Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Entry #1

While reflecting on my prior experiences teaching writing there is a lot that comes to the surface. Teaching writing to me is a topic that comes naturally when truly it is much more involved.  My only real experience with teaching writing was during my student teaching in a kindergarten classroom.  Currently I am teacher's assistant in a pre kindergarten classroom in which writing takes a whole new dimension.  The area in which I am most comfortable with the writing process is what I learned throughout my student teaching experience. 

Students were usually given a prompt to help them begin their writing.  This was modeled and talked about prior to the students beginning their writing.  Eventually we came to a place where students were able to use a map with a bunch of brainstormed ideas to help them formulate ideas of which they would like to write about that particular day.  Students would use a blank sheet of paper to begin their writing.  The students would also get their writing checklist out at the end of their writing to go back through and check back on what they had written.  This checklist included questions such as did you use capital letters in appropriate places, did you remember punctuation?  Once a student was confident that their writing was done being edited they would write their name on a white board and wait to conference with a teacher.  When a student was done conferencing with a teacher they would be able to publish their writing.  On Friday's we would have celebration readers where the students would be able to come up to the authors chair and read their finished learning to the class.  Occasionally students would be able to go and sit in the authors chair in the first grade classroom next door and share their accomplishment with a new class!  This was familiar with what Tompkins talked about in chapter one during discussing the writing process.

I do believe that attempting to teach writing workshop poses some challenges when used in connection with technology.  Mainly I see that writing is only because used in the world of technology for word processing.  This possess issues because writing could be delved into much deeper when discovering new writing ideas.  Such writing projects that could be used along side of technology is having students create a virtual field trip.  Even with a project like this the students would still have to look at all of the steps of the writing process and evaluate their writing.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Jaci,
    Your blog is quite inviting. Once you get more comfortable with the features of this design, feel free to add a gadget or two as well as exploring different font types.

    In response to your reflections, I am so glad you feel you have had some positive experiences with teaching writing. One suggestion I will make is to be sure to remain consistent with your "I-voice." Reading the second paragraph, I wasn't sure if these were *your plans/procedures* as the teacher or if these were your cooperating teachers plans. In these entries, you will want to focus primarily on what you did and what you will do again (or do differently).

    Let me know if you have any other questions about this assignment. I look forward to reading your next entry

    ReplyDelete