Entry #10 - Bless, Address of Press

When reviewing the blogs of peers, I found a sentence in Post #9 by J.Kerouac that stopped me in my tracks. The quote read...

"The use of this expository reading and writing provides limitless possibilities for the ways students can access new information and learn content. In my current classroom, we’ve combined our science and writing unit"

The first sentence in the above quote is something I am recently becoming familiar with. During my undergrad and graduate work I have learned the benefits of expository text and how to use it appropriately, but I have never been given specific examples of how to provide opportunities for student growth through expository text. It is limiting to think that I have settled in my own room using mainly fictional text simply because it is what I am most comfortable with AS WELL AS what my students are most comfortable with. But isn't my job to balance those students on the edge of their very own comfort zone?

Kerouac proved she is doing just that by going on to state that she has combined science and writing units in her own classroom. Five years ago I would've looked at her like she had 3 heads. Although my eyes widened initially, after thinking about this concept, I realized all of the benefits that come from it.

Right now I am struggling with science in general, specifically, with how to add it into my classroom across other subject matter rather than in isolation. Pairing it with writing, or making writing a large part of science, would cause for a smoother transition as well as help to make connections across the curriculum. I also love the idea that using expository text to introduce topics in science give students specific, concrete examples of what certain types of expository text look like.  “Through instruction and reading and writing experiences, children grow in their ability to differentiate among genres” (Tompkins, 2012, p. 202). Using writing in science curriculum is the perfect opportunity to help students grow in their ability to identify specific genres.

Teaching across the curriculum is a concept I learned early on in my education at Nazareth, however it is one that really causes the teacher to stop and think. In order to appropriately teach like this, I must first understand how topics relate, compare, overlap, and how I can think about them in a variety of ways. I must understand this before I ask any child to understand and make those connections as well. Kerouac's post was a great example of how as educators, we can take concepts that to most do not seem to relate on the outside, and make connections between them to deepen our understandings of them both!

Entry #7 - Open Entry

While working with my group on the "Teaching the Genre" project, I have been reflecting about my use of persuasive text in my own classroom. Prior to this project, persuasive writing and persuasive text was the genre I knew the least about, and in turn made me the most intimidated. Prior to research, I felt that persuasive text should be used with older children, and was primarily only a part of middle and high school curriculum. Without the research findings, I felt that the art of persuasion was too advanced of a task for younger students, without realizing that persuasive writing is all around me.

The article I read for our presentation discussed persuasive writing in children, adolescents, and adults, and the changes in writing as students aged. I learned that I was correct when thinking that persuasive writing is a challenging form of communication, and not a natural form of writing or speaking. Students and adults alike must understand the problem, form an opinion based on that understanding, and most importantly understand the opposing argument. Looking back, I think that is why I felt persuasion was used for older students. With maturity comes less egocentrism which helps students understand others' views. However, I learned that there are many ways to incorporate

Nippold, Ward-Lonergan, and Fanning would agree with Tompkins about many things. They agree that persuasion is used everyday regardless of age or where one lives. Even young children use verbal persuasion to prove to their parents they should be able to stay up later. In fact, when asked to generate an example of persuasion for our presentation I was thinking to myself "How in the world am I going to find an example!". I learned quickly that I have a ton! Even last month I created a persuasive PowerPoint presentation to persuade my fiance to wear grey tuxes at our wedding :) Nippold, Ward-Lonergan, and Fanning would also agree with Tompkins that students abilities to use persuasive text develop slower than any other genre. Because young children are egocentric, and have a hard time understanding other points of view, it is hard for them to understand  topic, choose a side, prove the argument, and understand the counter argument. Another agreement would be that a teacher must scaffold the use of persuasive writing in their classrooms. Prior to researching for this project, I had NO idea how I could even attempt to use persuasive writing in my own Kindergarten classroom. I knew my students could not grasp arguments and counter arguments, and understand we need examples to prove what we believe. I was anxious to even introduce it in my room because of this, and I did not want to set my students up for failure. I now understand how naive I was as an educator. My 5 year old students persuade on a daily basis. They persuade me to have more play time, to go outside for 5 more minutes, to be able to play a game with friends, to skip math all together, and many more. This is natural to them. I've learned in the past few weeks that I can use this background knowledge of natural persuasion to introduce the genre in my room.

Persuasive writing is an important skill to master since it is used in everyday text. It helps to empower individuals to make decisions at work and in society on a daily basis.Whether you are writing a cover letter for a resume, talking to a friend or family member, selling a product, or discussing which cake tastes better, persuasion is all around us!

Entry #6 - Open Entry

The way in which a teacher assesses student writing can either aid in the development of writing confidence or hinder that confidence development in students. As a college student, it has been difficult for me to get papers and projects back, with red ink on every page. I know over the past 4 years I have become a stronger writer, however I have lost much confidence in the task. Tompkins (2012) helped me to realize that there are many modes of assessing writing, and formal assessment of the final product is only one of them. 

Since my students are so young, and since I am teaching in a Day Care facility, I find ‘formal grading’ to be intimidating for me. I worry that since students are with me half day and with their school district kindergarten teacher the other half of the day, that parents expect our half day to be relaxing, unstructured, playtime. Since it does not meet those expectations, I worry about grading my students as a teacher would typically. Although I have these anticipations, I also know I need some sort of assessment for myself as an educator to know where my students started, what they have learned, and where we need to go next. Therefore, I have been using many informal modes of assessment to help me gain the information I need, without the ‘typical’ report card number grades.

Informal monitoring of writing can play a large role in younger students writing tasks. Through observing alone, I gain a better sense of what my students are learning and how exactly they are growing. Although this assessment may be subjective, as long as the teacher creates careful, thoughtful, detailed notes of observations it is extremely meaningful. Along with observing, I often find myself informally conferencing with my students. Oftentimes, this is an on-the-spot conference, that was not planned and students did not prepare for. Through these conferences I am able to informally visit each student at their own desk and see how their writing is progressing. There is no intimidation factor with this mode of conferencing since I spend a short time with each student, yet I still gain a better understanding of what that child is working on and what they may need facilitated.  

I also find myself gathering and reviewing writing samples. Even though we have not begun writing stories, over the past 5 weeks of school I have been able to gather written sentences, pictures with descriptions, and handwriting my students have been working on. Gathering all of these works in progress is a way for me to informally monitor student work, as well as for students to monitor their own work and successes!

When reading Tompkin’s (2012) work this week, I was trying to gather modes of assessment that would work for me in my classroom. The use of checklists stood out to me. I am currently not using them in my room, yet I think they would benefit both my students as well as me. The use of a checklist could help students understand exactly what I am looking for in their writing task, focus both student and teacher attention during the writing and assessing processes, and help students gain a better understanding of a certain piece of writing. For example, this past week my students were studying days of the week, and completed a writing task for me. The task included writing a sentence such as “On Wednesdays, I go to swimming practice”. Students were asked to think of a day of the week they have something important to them, and write a sentence and illustrate their sentence. Instead of me assessing these tasks, I could have easily used as checklist to have students assess their own work. The checklist would include pictures versus phrases to be checked off. Later in the year, or even within the next few months, I may even be able to use short words to describe the task to be checked off like the following:

O   Name
O   Capitol letter starting sentence
O   Punctuation
O   Best writing
O   Colored picture

Using this mode of assessment, students can learn to hold themselves accountable for their own work, and parents can see exactly what was expected and whether or not their child met those expectations.

There are many modes of assessment to be used in the classroom. The assessment used is strictly dependent on the task the students have been given. This week I have thought a ton about assessment I have been using, continue to use, and how I can change it to meet the needs of my students and be more purposeful.

Entry #2 - Hicks' Elements

When reading about the three elements of the framework Hicks (2009) describes in Chapter 7, I reflected upon a lot of things I would like to change about my current classroom and school. The students I am currently working with are Kindergartners, ranging from 4 to 5 years old. I am working in a private daycare setting, teaching Kindergarten to students in the morning, and in the afternoon, based on their school district schedule. I would view my students as capable of digital writing in some aspects, but not yet having the chance to pursue the task digitally. In some aspects of the digital world, I find they are more advanced then me! Many of my students have iPods, iPads, tablets, cell phones, etc at home that they are able to manipulate effortlessly and do so on a daily basis.

Since my students are so young, they are not yet involved with social media websites, blogs, or wikis, but they are familiar with writing digitally, and games or applications played digitally. Because of this, they are very capable of collaborating, drafting, and publishing digital writing pieces with teacher scaffolding. There are many things limiting my students from being able to experiment with these writing tasks, which consists of the space I am given both in my classroom and in the school building itself.

The building I work in is a day care center, with 15+ classrooms starting at the infant age group going up to my Kindergarten classroom. We also provide care for school age students in the morning and afternoon, however, this is not in a classroom setting but rather a day care or camp environment. My classroom has one ‘teacher’ computer with limited resources, and no computers set up for children. Furthermore, there is no setting for student sized desks and computers to allow my students to manipulate digital spaces freely. I have used my computer before in conjunction with specific topics or subjects to aid in student understanding in the room, but it is not easily manipulated by students because of the size and position of the desk and computer itself. Ideally, without budget, resources, and building space in mind, I would incorporate a ‘classroom’ of computers for students of all ages. The desks would be lower to the ground, with 4-6 year old sized chairs, for students to sit comfortably and use for longer periods of time. I would incorporate collaborative desks on the side of the classroom for students to reflect and discuss what they are working on, as well as for teacher communication and small group work.  When rereading this paragraph, I am thinking how silly it seems for my request for a computer lab for 5 year olds, but I have experienced their capability for learning electronically and when lessons are tailored of scaffolded for them, they would benefit tremendously from these changes. So no, I am not saying my classroom of 5 year olds is going to hop on a computer and type me an essay, but yes they can draft rhyming words or blends containing –op on a word processor or use programs such as a-z learning to read leveled text books.

“As noted throughout this book and simply summarized here, digital writing changes the contexts and purposes for writing” in the classroom (Hicks, 2009, p. 130). Reflecting on Chapter 7, specifically the ‘subject’ section of the chapter, I was able to construct many elaborate (maybe not realistic) ways in which my students can engage in digital writing in the classroom.  Realistically, I would love for videos, audio, and images to reinforce topics or subjects we are discussing in class. For example, last week I introduced rhyming words to my students. We used that as a jump off point to discuss word families and blends. While trying to solidify the concept of rhyming, my students and I brainstormed as large list of words on chart paper that rhymed with the given word I drafted. Wanting to push this concept to a new level, I set up rhyming stations throughout the classroom for students to experience rhyming in different contexts. I printed off rhyming texts from a-z learning, I created rhyming puzzles, and I used Reggie the Rhyming Rhino from the scholastic learning website. This rhino changed my classroom as a whole. A week later I still have students wanting him back J As a summary of the website, students are able to choose what environment they want to rhyme in (at home, at the grocery store, at the zoo, etc) and when they are given a word within that context, they must look at the 3 options given (in picture and word form) to produce a rhyme to the word given. This element of student choice was a huge motivator! So although my students were not opening Google Docs to draft a research paper with colleagues, they truly were collaborating with the program to read and write rhyming words digitally. Although this was only one subject and only a small part of my curriculum, I hope to find new digital programs that allow my students to collaborate, draft, and create digital work throughout the school day.

Because my students are so young, and still learning how to print letters, and letter sound correspondence, I think a digital writing workshop in my classroom will reflect the scenario I used above. I need to create and develop other means of digital writing in a more comfortable, collaborative setting. My students need a place of their own to draft and work, and more diverse programs to work with. My goal for this school year is to incorporate one digital aspect a week in my lesson plans. Throwing that number out seems like an easy goal, but a lot of planning and preparation needs to go into it since my room and environment is not set up for enabling this type of learning. Next week, I am introducing 2 more blends during reading, as well as introducing a plant study in science. My goal is to find or create a program that allows my students to work digitally in one of those units, and enable all students to use it!

Just incase any blog readers want to Visit Reggie!