Writing Essentials part 2

Routman's chapter four, "Raise Your Expectations" was and enjoyable read. It made me think and rethink about how I work in the classroom with students. On page 56, Routman writes, "I never give up on a child; it is never okay for a student not to write or not participate- no matter what the child's background. It is also not okay to rely on scripted, one-size-fits-all programs in our poorest schools while more affluent ones can choose the best materials and strategies to teach their students." In my dyad I observed my master teacher working with an uncooperative student. The assignment was to write about their ideal monster, but since the teacher knows his students pretty well he knew that the real problem was that she hated to write. She refused to write and sat down in the corner. My master teacher went over there after he let her calm down and asked what the problem was. He listened and advised her write about something else such as what she was going to be for Halloween or her favorite hero and she liked that idea better. He did not want her to give up on working on an assignment therefore picked a different topic for her to write about. I asked him why he let her do that and not just let her give in. He informed me that if he gave in and let her slide than he would have felt that he had given up on her. "I just wanted her to write, even if it was not about the same topic that everyone else was working on." I did also like to discuss about the optimal learning model however I did have a hard time understanding what it was therefore I waited to write this portion of my blog after class. From what I got from group discussion was that it was similar to direct instruction, where the teacher talks about the lesson, teacher demonstrates, has students work with the teacher, than the teacher lets them work independently. For example learning to write numbers. The teacher tells the students that they will learn writing numbers, teacher demonstrates how to write the number "1" on the board, students copy, then the students work independently on the writing the next with the numbers. I hope I understood that right.

Writing Essentials

Writing has never been one of my fortes but I have to say that I wish that I had this list when I was younger or wished that my teachers would emphasize oh each writing essential, especially with a couple of them. I think that all teachers should have this check list somewhere in their classroom because all these points are important and it’s nice to have this resource to look as a refresher on all the main ideas of writing. I was excited to read this list as it brought me back to my childhood and also made me think about how I write. In elementary school I remember how my teachers would emphasize that five paragraph paper, starting with the introduction, three bodies, and the conclusion where the thesis was the last sentence of the introduction and the first in the conclusion. Another activity that I learned when I was younger that I still used today is the brain storming chart using a circle map. The main topic is in the middle branching out the minor details that I would want to write about.

One essential that I see is powerful is the embrace of language. Playing with words is not only fun to do and read, but encourages the reader to experience other types of writings which will hopefully will have the student explore other different types of genres. For example reading poetry could lead to reading Shakespeare and learning how he wrote and use their creative minds to create their own style.

Another essential that I also liked was the authentic voice. Yes it is important to have a piece of writing understandable, clear, and powerful, but sometimes in doing so the writer could get bored. When I write, I want the reader to know my voice and have it sound like me and not be dull because I associate dull with boring.

The only one that I see as somewhat problematic is, “read widely and deeply – and with a writer’s perspective.” Some students simply don’t enjoy reading while others don’t read as well as others for example ELL students. I’m not saying that all ELL students will have a difficult time adjusting to different genres but a story that uses a lot of figurative language, that they may not get it. But as teachers we can expose them to these different types of writings, however not everyone will see this point as effective.

The Wonderful World of Phonics

Fox Chapter 1:
Last Friday I was at my main placement where I had a chance to closely observe first graders writing and drawing for an alphabet book they are making for their class. While they were writing many of them did not know how to spell certain words such as long, queen, and butterfly. Many of them immediately asked for either my help or my master teacher but we had encouraged to try their best and not to worry about the spelling for now. Many of the students used the synthetic approach or "sounding out" each letter. For example for the word long, the student had a hard time trying to figure out the “ng” sound but were able to tell by just sounding it out that it started with an l followed by an o. She is a wiz kid so she did figure out that –ing make the “-ing” sound that possibly the spelling was “loing.” Another student was trying to figure out the word thin. He knew that it ended with the letter –in as he figured that it rhymed with fin and tin but was not sure about the “th” sound. Due to the analogy-based instruction he was about to recognize that the word was in the –in family and just needed to come up with the first part which he had problems with.

During my September Experience I had the opportunity to see my master teacher take the analytic approach where the students already knew the words but had to break them into parts. She would sit with group of five students and would start of with simple sight words that they should have known such as rat, chat, and ended in the week with story words such as happy or play a game before each reading block and practice phonics on the students’ names.

My master teacher has taught the analytic way, encourages the synthetic approach, and began the school year with teaching word families and moving onto a new family every three days or so, or when she feels that the students are ready. Depending on the student, and if they are writing or reading, some use the analogy-based method where they recognize the word family and work off of that, where many of them are still using the explicit method.

Fox Chapter 2:
This coming Friday I will be visiting my main placement to read to class "Good Night Owl" by Pat Hutchins. I had chosen this book to read with the help of my master teacher as the class is learning about nocturnal animals in science class. Attached is a video of the book being read. Although I have not read this book in front of the class yet, after listening to the reader from the Youtube video I conclude that with the numerous amount of onomatopeias, will help promote sound awareness. Children do like make up words but I have also noticed that they like animals sounds as well. As for this story, I could use the "Roll Call" or "Secret Name" activity when chosing children to answer the questions, for example "If your secret name is Dim (Jim) please answer the following question. Although it might not be a complement to the book, it could be an interesting way of calling their names.



Fox Chapter 3:
After reading chapter 3 I can conclude that "invented spelling" helps young readers not only reading but with expressing who they are. Last week was teacher parent conference and one of the parents asked my master teacher "what should I do when my daughter asks me how to spell a word? Should I tell her to sound it out or should I spell it for her?" My master teacher stated that it was important for her students to sound it out as that is what we do in the classroom. Sometimes it takes trial and error for a student to recognize if they are spelling a word or saying a workd incorrectly. It also helps students focus on the content of what they are writing as opposed to stressing on the if they are spelling a word right.

Literacy journal response for Class 2

Emergent Literacy: New Perspectives

I have a to admit after reading this article I couldn't feel but overwhelmed as I didn't realize how much thought and effort went into reading, at the same time excited as I had just witnessed half of the examples described in the article, in my main placement. Of course I always knew that reading was important that students should start reading as early childhood, but there was one sentence that struck me. "Rather than teaching reading and writing in an early childhood program, our focus should be on teaching children to read and write." (page 6 & 7) This statement reminded me of a time in my September Experience, as I witnessed a teacher become easily upset and started putting blame on at the child's early education teacher and the student’s parents. After watching the other teacher create a scene, my teacher pulled me over and stated to never put blame on anyone and to just teach, don’t think about their skills coming in but to focus what you want them to accomplish when they leave in June.

Another concept that I enjoyed in this article was on advice how a classroom should be set up for independent reading. My master teacher has nailed all four topics as her main focal point is the library books in the back next to the open-faced book shelves with all different types of books. During reading group she breaks down the students into small groups of 5, where all students are reading the same story but in different ways. In one group she has the students read to her, one by one. In the other she has either chosen vocab words or word families that the students must practice writing on white boards. In another section she has students drawing an activity that has to deal with the reading and writing down what they are doing. And in the last station, students are listening to the story on tape.

And the last topic I would like to discuss is the idea behind “The Morning Message” where a message is written on the board, recited by the teacher, and then repeated by both the teacher and the students. I didn’t realize why my teacher did that until now. I did honestly assume that it was either filler time or another way of teaching calendar. Either way I did not put in much thought on how important that these little sentences. Now I know.

Council on Interracial Books:

Growing up I remember a book that was read aloud to my class that we all just loved. It was first introduced to me when a substitute teacher, Ms. Flynn, and because we always enjoyed this book and she seemed to be sub until grade 6 we would be beg her to read it every time we saw her. That book is called Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel. We loved that book because she made reading aloud fun. I’ll never forget the way that she would pronounced his name and how she used her voice and facial expressions when something exciting was going to happen. And I remember the moral of the story was, Chinese people do not have long names because for what happened to Tikki Tikki Tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo falling down the well, and how his brother Chang had wasted so much time on saying his name that the villagers could have gotten to his brother in quicker amount of time if Tikki Tikki Tembo had a shorter name.

It wasn’t until college and learning about Asian culture that now I find this book to be stereotypical as it reinforces that Chinese people use random syllables as names and how funny each one sounds. Although I did enjoy that book, I am still torn if it is a book that I will read to my class. Hopefully I’ll have made a decision by the end of this quarter.