Literacy Moves on Chapters 6-10

Chapter 6 talked all about Beanie Babies. When I started reading this chapter I felt that it made no sense. I did not understand why this one toy could take up a whole chapter. But as I read on I was interested by all the facts on how Beanie Babies became such a phenomenon. I remember as a child trying to collect as many Beanie Babies as I could and even trying to collect all the mini- McDonald's happy meal ones. I also never really thought about how these can relate to literacy but I do remember always reading the name of each Beanie Baby and the little description of each animal. Literacy can come from anywhere, even toys! It is sad however that Ty the company producing the Beanie Babies, manipulated the market to get rich but I think that is how most of our society works these days. It was cool though to read kids responses to this news. It was a great idea to have kids write their reflections on Beanie Babies before and after hearing that information because it got children to write and think about the world around them.
Chapter 7 was all about children writing about their experiences and neighborhoods and also reading about things that relate to their neighborhoods. This is the best thing for kids to write about because everyone loves to write about their past and their story and where they come from. I also think it is cool how teachers had the children think really deep into all the aspects of their neighborhoods, families and even their cultures. I still don't understand how children would use their own local, cultural texts it does not make much sense to me unless they are an ESL student. The alphabet book idea was really cute. I really enjoyed how it tied in children's personal experiences with the alphabet and it even allowed them to get extra creative and draw pictures.
Chapter 8 discussed linking reading and play which I think is a brilliant concept. Children, especially younger children, love nothing more than to play and if they can learn while they are doing that then that is great! I think kids would have a lot of fun creating stories with toys. That is how I used to play as a child with my Barbies and I never imagined that could be related to literacy but after reading this I understand how it can be part of a curiosity kit.
Chapter 9 talks about introducing different genres to students by having them write about certain character types. Having children write about heroes and villains does a lot more than just help develop students creativity. Usually when students begin writing about these characters they are developing stories from scratch. This is introducing the genre of fantasy. It is a big part of learning literacy to develop an understanding between the differences of reality and fiction. Children are taught about fictitious characters from the moment they can walk and talk, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy are two examples. At some point in time they have to learn what is actually reality and what is fiction and there are subtle ways to start that lesson.
Chapter 10 ties in a lot of these prior lessons about connecting culture, community, and school. As I said before this is a great way for students to learn because they relate to their own life experiences which is something we all have in common, a past. Journals or Govies are great ways to get students to open up with their writing and to even reflect on things they have read. Literacy comes in all shapes and forms and if we open our eyes to it we can find it anywhere!

Literacy Moves on Chapters 1-5

One thing I am still curious about is how much technology is important and appropriate to include in the classroom? These chapters give some interesting ideas of how to incorporate computers, television, and other forms of media. I really liked the idea of having students retell stories using the computer or by acting them out. Last week in class we did something similar by retelling a story or making up a story and using puppets to tell it. The only difference is that did not involve technology. Another question that came to mind however is are students in lower income schools not receiving the same educational benefits as students in schools that can afford this kind of equipment? At Fairview Elementary, where we are currently doing our field experience, most of the students do not even have computers at their homes and there are not enough computers for all of them to use them at school. Some students do not even know what the internet is. Since our society is expanding so rapidly when it comes to technology I think it is important to incorporate it in lessons even in elementary school but how can that be done if the resources are not available? All together these different lessons seem like great ideas to really expand students minds about different stories and help them become more creative for their futures. The examples shown of what some very young students created were amazing to me.

Van Sluys- Literacy Invitations

This article really explains what a literacy invitation is. It took me a while to understand what exactly a literacy invitation entails but as I read on and through our discussions in class I came to the conclusion that it can be any literary activity that expands students minds by having them create something on their own. My favorite quote from this article comes from page 10, "invitations are not about seeking right answers or rushing to be done; rather, invitations are experiences in which learners, working together, reach new insights that lead them to take action." I really like this because I am a strong believer that if a student is rushing to get anything done then they are really not learning much about it. Assignments are not just meant to keep students busy but to engage students' minds in a certain topic. Our job as teachers is to teach students vital information for their lives. I know that not everything is going to be fun for students but I believe it is important to make as many assignments as possible enjoyable.

Multigenre Research Paper

The multigenre research paper put a new twist on something I was already familiar with. I remember writing research papers in middle school but I never had to add genres to it. When I had to create the genres for my paper at first I did not understand why it was important but as I really thought about my different genres and how I was going to use them I understood their purpose. Creating these pieces really helped me think about my topic more in depth and understand the perspectives and view points of all the people it was affecting.
The Multigenre Research Paper book gives a lot of great ideas on how to make the most out of your different genres. I really enjoyed the section in chapter five where a student answered many questions about the character he or she was trying to understand. I have not been researching this person and I even got a better understanding of the person just by reading the student who has been researchings answers. I had no clue how many different ways a person could be creative with this project. The book provides a list of about 110 different options for genres. This is a great way for students to be creative and also get good practice on researching topics. The book was right in stating that this is a great way to expand students minds.

MGRP and Van Sluys

Learning about multi-genre research papers has been quite and experience. It reminded me of eighth grade when I had to write my first research paper. I remember the instructions for that paper were to find a bunch of sources, read them all, make note cards with specific quotes and page numbers that would help our research, and then add our thoughts about each quote on the note card. We then put all the note cards together and made a paper out of them. I recall all that work being very tedious and boring. However, we never added the multi-genre aspect. I believe we made a poster board about our topics but we did not get to do anything too creative.
I still believe these papers are kind of boring and I think it is hard to allow students to write on something they are truly interested in but I think added the genres could make it a lot more fun for them. These genres are also a great way for children to expand their abilities on writing poetry, newspaper articles etc. They also are a great way for students to show their creativity. I believe many students would really get into this and it is a great way to develop their writing skills. The MGRP book has some great ideas for topics and different genres students could use. Some of the topics I would have never thought about such as chocolate. It seems like such a vague topic but there are so many things students can research about chocolate. I also really enjoyed the poetry chapter. I think the six room poems idea is brilliant. This could get students to include all their senses in their writing and really help them make their writing more detailed. I wish someone had done an activity like this with me when I was younger. I did it myself in my head just looking around my room and it really got me thinking.
The Van Sluys article discussed how to have literacy invitations. These literacy invitations remind me of the multi genre research paper without the research paper. I think it is a great idea for students to use all different aspects of literature to expand their thinking. Newspaper articles, pictures, magazines, and different types of books are great ways for students to expand their thinking when it comes to literature. Making it seem kind of like a party and having invitations could get students more excited about the actual experience. I used to love it in school when teachers would have us present certain projects in a sort of party way. It made learning more fun and I think this is a great idea. These will help students think about all the different social worlds going on around them. How do you get students to perform literacy invitations without just writing a standard research paper? I could see how many students would misunderstand the instructions and end up doing a boring paper that they are not getting much out of.

Chapters 10, 11, and 12

Chapter 10 dealt with teaching the conference. It highlighted some teaching moves to do in a conference to make it as effective as possible:
-Transitions
-Naming the skill
-Saying why it's good
-Say back to me
-Record the teaching
I feel pretty comfortable now about finding strengths in student's writing but I am still curious how to pick one specific skill to focus on in a conference with a student when you can find a few different things the child needs to work on. What are the most important things a child needs to know first and foremost to develop most successfully as a writer? I again enjoyed the point of including why something is good to the student because as a child I never cared about anything I was taught unless I was given a full explanation of why the thing I was learning is important. Another thing I really liked and found interesting in this chapter was having a student say back to me what we just went over in the conference. From my experience working with students I have seen how students will often act like they understand what you are teaching them but then five minutes later don't remember. It is easy to feel like you just taught a student something very successfully when they assure they understand and can do the skill correctly as you are guiding them along but is very upsetting when that lesson does not stick. If you develop a routine of having students always say back to you the skill they were just taught they will soon be expecting it and pay full attention. It is just like the idea presented earlier in the book that if you tell students they are going to have to discuss with other students what is being taught in group lesson they are bound to pay attention more so they will know what they are talking about with their peers later. Recording the teaching is also a very smart idea so you don't lose track of what you worked on with each individual students and keep records of what they have learned and what you still need to cover.
Chapter 11 dealt more with group conferences and how to manage them. I have seen many group conferences before and I have seen them go well and I have seen them be a total disaster. In some cases the students all were well behaved, spoke only when asked, and got the work done. In other instances however, I have seen group conferences turn into a disaster. The students would be rolling around, talking to one another not paying attention, interrupting one another, and wasting time. This caused none of the work to get done. How do you get a group conference to go successfully? Is there a certain environment that helps the students become more focused? For example is having them sit at a table together better then having them sit on the floor in front of you as the teacher? I agree with the chapter that it is still very important to record the teaching point on each of their conference sheets because with a group conference you may not get everything done that you thought you would.
Assessing a students writing, as discussed in chapter 12, seems like something that I, as a teacher, will have to make sure I am doing fairly and have a proper rubric for all students to follow. When creating a writing assignment for students I want to be sure I have a fully developed rubric to use when grading the assignment before I even assign it. It is important to have specific requirements in each section of the rubric so each students' paper will be graded fairly. What does one do however, if the rubric created for an assignment ends up being too tough and the majority of the students papers fall into the "unacceptable" category? What if that continually happens and, as a teacher, I feel students should be able to do the things I am asking of them but their performance continually says otherwise? I have felt many times that grades I have received were unfair and often just saw numbers next to my strengths and weaknesses, never an explanation. As a teacher I want to be sure I don't just check the categories on my rubric but if a student is lacking in a skill be sure to make note of exactly what they are missing and try to help them improve on that skill for later.

Chapters 7-9

We read three chapters this week, chapters 7, 8, and 9. Chapters 8 and 9 were very similar because they both discussed important things to cover when conducting one on one conferences with students. Chapter 8 focused mainly on researching and addressing each students strengths in writing before trying to teach them how to correct all the things they are doing wrong. I think this is very important. In every class I have had concerning addressing students and even parents has emphasized the importance of pointing on the strengths before pointing out the weaknesses. One question that came to mind as I was reading however was, how can you be sure to praise the student's strengths but at the same time not overly praise them causing them to think that they have mastered that skill and can stop trying to better it? I also found the section of this chapter interesting that talked about specific writing craft skills that we develop over time just by reading others writing. I have noticed that when I read a book and then have to do a writing assignment that my writing style will change slightly and resemble more the authors style whom I had just read.
Chapter 9 dealt with the next step in a conference which is picking the topic you want to work on with the student first and foremost. The question that was addressed a lot in this chapter and I wondered about as well was, which is more important to focus on, problems with craft of problems with mechanics? The author talked a lot about how it is important to combine the two but I still do not understand how to do this. When reading a students writing it is very easy to pick out all the things that are wrong with it but how do we find the time to fix all of these problem areas without just telling the students how to do it?
Chapter 7 was very insightful and in a way kind of addressed a lot of my concerns from chapter 9. It is important not to just tell a student what they are doing wrong and fix it for them as chapter 7 states "Telling is not teaching." This is such an important concept because it is crucial for students to do things for themselves in order to learn. When I was growing up I had a horrible attention span and could not pay attention at all when the teacher was just lecturing and having us listen quietly without any interaction. I know as teachers it will be hard for us not to just stand up in front of the class and talk and assume all the students are paying attention and understanding because the information seems so simple to us but the fact of the matter is it is brand new information to the students and many of them wont be retaining much of what we are telling them. I learned the best and retained the most information as a child when the teacher would tell us we were going to practice the skill we were learning individually after the lesson or talk about it in groups. I was so worried about not knowing what was going on that I forced myself to try and understand what we were learning.

Chapters 4 and 5

Chapter four talked a lot about expanding a child's writing and encouraging him or her to add more details to his or her writing. It brought up the idea of using the 5 senses again. I really liked the idea about when you are writing to think about not only what you saw but what you heard and even, if it made an impression, write about what you tasted, felt, or smelt. I think it is very important to get children to think about details in their writing because in the long run it will really help them become better writers.
A lot of the things in this chapter are things I wish I would have thought about more as I was growing up and learning how to write. I had never thought about thoughts and feelings and how you can affiliate your thoughts with your emotions. Writing is such a powerful way to express your emotions and I hope someday I can emphasize that to my students. Also, using dialogue is a great way to add detail to your writing so you are not just using descriptors. My favorite line I read from this chapter was, "readers are supposed to fill in some information with their own visualizing; we wouldn't want every single thing described for us. But I find that most students are still working on offering the reader enough details to create a healthy balance." I feel this is very true because we read to create an image in our heads and we cannot create these images without some detail but we, as the reader, still want to imagine some things on our own.
Chapter five was all about teaching children the craft of punctuation. I am very worried about finding a good way to teach this to my students because grammar and punctuation are what I had the most trouble learning while I was growing up. I am still not the best with it but as a child I really struggled trying to understand all the punctuation rules. Learning this stuff is so important because it will keep coming up all throughout one's life. I still have to edit all of my papers and make sure that my punctuation and grammar is correct. This is such an important thing to learn to gain respect from others because using proper English will get you much further in life.

Coffee Shop Experience

Today I met my group at the Starbucks in the IMU to do our project. My part involved drawing the map of the shop and observing how it was set up. I had never noticed before how strangely this coffee shop at our schools union is set up. There are two large counters and then a tiny area that looks like most other coffee shops for people to sit with colorful couches. Then there is another much larger area for seating but it looks much more uncomfortable. It is made up with many wooden tables that seat 2-4 people. I would much prefer to sit in the section with the couches but since this area only seats about 6 people and this is a very popular area for students to spend their time it is very difficult to find an available spot on the couch. I think the shop is set up this way so they can include the couches to give the union a coffee shop feel, but also have a larger section so people can sit at tables and get work done but still be close to the shop so they can get refills of their beverages when needed. Most people in the shop were students and professors. The first clue of this is the fact the shop is in the Student Union. It was also very easy for you to tell this because most people there had some kind of book, notebook, or papers in front of them. Even though I don't drink coffee or go to coffee shops to do my work I have many friends that spend much of their time in the Union Starbucks working on homework and studying. I have also had many group meetings there to discuss group projects. It was also kind of fun to listen in on other people's conversations and then think about your own conversations you would be having with your friends if you were to met at a coffee shop. It is funny how much time people can spend talking about something so minor such as discussing what ingredients you prefer in your latte. I know many people there were very stressed because it is the second week of school and you could see from the looks on many peoples faces, and the many books and papers in front of them, that they were trying to get everything organized and figure out their first assignments and projects. I know they were feeling this stress because that is the stress I always feel the first and second weeks of school. It is really hard to get adjusted to a new semester and remember everything that you are going to have due and to be sure you get it done on time.

Crafting Writers Chapters 1-3 and 6

The author of this text has a very unique way of addressing writing in elementary classes. I really enjoyed how she tied into the chapters her personal stories of figuring out recipes at restaurants and learning how to swim. At first these stories seemed irrelevant but as I continued reading I was able to understand how these stories tied into what I am supposed to be learning. One of my favorite parts from these three chapters was the quote from Don Fry about voice: "Voice is the sum of all the strategies used by the author to create the illusion that the writer is speaking directly to the reader from the page." I had never really understood what a writers voice really means but this section helped make it clear to me that each writer has his or her own unique style that would be very difficult to mimic.
Chapter 2 had some very good ideas on how to get a child to write with more detail and it introduced how to look for specific craft in writing. I still find specific craft kind of confusing but what I think it means is using something in writing that has specific instructions on how to use it, such as a simile. Chapter 3 really made me think about how you include the 5 senses in writing and how important it is to do that to make your writing truly descriptive. I think everyone could improve their writing just by thinking about how all 5 senses would be used in what they are writing about. I had also never thought about how the many variations of particular words came about. There are so many different ways to say the word "said" but they all give off a slightly different meaning. Chapter 6 was different from chapters 2 and 3, it focused more on incorporating writing with earlier elementary grades. I really liked the section on art and how essential it is for a student who is learning how to write. Writing and drawing are both ways to express emotion and you can add more detail to both art forms to make them more effective. All in all these chapters did a good job at keeping my attention and I feel as if I learned some very valuable things from them.

The Talkback Project

I found the writing with blogs and the Talkback project to be very intriguing. Pre-teens and Teenagers are all about expressing their emotions and feelings on their personal blog sites everyday and intigrating this blogging into school work seems like it would make sense in helping students to become more excited about their school work. The project was set up so students would read a novel and then blog their responses to the novel on a Talkback Project blog so the teachers were able to respond to these blogs with their own ideas and opinions. One part of this article even mentioned a parent who was overseas in Iraq getting involved in his students work by participating in the readings and blogging as well. I think this is a very good idea to get all sorts of parents involved in their students work because they can access this blog site from work or home and it would not be too time consuming. I understand the safety issue also presented in this article. Pseudonyms are used but students can mess up and mention things about where they live. If this project is to be successful I think it is important to emphasize to students how crucial it is to be safe on the internet and not give out any personal information. Students will probably be blogging on their own anyways so this lesson could be benneficial for their safety at home as well. We are living in a technological society and students these days are used to expressing themselves online so if teachers can find a way to intigrate this into the classroom most students should respond to it well.