Wordle, Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3487878/YoungLifeLyrics

Blogging about Blogging

Honestly, I love writing. I enjoy having an outlet to let my thoughts out. Whether it's a new recipe I want to share, posting some links to great music, or giving an update on my super-busy life, blogging can be an excellent resource to do so.

Time. Where is the time? Where do women (and men, I'm sure) get the time to sit and write? I wish so badly that I had time to make blogging one of my hobbies. I feel like I would have so many ideas of things to share with friends and family, but I just don't know where it would fit into my schedule!

Envy. I'm dating a guy whose sister-in-law is a wonderful blogger. She has the cutest layout and wonderful pictures posted all of the time with recipes and interesting news about their lives. The way she writes is almost sickening because she sometimes portrays her life as a perfect love story with pretty houses and fun social events. Ha, I know. I'm jealous. I envy the time she has to upload her photos and update her friends and family on the fun things of life.

I have always wanted to journal or document the interesting and memorable days and events in my life. I will just have to suck it up and find the time, patience, and creativity to create a blog just as awesome as the ones that make me sick.

Comments4Kids

Commenting on a student's post about getting in trouble for messing up the TV.

http://kidblog.org/MrsSalernosClass/eion/the-annoyer-2/#comment-234

A student wrote about a fantasy book he is reading.

http://kidblog.org/MrsGoerendsClass/danielf2017/the-fall/#comment-778

Another student that is responding to literature.

http://kidblog.org/MrsGoerendsClass/kassidyn2017/reading-responce/#comment-779

The GACE

Saturday I took the GACE for what is hopefully the ONLY time. It was a crazy day in the making, starting at 8AM. Our sorority yard sale had begun a few hours early and luckily I was able to sleep in for a few hours considering I had to take the GACE at 1PM. It was busy with customers and from what I heard brought in a good deal of money for our philanthropy.

From there, I rushed home to grab some lunch and get ready for what would be after the GACE. Packed up some clothes, grabbed some jewelry and headed towards Clarke Central High School. I arrived with plenty of time before the exam started. I was extremeley surprised to see how many people were at the test location taking the exam. It was quite overwhelming.

The tests itself was not that bad. Literacy was a littel difficult for me, but the other subjects I feel that I did pretty well. I will anxiously await for my scores to post in a few weeks!

Since the exam started about 45 minutes behind what I had expected, I was late getting to my other event for the evening. Back to sorority duties, I rushed to pick up a few girls and head towards Atlanta for the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Awareness Gala. It was so exciting to be volunteering at such a chic and formal occasion in downtown Atlanta. Though my nerves were a bit shaken from the exam, I was still able to have a fabulous night dining and celebrating our cause.

Field Placement Reflection

Spending a whole week in the classroom from 7:15-3:00 was exhausting, yet so much fun. I wish that I were student teaching already to avoid coming to class. Overall, my experience spending a week with my class and mentor teacher was great.

I actually woke up on time and made it to school by 7:15 every day, yes, everyday. I can't believe that for 5 days in a row I was on time. Of course, there were a few days with Chick Fil A as an incentive to wake up! I was excited to get to school on time, prepared and ready for the day. I feel like I'll always struggle with waking up and lookinf forward to a full day of teaching, but this past week was very helpful in showing that I can do it!

It wasn't all fun and games at school though. Every day presenting my unit was a struggle fighting for the students' attention. There were many successful activities that students loved where I found them extremely engaged. There were other slip ups with technology that caused distractions and sometimes even my lack of preparedness with materials. This week definitely proved that the more prepared you are as a teacher the more students seem to be engaged. Lessons that I reviewed the night before and became most familiar with were the ones that students seemed to enjoy the most. Their behavior also was better when there weren't hold ups and gaps within the lesson.

Another cool thing about my week long experience was the hang out time with my mentor teacher and the 4th grade teachers. They have been extremely welcoming and inclusive since I have started at Fowler this semester. It is a great environment for me and they have all been supportive and helpful throughout.

Writer's Workshop Reflection: Chapters 7,8,19

I have been spending a lot of time in my field placement walking around the classroom observing students' work and helping where needed. As my mentor teacher spends time putting together other things and helping individual students, I have found my job as the teacher who walks around making sure students are constantly working towards something. I have observed a few students in the class who struggle finding their focus and accomplishing much at all. I repeatedly tell them that they should be writing and try to encourage them to write by asking questions about their writing topic and where they want to take their writing. In my classroom, the teacher does not put a lot of pressure on students to complete a certain amount in specific time. She allows freedom for her students, so it bothers me that students still have a problem finding enjoyment in writing and why some students just CAN'T stay focused and write even a few sentences. In another class I am taking, the teacher demonstrates well how to work with your students. If the teacher is making known his/her presence, it may be motivating for students in that he/she is creating a complete working environment where everyone is being productive.

I love being in control. I can definitely see how in the future with writer's workshop the ways I may struggle if students are in many different places with their writing. I agree with the text in that writer's workshop at the base is very organized, planned and stuctured, but how it can easily seem out of control with students' work being so diverse.

I really liked the author's three concepts of publishing. I am unsure if these would explicitly be made known to the class; however I can see where it would be beneficial to go into detail with students about these three ideas. Students need to know what it means to "finish" a piece and the long process it takes for a piece of work to be published. I also think audience is important for students to know about in that one of the beginning steps of writing is determining your audience.

Writing Workshop: Chapters 14,15, 17 Reflection

Conferring sounds like a great idea. I've heard about the effectiveness of having conferences with students on a regular basis, writing related or not. It will be extremely important in my classroom that I follow up with students not only on their individual work, but their lives and how my class is affecting them. I think it is important to meet with students and to show that you care and are concerned with the rate of progress and understanding of material. Students should know that their teacher is supportive and genuninely interested in each student. I have no doubt that conferring could play a large roll in improving students' writing.

Should students be required to share? In the past few years at UGA, on many occasions I have become very frustrated with professors that have participation grades, in which to get full credit a student must speak aloud in class and share in discussion. I feel like student sharing of their writing is similar. I absolutely do not feel that I should be required to speak aloud in class and state my opinion in order to obtain a grade. Personalities vary, and so do confidence levels. In my case, I just choose to weigh the opinions and voices of others and compare with my own silently. I see the potential benefits from participatin in group discussion, as I can see what could good can come from sharing their writing. I just don't know if I would require students to share. I'm sure there are many methods to use to increase students' confidence for sharing.

My mentor teacher seems to have no problems planning writer's workshop. I have seen her use the standards combined with the framwork to create a drawn out tentative plan for the year. All of the standards are covered, but there is room for additions and flexibility with topics and ideas.

Writer's Workshop Focus Lessons

Suspense
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, Chris van Allsburg
The Giving Tree

Persuasion
Commercials, Cereal Boxes, Magazine Ads
Hey Little Ant
The Great Kapok Tree, Lynne Cherry
The Salamander Room

Punctuation
Punctuation Takes a Vacation, Robin Pulver

Online Books/Digital Libraries
tumblebooks.com
storylineonline.net
childrenslibrary.org

Writing Workshop: Chapters 9,10,13 Reflection

In Chapter 9, the author discusses the goals of writing workshop and characteristics that are trying to be established that resemble science experiments and museums. Strangely enough, the author compares the two and says that it's possible to create a writing workshop with similar ideas.  It asks the intriguing question, "What could students learn without my presence in the classroom?"  As a prospective teacher, this idea is initially humorous.  How can students learn without a teacher?  Without instruction and guidance can students really learn?  The author is clearly not saying classrooms can go without teachers, but I began to wonder myself the importance of creating a learning environment where students can teach/learn for themselves.  The author also included some of my thoughts about the teacher's role.  For writing workshop and I'm sure many other subject areas, teachers can create lessons and activities that are student focused and guided. I do believe that often, teachers can set the rules and basic instructions, provide the necessary materials and set students along their learning ways.

Writing is something you do, not something you know.  There is validity in this statement, personally.  As I have progressed through school I have learned that writing is so much more than the way some teachers show.  Writing is more than research papers and essays.  Writing can be creative, enjoyable, lyrical and telling.  Writing can be freeing and expressive in ways other forms of literature and communication cannot.  The text quotes the line from above and follows with "but there are all kinds of things to know about how to do it."  I also agree with this in that students should be informed of the many styles and types of writing.  I remember in grade school learning how to write business letters and friendly letters.  I would place a high importance on practical, real life writing styles, because know these things, such as how to write a resume, are types of writing that will benefit students long after high school research papers.  I think it is necessary to review the dept and breadth of writing.  Where there is freedom in writing, I also see the importance of proper formatting and style within it also.

I have a wonderful mentor teacher from Fowler Drive this semester and some awesome fourth grade students.  My teacher has already demonstrated at least two times how she uses writing workshop in her classroom.  She has taken the time to explain how she creates the writing lesson plans for the week.  Before we read from the text, I already knew the term "focus lesson."  I loved being able to read from the text about how to actually create and implement the steps of the focus lesson, but more importantly I am going to enjoy getting to observe focus lessons being taught in my field placement. 

Concrete Poetry

I love the resources I am already gaining from this class.  Hopefully by the end of the semester there will be a long list of websites and book titles that will help with writing in my future classrooms. 

Check out: http://www.tagxedo.com/
A great idea we discussed in class for a poetry unit for students was to allow students to use Tagxedo to create concrete poems using descriptive words about themselves.  It would also be a useful tool for teachers to create his/her own concrete poems or to create class poems.

I made this one from a friend's blog about her trip to South Africa.

Today's writing assignment was to create a concrete poem using words and phrases from the text.  We created a clock because time plays a large role.  It was easy to pull keywords and ideas from the text to create an image to help supplement the words used to create the poem.

Writing Workshop: Chapters 1-5 Reflection

I never thought it was possible for a noisy classroom to be a sign of hard work and creative learning.  It has taken a while for me to recover from what I have experienced as a student and from also what I have witnessed in the classroom as a prospective teacher.  What once seemed like the model of a perfect classroom, including silent students, has been recreated.  I am beginning to realize the importance of noise.  I give credit to my experiences and also my parents for my personality that desires the quiet and controlled setting for students.  However, I am in the process of breaking down those improper standards I and other teachers have set for classroom management and allowed myself to witness the wonder of a nice little roar of students throughout the room.   I haven't let go of all my values and importance of a having productive students remaining on task and at the highest level of learning.  A classroom described in the first chapter of The Writing Workshop, these students are talking and communicating with each other, but they are also being very productive and are remaining at an appropriate level of noise.  Like anything, it is necessary to have a balance.  Writer's workshop seems like a fantastic tool to set up the learning environment described that will provide students with optimum learning opportunities through discussion, listening, and writing.

Can everyone be a writer?  Apparently the author of The Writing Workshop would be appalled if anyone ever questioned it!  Although  I believe the answer is clear, it is definitely an idea to ponder.  I come from a fairly successful writing background and experience.  I have vivid memories of writing in elementary school and my teachers being proud of my writing progress and achievements.  Throughout grade school I continued to make the grades in writing.  At the beginning of college I struggled with the different expected writing styles, but have somehow managed my way through assignments.  In high school I wrote articles for the newspaper and thoroughly enjoyed the creative writing aspect.  I absolutely believe everyone can be a writer.  I don't any teacher or society in general should hold any standards or rules for writing.  With the various genres and types of writing, the broadness should allow for all types of people the opportunity to write and to find their own identity in writing.  These outlets could include journalism, writing lyrics to a song, creating poetry, play writing, or writing novels. 

The essential components of writing workshop are helpful to me in that I can visualize and use them as a foundation in my classroom.  Structure behind flexibility seems to be key for writing workshops, allowing enough direction and lesson, but providing the flexibility of topic and writing styles.  It seems important for the Georgia set standards to provide the basis of the workshop by providing a lesson that prompts students for the independent writing time.  Time spent during the second phase on writing seems extremely flexible as to allow for different students' writing time and style and any other reasons.  Sharing is something I am familiar with from experience in my own classes, but also after observing first graders last semester.  It is crucial for students to have the opportunity for sharing, whether in front of a classroom with a mock-spot light and curtain, or if they simply go through the publishing process, which allows work to be displayed about the room or in the hallways.