MGRP Chap 5 & 7; Seedfolks chapter; Van Sluys chapter

MGRP Chapter 5 & 7:
A single character or multiple characters are good topics for students to write about, especially a quick write. Students can work on "showing" not just telling a physical description of characters or can learn to write from different perspectives. I think students will learn to enjoy writing more if it is emphasized that he or she can add his or her own personal touch to it. Being able to express individuality in pieces of writing allows students to feel more proud ownership of it. Should writing assignments be more open for students to add personality or should they be given exactly what needs to be included in their writing assignment? (such as a topic sentence with 3 supporting sentences after it)

Seedfolks Chapter (Virgil):
Virgil just finished the 5th grade, but would have to do hard work in the summer as well. He was helping his father build a garden of lettuce to hopefully make money. Virgil hated doing it and was upset that bad things kept occurring, such as bugs eating the lettuce and eventually watching the lettuce die. He is somewhat mature because even though he was mad at his father for having them plant the lettuce in the summer time instead of in spring of fall, Virgil also felt sorry for his father. He found a locket when they were tilling the land for the garden and the one quote in the chapter comes at the end when Virgil opens up the locket and whispers, "Save our lettuce," to the girl inside it. Did I miss any important quotes by Virgil throughout the rest of the book?

Van Sluys:
The main thing I took away from this chapter was to always plan correctly when doing invitations so that time is not an issue. It is possible that students will dig deeper in the invitation and get more out of it through further exploration or discussion and the teacher should not cut them off.

Van Sluys invitations article

I do not see any major difference between an invitation and center. If you are providing a specific thing for students to have to do..it seems just like a center to me. Maybe they are just more open ended instead of having a specific product that is supposed to be created? The book that this article came from has tons of invitation ideas, so it is a good resource for our own classrooms someday if needing ideas sometime.

MGRP Chap 4

I have had positive and negative experiences with poetry in the classroom as a student. In 4th grade, we did a huge poetry. We did so many different types of poems and the teacher had them made into a little book. We had our parents come in for an open house type deal to read them all. I can remember everyone being exciting for poetry writing time. I cannot remember exactly HOW he had went about making us so enthused about it, but he definitely did something right. Then in high school A.P. English, the teacher had us analyze poetry allllll the time by just putting a poem on the overhead and going line by line to what we thought it meant. It got extremely old and uninteresting.

I do plan on using poetry as part of my own MGRP, although am unsure exactly what type of poem I want to use yet. This chapter gave some great ideas.

MGRP Chap. 1-3, 6

Well...I know I definitely did not have the most positive attitude towards doing this research paper. I believe it is mostly due to negative experiences with research papers throughout the school years, with tons of note cards and taking so much time and such. Even writing this paper, I still did not grasp what the heck a multigenre research actually meant. I obviously should have began reading this book before starting...but that's ok. Seeing an example of a completed paper really helped me understand. I didn't enjoy the research aspect-maybe I should have thought longer about a topic I was more passionate to find information about. However, I do look forward to the different genres part of the paper. It allows a lot more freedom and isn't "traditional" research paper work I feel like.

Additionally, I liked that chapter 2 had a week by week schedule idea of how to go about such a project with a classroom. I think students would never feel overwhelmed with how it is set up.

Are multigenre research papers appropriate at any grade level?

Crafting Writer's Chapter 10-12; Dilemmas & Discourses

The information provided in the text in regards to how to set up, run, and successfully complete a conference is great. I am not quite sure I understand the "teaching a next step" part though. It seemed like the "teaching a strength" and "teaching a next step" were the same thing in some of the tables. Actually, the the example where it writes out the teacher's voice and the student's voice helps make it more clear. Are documented conferences required as a teacher? or just encouraged for the benefit of the student?

My biggest concern is not being able to have enough time to do individual conferences all the time, so I liked reading about the concept of group conferring. It seems like this would be similar to doing a mini lesson with the whole class.

The two ideas I loved from Hale is having students decorate their notebooks as well as having a special spot students can go to during writing time. I just think students can associate writing as a positive experience by doing little things like this.

As far as assessment goes, are rubrics included sometimes in textbooks being used or does the teacher make-up a rubric for everything?

Crafting Writer's Chap 7-9, Appendix F

While doing my field experience on Monday, I was giving a 2nd grade student an assessment. It required me to tell the student to "write down as many words as you know," and I was to stop him after it had been 3 minutes. Although he knew words, it was hard for him to just do it on the spot like that without being given some kind of prompt. I eventually had to be like "do you know how to spell any types of animals, colors, etc..." Chapter 7 mentions this same concept with writing. It can't usually just happen on its own if telling a child to write. The child will have to know something about actually writing. I like that the idea of mini lessons were also introduced...that helped answer some questions I had after reading some previous chapters in this book.

Additionally, I liked reading the story about Jonathon in Chapter 8. I know as a future teacher I will make it a point to point out the strengths in the children's writing. I just feel like if teachers at the primary level are constantly wanting to make corrections to the students writings, that the kids will dislike writing and shy away from it more.

I think this book is a great resource to hold on to when I have my own classroom.

Crafting Writers Chap. 4 & 5

Personal experience has shown me that having a love for reading, or reading for enjoyment not just for school, improves writing. My sister is 8 years older than me and has loved reading since she began school. She began to love writing just as much and always said "it came easy to her." She actually went on to become a journalism major in college and writes for a living now, as well as having an entire library room in her house.

Then there is me.

I never read outside of school and still do not now. Writing is still something I 100% dread doing as well.

I do not feel like it necessarily affects how well one does in assessments and grades in school though.

All the specific crafts listed in the reading are great dealing with adding detail and punctuation. My only concern I had when reading it is when and how do you introduce these crafts in class? Is it best to only work with one or two crafts at a time or to let the students see many of them at once?