks while observing Ms. Blair has been preparing her tenth grade students for the Minnesota state writing test, a test that I myself had to take in tenth grade. A test where the formulaic five paragraph essay is emphasized. My cooperating teacher has spent weeks filling her students heads with the "proper" way to write a one thesis, five paragraph essay. Not because she wants them to write this way, but because she knows if they don't learn the formula they will fail the test and won't be allowed to graduate until it is completed correctly.
In tenth grade, at South High School, when our writing test was coming up, my Humanities 10 English class spent weeks writing, and rewriting formulaic five paragraph essays merely for the purpose of preparing us to pass this one test. Even in eleventh grade I had an English teacher who had us write a five paragraph essay on how to correctly write a five paragraph essay. After writing this type of essay multiple times I felt that I knew how to write great essays. It wasn't until freshman year of college in my English composition class that I realized my perception of a good paper was wrong and I was angry at my high school English teachers for wasting my time with a formula for writing that was useless. However, in high school if we had finished with the state writing test and my teachers had turned around and told me that the formula I had just learned for essays was useless I would have held very little respect for them. So what is an English teacher to do? We have idealistic, fantastic notions for how we would like our students to write, for ways to encourage them to explore topics and play around with structure and organization. However when we look at the big picture, teaching writing in this way is almost impossible to implement.
My site for this week has nothing to do with my blog but I will post it anyway. My cooperating teacher has had some trouble getting books for all of her students so she has been getting copies of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew off of this site. It's completely legal and she tells me that many teachers and students use it. The site contains full books and plays available to read and print out.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Williams Reading for 1/25/07
I really enjoyed the reading for this week that we did in William's book Preparing to Teach Writing. I consider myself a writer and hope to someday be a published author. I also enjoyed writing classes the most during high school and college, especially fiction writing. I hope to be able to teach comp and fiction writing in my own classroom in the near future.
While reading through chapters three and four in William's book I didn't find much of the information new but I did find it to be reinforcing of the ways in which I want to incorporate writing into my own classroom. I am very familiar with the workshopping process, which I have used effectively in every fiction writing class I have ever had, and feel that it is the best way to get students to really think about each others work and begin the revision process. I feel that this type of writing environment is best for the students because most times their peers can offer them advice and suggestions that the student themselves would have never even thought of on their own. It can also help students who have writers block and are unsure of how to proceed with their writing. As a writer I believe that the best help I can receive if I'm stuck is to talk about my writing to a peer and listen to what suggestions they have.
I also appreciated Williams run through of the different stages of the composing process. Even though I was familiar with and have successfully completed all stages of the composing process in the past, it helps to have a reminder of each individual stage and suggestions for how to best implement it into the classroom.
Below you will find a link to a website that goes through the steps involved in writing an essay. The website is pretty simple but will be helpful for students who might not know or remember the components they will need to compose an essay.
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