I Poetry February 21, 2011

I enjoyed seeing the examples of I Poetry on the Dr. Frye’s blog.  It made it seem more real and more like something I can do.  I was also very impressed with the fifth graders’ I Poems.  I thought they were very well-written and they used some very good vocabulary.  I have never written an I Poem before and I will probably struggle with it when I try this time and I definitely would have in the fifth grade.  I know my poem is supposed to be about Blackbeard, but I really don’t even have any idea where to start. 

I think I Poetry is a very interesting form of poetry.  I like the idea that students can take on a character’s personality and traits and tell a story through that character’s eyes.  I definitely agree that this form of poetry “provides a creative format for students to transform the knowledge they have learned” (from the PowerPoint).  Before reading through the PowerPoint, I honestly didn’t even know what I Poetry or I Poems were.  I have learned that they are always written in the first person, from the character’s perspective.  I really like this because I think this is a way to captivate students’ attention and ideas into a very neat form of writing instead of telling a story or writing a report about the information they found.  Do all I Poems have to have three stanzas?  I feel like I have seen some before that are only one or two stanzas instead of being three.  According to the PowerPoint, there is a lot of work that is required for these I Poems such as gathering data and information, organizing information, drafting the poems, and editing their poems.  Plus most students choose to “artistically represent” their work. 

I definitely think I will be able to incorporate this into my IDP.  Since we are planning to do our multi-text unit (and my IDP) on the Underground Railroad, I think it would be a great idea to have students research the Underground Railroad and/or a specific person related to it in some way and write an I Poem.  I think the poem could be written from the perspective of someone who helped out with the Underground Railroad, a character they make up that is hiding out with the Underground Railroad, or a character they have come across in their book or in their research.  I think my students would do a great job with this and it would be a lot of fun for them.  If I do this, could I post some of their I Poems on my blog?  (Of course I would hide their names.)  I think this would be a great way for me to really get a good experience for teaching.  We could maybe even make a class book of all of their I Poems and illustrations!  I bet Mrs. Hogan would love to keep that (and of course I would want a copy too!!!).  This could be a really neat idea!

Building Vocabulary February 16, 2011

I really enjoyed doing the vocabulary activities from the piratical multi-text unit.  Some of them really made me think to be able to answer the questions.  I found out that even though I may know the definition of words and know how to use them, it’s sometimes hard to be able to put those definitions into words.  I can’t get them from my head to the paper. 

The article explained how important vocabulary is for reading comprehension and how it is important to instill vocabulary-learning strategies in students in order for them to be successful.  I completely agree and think this is very important for students to learn.  I know from my experience that we weren’t taught strategies to learn vocabulary and in turn I can tell that my vocabulary suffers.  I always feel dumb and behind in college English courses because my peers use these big vocabulary words that I don’t understand and don’t know the meaning of.  I hope that my future students won’t have that same experience and feel that way, so I plan to teach them good vocabulary strategies, such as identifying suffixes and prefixes and root words.  I think if I would pay attention to root words that I would be able to understand a lot more words than I do.  I was just never taught this strategy, so I have a hard time making myself stop and think about words.  I really need to practice this so I can teach my students these strategies in the future. 

I think the vocabulary worksheets in the multi-text unit are really helpful.  They make students think about vocabulary words without requiring them to copy definitions out of the back of the book or off of the PowerPoint.  Students are allowed to be creative and perform different activities to learn vocabulary instead of the traditional, monotonous worksheets or copying definitions.  Like the article implied, if you can teach students important strategies for learning vocabulary in the classroom and make it fun, students will continue to learn vocabulary on their own.  They will also continue to learn vocabulary when they are leisurely reading and their overall reading comprehension will increase.  I think these worksheets are a very positive way for students to learn vocabulary without memorization and monotonous, pointless work.

Multi-Text Unit February 14, 2011

Oh my goodness!  From looking at these multi-text units, I am feeling extremely overwhelmed.  I keep trying to tell myself that everything will be ok, but from the reading levels of my students that I discovered on Friday, I don’t know how I am going to do this and make it my IDP!  I know one thing for sure, I am definitely going to need help from Dr. Frye.  I think this assignment is great and I can see how it will help me in so many ways in the future and I am actually very excited about working on it, but I think it just scares me.  I think Dr. Frye mentioned something about working on it in partners and small groups which would be fabulous!!!  I’m really hoping I didn’t just imagine that.  Is there a certain amount of pages we are supposed to have?  I noticed out of all of the multi-text unit examples I looked at the shortest one was 59 pages long.  That scares me!  I almost feel like I shouldn’t have looked at those because I think it scared me and (I’m hoping!) it gave me a false sense of how strenuous this assignment is going to be.  I think I am just overwhelmed with all of the projects, assignments and IDP being thrown at us right now, but I know it will get better and we will get through it.  It just may take a few break downs!!

I also wanted to mention the one-on-one I am going to be doing at C.C. Wright with the fifth grade student.  I am actually very excited to be able to work with him and I am hoping that I will actually be able to help him.  I am worried that I won’t be able to help him very much, but I know either way it will be a wonderful learning experience for me.  To put all of my feelings in words, I am excited, worried, nervous, sad, and broken-hearted.  But all of these feelings and emotions are why I want to work this child.  I am extremely excited that I actually get the chance to do this kind of intervention during my Block 2 experience.  I feel like this will make me a better teacher in the future.

Internet Workshop and Classroom Activities February 9, 2011

The ideas in the “Swashbuckling Adventures on the High Seas” article were fantastic!  I think these are really great activities that I can see myself using in my future classroom, and maybe in my multi-text unit/IDP for this semester.  I like the fact that in the DEDs students are encouraged to find passages or words that they like, write them down, and record their thoughts on it.  I find this interesting because this doesn’t come naturally for students, at least it didn’t for me.  In school I liked to read something in its entirety before I had even thought about what I read.  I sometimes still catch myself doing this even now.  I think this is a way to make students process what they are reading and actually think about it.  I can also see this activity being used with sustained silent reading time (not as a requirement that you have to write so many things down, but as a guide to help students collect their thoughts).  I also really liked how the individual research on a certain pirate and the data retrieval chart went together hand-in-hand.  When assignments link together like this, it makes it easier for the student to see the connection of assignments and realize the importance and point of doing the assignment.  I LOVE the “Wanted” posters!  My teacher at C.C. Wright, Mrs. Hogan, had her students creating “Wanted” posters for a character they had read about that had escaped out of jail.  The kids loved this!  They spent so much time drawing their character, writing the information up, and thinking of catchy lines to put on their poster.  She said she actually did this for the first time during her Block 2 internship in her IDP.  I’m wondering if this might be a good idea for me to try to incorporate into my multi-text unit and my IDP.  If the kids love it and I can tell that they have learned something, then I think it is a great idea!  I also loved the list of pirate books that I can definitely use as a resource later on in my teaching career.

The “Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing” article answered some questions for me that I had been wondering about lately.  We are told we need to let our students explore and reasearch on the Internet, but because of a bad experience I had in school, this has really worried me.  I know that schools have blocks for websites that they don’t want students visiting, but I know that some bad sites still come through to the kids.  When I was in Spanish class in seventh grade, we were taken to the computer lab to pull up an interactive website that my teacher had found for us.  He wrote the URL up on the board and we copied it down so we could type it in.  When my best friend, also my partner, typed ours in and pressed enter, a porn website came up with all of these windows that kept popping up on our computer.  We immediately had the teacher come over, but every time she pressed the “x” to close it out, more pop-ups opened.  We were so embarrassed, but scared we were going to be in trouble at the same time.  We were called down to the principal’s office later that day so he could talk to us about what we had seen, explain that there is bad stuff on the internet that we shouldn’t see, tell us not to go around discussing the situation because they didn’t want other students trying to get to those websites, and that he was very sorry we had to see that.  This just concerns me with my students because I don’t want something like that to happen with them, especially in elementary school.  I know this is always a possibility, but as this article told me, if I can already have the links to the websites I want them to visit posted on a webpage or in a document, having my students on the internet is a lot safer and more on task.  This definitely eases my fears of letting my students on the internet, especially since I know there are kid-friendly search engines as well. 

Thanks to these articles, I now look forward to planning my IDP, getting my students involved in searching the internet during and after internet workshops, and getting my students familiar with blogging.

Shared Readings and Pirates February 7, 2011

These readings today were very informational and educational for me.  The most important sentence that I learned from the article is don’t focus on one comprehension strategy at a time, but focus on them like they would occur naturally when reading.  I learned a lot of information that will help me in the classroom that I don’t remember learning when I was in school.  I don’t ever remember shared reading in school with the teachers, or with partners.  I do remember teachers reading to us, or having us listen to books on audio tape (a TERRIBLE experience!), but we never had a copy of the book to follow along with.  I love the ideas from the article of a class set of books, photocopies of specific texts, and projecting the text on a screen.  It could be that I just don’t remember the experiences, but I honestly don’t know that it ever happened in our classes.  I definitely plan on using this strategy of shared reading to teach and model comprehension and to build vocabulary.  I think this way of building vocabulary is much more efficient than copying down definitions over and over again.  That is how I always learned vocabulary in school.  I LOVE the idea of students having their own dictionaries with illustrations and the definitions they come up with for the words they want to put in it. 

I don’t remember anything about text structures or text features from my elementary school days, so it was very helpful to learn about these areas of instruction for my own personal knowledge and so I can teach my students about these topics.  I think knowing this information will be very beneficial for students as they are reading and with enough practice, these strategies will become very natural to them.  I do remember learning about understanding vocabulary through context clues, word parts, and resources, but like the teachers in the article, I don’t understand the point of “skip it” and don’t plan to ever use that in the future unless it is absolutely necessary, which I don’t think will ever happen.  I loved how the sixth-grade teacher introduced and taught the word “malodorous.”  I have never even heard of this word and knowing that sixth-graders can use these types of words just blows my mind, but also makes me excited to know that I have the opportunity to teach students strategies and skills like these.  

Reading the pirate article by Dr. Frye was very exciting for me.  It makes me excited to start our pirate unit in our class, to plan my multi-text unit, and to teach my IDP in reading with a multi-text unit in my fifth grade class during my internship.  I hope that I will be able to find a novel that my students can get excited about and plan great activities that will keep my students engaged throughout the unit and novel.  However, I may need some help Dr. Frye!!

Integrating Instructional-level Social Studies Trade Books February 2, 2011

The example of Jon at the beginning of this article absolutely breaks my heart.  I hate seeing readers struggling, but especially in front of their peers and on the spot like that.  Poor Jon was probably very nervous.  I also don’t agree that this style of popcorn reading encourages students to pay attention and remain on-task because there were plenty of times in elementary school that I would be listening and not following along, but I could make a pretty good guess as to where we were in the story.  I would mainly be found tuning out the other students who were reading while I was reading ahead.  It is also heartbreaking to read that students like Jon are given such hard reading materials when their reading level can’t support it.  And having these students complete worksheets or writings about their reading when they can’t finish the reading, much less comprehend it, is pure torture. 

This article makes me realize just how important finding students’ instructional reading level and texts that are on that level.  Just like we learned in Dr. Schlagal’s Block 1 reading class, the instructional level texts are important for students to read in order to build fluency, comprehension, word recognition automaticity, as well as a love for reading.  During my Block 1 internship, I saw my cooperating teacher finding books for students that they enjoyed reading and that were also on their instructional reading level.  The students in the class seemed to like reading, but didn’t like to be required to do it for homework.  In my Block 2 internship classroom, I see a lot of struggling readers.  Mrs. Hogan says there are many of the fifth grade students on as low as a first grade reading level.  They are starting a new reading program at the school in hopes that it will help these struggling readers, but I’m starting to think that just finding students literature on their reading level might help these issues as well.  I don’t know for sure that these students aren’t given texts on their reading level because I haven’t been able to observe long enough to know, but from what I have read and been taught, I can see where this could greatly improve reading for these students. 

I think connecting children’s literature to other content strands, such as social studies, is a great idea (and so does Dr. Frye!), but I am also sure that it doesn’t do any good if the reading material is too hard for the students to read.  I do have one question though:  How can you give students different reading material at different reading levels but still be able to bring it all together to learn about Native Americans or slavery? 

Well, if I had just continued reading a little further, I would have answered my own question.  As an example used in the article, students can be studying the Civil War and there are different books on different grade levels that students can read.  I think a good idea for the classroom would be for students in these groups to discuss what they have learned about the Civil War from their books.  Then maybe a class discussion on what all students have learned about the Civil War while using examples from their books for evidence could help bring about new aspects of the topic that other groups hadn’t experienced or thought of.  This type of reading could also bring in certain aspects of the sustained silent reading that we read about earlier in the semester.  Students could read their books silently, be paired off or grouped off with students who are reading other books, and discuss what they have found out or learned about a certain topic.  I agree with the article when it says that student-led discussions are enjoyable to participate in and can help students better comprehend what they had read.  I always felt in school, and even now, that if we have student-led discussions I can talk to my peers and they can clarify something that I didn’t understand or may have misunderstood.  I think this is a great way for students to better comprehend and understand their readings and to also encourage them to actually read so that they will have something to contribute to the discussion.  These types of student-led discussions can also hold students accountable for completing their readings. 

I love that this article includes a list of books we can use with our future students on many grade levels!  I was almost in stress-out mode when reading this article because I was wondering where on earth I was going to be able to find books about the same topic on different reading levels and how I might connect these books together.  These lists really help me to feel better about finding books for my students and getting them interested in reading. 

I can’t wait to start assessing the students in my fifth grade class to see what reading levels they are on so that I can hopefully point them in the direction of good books on their levels for their silent reading and individual reading time!  I think it will be a great experience to connect these students to reading and hopefully help them improve their reading skills over the course of this semester and the time that I will spend with them. 

 “No one has ever seen a ‘first-grade class,’ or a ‘fifth-grade class.’  What a teacher should ‘see’ is a group of individuals, unique unto themselves.  Not until differences are ‘seen’ is the teacher ready to teach, because learning the child must precede teaching him…”  –Betts

Extending Acrostic Poetry Into Content Learning January 31, 2011

Before reading this article, I honestly didn’t know that acrostics were considered to be a form of poetry.   I remember writing them in elementary and middle school, but I don’t remember ever being told it was poetry that we were writing.  I feel like if I was told we were going to write poetry at that time and then was handed an acrostic, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.  Just the thought of trying to write poetry was not a good experience for me. 

I like how in the article it encourages students to post their acrostics on their blogs or in the classroom.  I feel like these acrostics could and should be started in the students’ notebooks and even revised in those notebooks.  I think this is a great way to start students on a poetry unit and I feel that the acrostics can be written, like the article said, on anything that you are studying in the classroom, like pirates, Native Americans, North Carolina, symmetry, anything!  That is the most glorious part of acrostics!  I especially like to do acrostics with names and I think it could be tied into finding out about their name activities.  I think students doing their own names in acrostics would be a great way to introduce poetry!

Poetry January 26, 2011

How do I feel about poetry?

Well, for starters, I love children’s poetry.  I like that it is mostly simple, humorous, and straight to the point.  I absolutely HATE the poetry we were made to read in high school English and in ASU English classes.  I think it is pointless to make us read that stuff.  I don’t understand why I have to try to figure out what someone else was thinking when they wrote a bunch of words down on a piece of paper that may or may not even make sense.  I also HATE finding the deeper meaning of poems.  I bet some of the people who wrote poetry didn’t even have a deeper meaning, so why do I have to try to find out what in the world this non-existent deeper meaning is?  Most of the poems we had to read in American Literature or British Literature (classes here at ASU) were so pointless to me because I never even understood what they were about.  I guess in this aspect, I have had bad experiences with poetry which influences my feelings on it.  However, I love to read Shel Silverstein poems and poetry for little kids because it is funny and I actually understand what they poet is trying to tell us.  I write funny little poems to my fiance sometimes about him and how we met and things like that.  I like to do that because they are usually humorous and mean something to me.  I always try to make them rhyme too, so that makes them even funnier.  Maybe my overall opinion of poems will change after this poetry unit in the class.

I loved reading Love that Dog!  It was great!  I loved how the little boy was able to express himself and his thoughts freely without knowing he was even creating poetry.  It was like he found his calling and was then told “oh by the way, you are a poet.”  I think this is the way it should be with students instead of telling them to write a poem.  That was always hard for me.  I like how he wasn’t given any restrictions to his poems and how the teacher granted his request to keep some of his poems anonymous.  I enjoyed the freedom he had and the reinforcement his teacher apparently showed him.  And I loved the part where he got to meet Walter Dean Myers, his inspiration.  I thought that was so neat and it really inspired this student to keep writing.  I loved reading the poems because they usually kept me laughing.  I also liked reading All the Small Poems as well because they are short, simple, and to the point.  I can understand them.  I also liked that they were written about very simple, everyday objects.  I could maybe even write a poem like these!

Writing Workshop January 24, 2011

I think it is interesting that in order to get students excited about writing, we as teachers, must write ourselves.  Until this semester, I had never thought about writing as being one of my duties as a teacher.  I guess I just considered teaching being about teaching the students content, grading papers, and other things, but never involving myself as a writer.  Graves’ Fundamentals in the teaching of writing are very important and will help me as I prepare myself to start notebooks/writing in my future classroom.  I think the steps (choice, response, time, publish, write with children, and notebook) are extremely important and should be followed directly, just as we have seen Dr. Frye model for us. 

I can relate to Amy in Graves’ piece.  Many times when I know I have to write, even knowing that I need to write in my notebook before the end of the day, I spend a lot of time trying to decide what to write about or how to start talking about a topic.  I go throughout my day looking for ideas of things to write about and how I might approach those topics.  I often find myself wondering about if the topic I have chosen might be seen as stupid or dumb, even though I know nobody else will read it unless I show it to them. 

Throughout this class and from this Powerpoint, I have seen how important it is for students to write and write a lot.  Every single day is ideal, but several times a week is important too.  So far (even though we have only been one day) in my internship, I haven’t seen my students write at all.  They completed some multiple choice worksheets, but haven’t even written answers yet.  I hope this isn’t a shadow of what is to come this semester because I would really like to see how writing happens in a real classroom.  I LOVE seeing the third graders’ writing notebooks and how they decorated them!!!  This has inspired me to decorate my own notebook to make it more my own.  These students seemed so excited and proud of their notebooks.  The teachers’ journal invitations are so cute!!  Seeing these ideas makes my mind start wandering away from the Powerpoint and towards what I could possibly do to invite my students to start their own writing notebooks! 

Thank you Dr. Frye for giving us ideas and “prompts” to help us help our future students begin to write in their notebooks!  The lists of ideas and points were very helpful and create a lot of ideas in my head.  It was also very helpful to see a rubric that we can possibly use.  I like the headings of the rubric (Well Done!, Good Work!, You Can Do Better…, and Not Going to Work…).  I feel like these can really help students to understand where their work is without telling them that it is bad like most rubrics do. 

I remember reading Amelia’s Notebook when I was younger and can’t believe that teachers use this for their students because it was great to read!!!  I feel like students will have fun reading this notebook and it will inspire them when they are writing in their own.  I thoroughly enjoyed this Powerpoint and I know that all of the information will be useful in the future.

HOT Blogging January 20, 2011

“Blogging is an easy way to begin preparing elementary students for the new literacies of the Internet” (p. 650). 

I think this quote is especially true and a great way to start out this article.  I know that in one week of having this class and blogging for this class, I have taught myself so much about WordPress, how to blog, different things on the internet, and how blogging can connect a class even when you aren’t physically in the classroom.  I also think it is interesting how in this article it promotes another free blogging site, like WordPress, that we can use with our students called Edublogs at edublogs.org.  This gives us options as future teachers as to which blog we want our students to use.  I didn’t realize that there were so many things on the internet considered to be “technologies for literacy,” like search engines, e-mail, instant messenger, and social networking tools.  I mean, sure, I knew these websites and tools were out there, but I had no idea they were considered literacy.  I guess that just never crossed my mind, even though every time you open up your internet browser you are reading. 

Oh my goodness!!!!  I have never used a blog until the beginning of this semester when we were required to make one.  I was completely lost!!!!  I would have never figured it out without the help from the video Dr. Frye gave us.  It absolutely blows my mind that 12 million students between the ages of 12 and 17 have their own blogs!!!! 

I am very glad that Lisa Zawilinski is addressing the issues of blogging in this article.  I had some questions about student interest and my own interest dwindling because of not having as much to say about the same topic over and over.  I would have never imagined that online reading comprehension could promote any higher order thinking skills.  To know that it can promote analysis, synthesis and evaluation is very helpful when teachers are planning their online homework assignments.  I also think it is very important, like Ms. Kreul says, that student work can be read by many different audiences.  This way they can feel important and will actually spend time planning their posts and responses, as well as family members and others being able to see what is going on in the school-life of their students.

I think blogging could be a great way to incorporate the discussions of Sustained Silent Reading.  I think it would be a good idea to have students read silently in the classroom and have time either at school or home to make a post about what they read or something that caught their attention as they were reading.  This could also be alternated with the classroom rap time so that students didn’t get burned out on one method of informing others of what is going on in their silent reading adventures.  I also feel like the internet provides a sort of “protection” for students so it’s not like raising your hand in class and having everyone stare at you.  You don’t get the ridicule like you might possibly encounter as a student in the classroom and you don’t worry as much about someone laughing at something you have said.  Students could also comment on each other’s posts as well.

I think Stephanie’s idea of an Our Best page is incredible!  If students are proud of their work, which we as teachers should encourage, then they should be able to show it off to their classmates, friends, family, and anyone else who might stumble across the blog.  I think this is a wonderful idea and definitely plan to use it!

I think the teacher/class blogs I viewed are awesome!  It is a great way for teachers to communicate with parents and students outside of the classroom.  Students may also be able to keep up with their homework assignments easier and can see pictures of themselves on the blogs which can help engage them in the class and make them feel special.  I absolutely LOVE how Mrs. Knee on The Kinderkids’ Blog included pictures and videos of the kids.  I think that is great and so cute!  And the students being able to post some of their artwork is a wonderful idea and can be used at any age.  I can’t wait to use some of these ideas in my classroom!  I love how the kids can comment on each others’ pictures and make each other feel special!