Blog 12: Growth through the semester

This class has made me think about my experiences in elementary school a lot over the semester. It has made me think about not only how I was taught to write but what we would write. After reading Tompkins and Hicks, it amazes me the experiences or lack of I should say, that I had. I remember that we would do a lot of writing as our end of unit project to show what we have learned however every writing piece would either fall into the narrative genre or the descriptive genre. I was taught about some of the other genres however I never had the chance to write in them.

A poster with some of the genres written on it

Throughout Tompkins book, she mentions multiple different writing genres. She goes on to explain how each genre can be taught and used within elementary classrooms. When I was asked in the beginning of this class what genres I thought I knew pretty well, I immediately wrote down narrative and descriptive because that was all I knew. Even though I knew about the persuasive genre, poetry genre, nonfiction genre, and bibliography genres; I wouldn’t say that I knew them well enough to present on them.  I think that there is a strong focus in schools to teach the narrative genre to students. I felt like while my teachers did teach the other genres, I didn't really learn anything about them because the unit was so fast.

I was assigned the nonfiction genre to do a presentation on as an expert which was very beneficial as it helped me to get a deeper understanding of the genre. At first I thought the nonfiction genre was all about information and being able to recall certain information from the story. The only time that I would read nonfiction was when I needed to do research for a project in school. I was never interested in reading a nonfiction book for fun, but I think it had to do with I never really knew how to read the genre. Through my research, I learned that there are specific text features within the genre that when you take the time to look at them, they will help you to understand the book that you are reading.

One genre that Tompkins talks about that surprised me was the letter genre. I didn’t even know that letter writing was a genre. I thought that letter writing was a type of writing activity that falls in the narrative/persuasive genre.  Even reading the chapter on it, I was surprised to learn that letters can be broken down into three type; friendly letter, business letter and simulated letters (Tompkins, 2019). Even though I feel like letter writing is straight forward I would say that it is still a genre that intimidates me. I just don’t know all the aspects that go into to it. I am excited to hear Michelle’s presentation on it and see how I can use it in my classroom.

Along with talking about the genres in class, we spent a lot of time talking about different aspects of digital media and how one can ‘digitally enhance’ (Hicks, 2013) their writing. I am terrible with technology and so everything was brand new to me however now that I know what to do, I actually find some of the aspects quite simple to use. I learned how to create digital web texts by including pictures and hyperlinks to engage the reader as they are reading. At first I didn’t know how to create a hyperlink within the text but now I do it every blog post. The aspects that still intimidates are creating both video and audio texts. I feel like I don’t know that much about the software’s that would be needed to put a clip together. I would love to learn all the different steps that it takes to create video and audio texts because those are great activities to have my students do in the classroom.

After reading both Tompkins and Hicks, I now know what I teach in my classroom when it comes to writing. I have to make sure that I am giving my students the knowledge that they need in order to and time to write in every genre.  Tompkins says “Students need to experiment with a wide variety of genres and explore the purposes and formats of each. Through reading and writing, students develop a strong sense of these forms and how they’re structured” (Tompkins, 2019, pg. 7).  Since we are in such a digital world, students need to be able to interact with technology while they are writing. The students love when they can write in a different form and incorporate digital media because that is when their creativity shines through.

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

  

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019). Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Blog 11: Student Learning Outcomes

When I first saw that I was going to create a blog and write posts throughout the semester, I got a little nervous. I knew nothing about blogging. Even though I would read some occasionally, I had no idea how the authors went about setting theirs up and deciding what they should be writing about. I always thought of writing in college as formal papers that had to be sophisticated and filled of academic language. By having this assignment to create a bog and write these posts, I was able to practice writing in a different way. It took me some time but I finally realized that in order to write these blog posts, I had to change how I write.

Each week there would be a different prompt for me to respond to that went along with what we were learning about in class. These blog posts helped me to think critically about the concepts and reflect we were talking about. I was able to take the ideas that Tompkins and Hicks were talking about and connected it with experiences in my own life. I was able to take away the big ideas from the books as well as our class and think about how I would implement them in my future classroom. During one session, we talked about how to incorporate writer’s workshop in our classroom. When I got home, I was able to think about all the ideas that we talked about and write a post talking about which ones I would use in my classroom. I now can use this blog as a reference for when I am ready to implement these ideas in a classroom of my own.

Students blogging in the classroom

When looking out the learning outcomes of this class (LTED 618), I can see how I was able to meet them by keeping up with a blog each week. By writing a blog post each week, I grew as a reader and a writer.   These blog posts helped to show me the relationship between the writing and the reading process. I will admit that I originally thought that the reading process and the writing process were two different processes that never mixed. By learning more about each process and actually working through the process, I can see how they work together and can be mixed. Tompkins adds “Linking reading, writing, and thinking improves students’ literacy learning and their content area learning” (Tompkins, 2019, pg. 119). These blog posts let me connect what I was reading with what I wanted to write.  As I was writing my blog post each week, I would look for outside articles that I could hyper-link into my post. I would in the middle of the writing process but have to stop to switch to the reading process as I wanted to include research that backed what I was writing about.

Another outcome that this blog has really helped me to understand, is knowing how readers and writers can use different genres to communicate. Throughout the semester we spent time learning about the different genres people can write in. After learning about the genres, I realized that I do most of my writing within the narrative genre. I would say that most of my blog posts would fall under the narrative genre as well however there were a few posts that I did write that were in form of a letter and would be in the letter genre. I learned a lot about how writers try to communicate with their reader. A persons blog site might be set up in a certain way depending on the topic that they are taking about and how they want to communicate with their reader.

Going along with different genres and communication, another outcome that the blogs really helped me to understand better is the role of purpose and audience in writing. In order to write these blog posts, I had to switch the way that I normally write. Tompkins always talked about how you always start with thinking about what the purpose of the piece is and who the audience is before deciding what genre it will be. Blogs are more personal since the writer is trying to connect with their audience. When you write a blog, you have to write it in a way that you are having a conversation with you readers. They have to be engaged with the topic and excited to read every word. While looking at the “habits of mind”, I realized that I had to change my writing so that it was more open and creative. I needed to learn how to write in a way that it felt like I was having a conversation with anybody that was reading it. This was a hard thing for me to do since I wasn’t used to it.

Writing these blog posts truly allowed me to make sure that I was reading with importance but that I am also writing with expression. It allowed me to experiment with all the digital features that can be added to text to help make it ‘digitally enhanced’ (Hicks, 2013) since we are now living in a digital world.

Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of  Teachers of English, & National Writing Project. (2011).  Framework for success in postsecondary writing.  Retrieved from http://wpacouncil.org/framework/

HelpTeaching.com. (2015, November 10). 5 Benefits of blogging in the ela classroom. [blog] Retrieved from http://blog.whoosreading.org/5-benefits-of-blogging-in-the-ela-classroom

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

  

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019). Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Blog 11:Student Learning Outcomes

Blog 8: "To Bless, To Address, To Press"

One of my favorite parts in writing is when it can be shared.  I think that it is important that we as teachers give our students time that they are able to share the work that they are doing. Tompkins states that sharing is an important part of writer’s workshop. She adds “After the reading, classmates clap and offer compliments. They may also make other comments and suggestions, but the focus is on celebrating completed work writing projects…” (Tompkins, 2019, p.27).   In fact, Hicks encourages peers to respond to each other by saying “To bless is to simply offer praise.   To address means to ask specific questions about the ideas.  To press is to ask critical questions in order to help the writer move toward a stronger version or the writing or a clearer explanation of his/her opinion. (Hicks, 2009, p. 83).

There is a classroom that I will spend a lot of time in so to help out and I’m always so impressed by the amount of people that want to share their writing. They have ELA centers every day and one of the centers is usually a free write where they can choose what they want to write about. There’s always usually two or three people that want to share their writing at the end of the day because they are so proud of the work that they did. Not only am I taken back by the students wanting to share but also the way that the rest of the class reacts. At first they will all clap and say something that they really liked (To bless), then they ask specific questions about what they wrote (to address) and then they will add some suggestions of small things that they could change (to press).  I love seeing how great their classroom community is and that they all support each other along with wanting to help them grow.

As I was reading through all my peers’ blog posts, there was one that really stood out to me. I really Kristina’s blog entry about providing feedback.  She talks about how by proving feedback to the writer, the reader and the writer are communicating. They are talking about the piece by saying what they like and what questions they might have. One thing that she said that stood out to me was “The reader is a fresh pair of eyes for the writer, they are able to provide an unbiased opinion of the writing piece and give critical feedback that will help the writer make improvements to their writing” (Wells, 2019). I couldn’t help but think back to one of my blogs that I have written where I talk about feedback. I love when I get another set of eyes to look over something that I have written and give me feedback on how to make it stronger.

Another idea that I loved as I read the blog post, was the idea of having student- student conferences to talk about their writing. I know that the kids I work with would much rather meet with another student to talk about their writing rather than meet with me.  However, I always run into the issue of making sure that they are staying on task.  I would love to ask Kristina how she would implement these conferences in her classroom. What do you do to model them and how do you make sure the students are focused on what they are supposed to be doing? I definitely want to make sure that my students have the time to share their work with their peers and receive feedback on how they can make their pieces stronger.

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019). Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Wells, K. (2019, February 22). Entry 5 [blog post]. Retrieved from https://kristinawells-lted618-spring2019.blogspot.com/2019/02/entry-5.html

Blog 2: Author's Craft

While reading Tompkins chapter on writer’s craft, I began to think about the way that I learned how to write in school. Tompkins (2019) explains the elements of writers craft as: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.  I remember my teachers taking a lot of time talking about the elements ideas, organization and conventions but not talking about the other 4 elements.  They did multiple mini lessons on the importance of brainstorming an idea and then organizing your information for the idea before writing it. They would always tell us to look back at our writing to correct any errors we had in our writing but never had us specifically look at the words we choose, the voice we used of how the sentence flowed.  I can now see how that experience has impacted me as I write now.

The idea and organization elements are fairly easy elements for me to understand whether it’s writing or reading. I always take the time to think of the ideas I want to write about before I start to write them. I sometimes find it difficult to figure out the idea of an article when reading digitally because there can be a lot of information that might not be related to what the topic is about. While reading digitally, the author might include hyperlinks that take you to another page that gives you more back ground information on the topic they are writing about. While that is useful, I feel like it makes it harder for me to have a concrete idea of what the text is about. While reading traditional text, I don’t have to worry about switching to another source and getting distracted. I was taught that your ideas should flow together so that the reader can easily move through your writing. I will admit that now days I tend to do the organization part after I have written my entire paper. I find it easier to see the organization element within traditional text since the ideas are usually separated into paragraphs, pages, or chapters. In digital text, the only way to switch an idea is by having them in separate paragraphs. I occasionally find it hard to see where one paragraph ends and where one starts. This makes it hard to know if they are talking about the same idea or switching to a new one.   

I find voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions to be a little difficult when it comes to writing. I always struggle to find the right words to use or the right sentence to say. I can usually recognize the elements while I am reading. I find an article to be more interesting and easier to read if it has a variety of words and I can hear the voice of the author. I will admit that I am not a strong speller and so when I first start writing I don’t worry about spelling and conventions. While I reread my writing at the end, I take the time to fix any errors I might have. I have a hard time reading both traditional and digital text if there are a lot of conventional errors in the writing. My eyes will go straight to the error and I won’t understand anything that I read.

The publishing element is an element that I try to use as much as possible. After I am done with the actual writing part, I spend some time with layout to figure out how I want my writing to look. The way my writing looks depend on what I’ve wrote about and who the audience is. I think the way a piece or writing is shown says a lot about the author’s personality. No matter if I’m reading traditional text or if I am reading digital text, take the time to notice how the author is displaying their writing.

I think that there are some students just like me that haven’t spent time learning all of the elements of author’s craft. Hicks (2013) says, “Even the most skilled readers among our students may not have all the lenses they need to see the ways in which an author constructs a text” (p. 12).  It can be hard for students to go through all the different steps and elements while writing. One thing that I agree with Hicks, is when he says to slow down and work backwards when teaching authors craft.  When I teach author’s craft, I will make sure to teach each element at a slow pace so that the students will be able to practice each element.

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Lambert, K. Helping students find “voice” in their writing. Education world, connecting educators to what works. https://www.educationworld.com/helping-students-find-%E2%80%9Cvoice%E2%80%9D-their-writing

Julian, S. (2018). Digital texts and reading strategies. Tips and trend instructional technologies committee. https://acrl.ala.org/IS/wp-content/uploads/Tips-and-Trends-Sp18.pdf

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.