Entry 5

Dear Dr. Jones,

Overall, the class is going well.  I already find myself thinking differently about writing.  Through our writing workshop sessions, I am becoming more comfortable with writing assignments.  Previously, whenever I began to think about an assigned writing piece, I would not be very motivated and would consider the whole writing process to be a daunting task.  Typically, I would come up with an idea, create a brief outline, write a draft, and then edit the draft once for grammatical errors.  Once my work has been written, I have always had a hard time wanting to go back and read through what I have written, as I am extremely critical of my own writing.  Our writing workshops have helped me to take the necessary time to plan, pre-write, and draft my work.  As a result, I now feel more confident when I sit down to write.  I also enjoy our class discussions; even though there are only three of us, I think we are able to have richer, more authentic conversations than some groups that are twice as large.  This course has also broadened my knowledge of technology and how to utilize this technology in classroom learning.  Prior to this class, I was vaguely familiar with blogs and wikis, but I had never actually created and used one of my own.  After reading Hicks (2009), I have been introduced to numerous websites and other technological resources to use with my future students.  Our class blogs and wiki have aided me in better understanding how these two technological resources work and how I could utilize them in my future classroom.

Prior to this course, I had learned about Kucer’s (2009) ideas regarding the connections between reading and writing and how the two are similar processes.  While this was very enlightening to me, the implications of this way of thinking about reading and writing did not resonate with me.  Now that I am actually utilizing the writing process in our class and keeping this connection in mind, this relationship is clearer to me.  Lately, I have been engaging in a fully transactional writing process at least twice a week.  I think deeply when I write m blog entries for this course and when I write during writing workshop.  As a result, I find myself transferring this state-of-mind to other writing situations, either for other courses or for my own personal writing.  I chose to engage in this kind of thinking because I find that I am better able to understand and retain the information that I am writing about.  Also, thinking deeply about what I am writing allows me to examine the issue in-depth and form multiple perspectives.  I feel better able to discuss a topic after writing about it thoroughly.  For example, as a result of the work I have done thus far for my genre pieces project, I feel as though I am gaining a better understanding of chinchillas and am moving from being a “competent” learner to a “proficient” learner of this subject-matter (Alexander & Jetton, 2000, p. 300).  One of the habits I may have to change in order to fully engage while writing is to stop feeling so self-conscious about my writing and about the fact that others will read it. 

The main instructional strategy that will benefit me as a teacher of literacy is the writing workshop.  While I had read about this strategy in articles, I had not utilized it in a classroom setting.  After having experience with the writing workshop format in our class, I feel more comfortable with the strategy and see the benefits of using it in my future classroom.  The biggest concern that I have at this point is my “Teaching the Genre” expert presentation.  I always have anxiety before a presentation; I feel as though I’ll forget something or freeze up in front of everyone.  I will just need to think positively, make sure I’m well prepared, and remember that there are only three people in this class, so I shouldn’t feel too nervous.  Aside from this concern, I do not have many other concerns.  So far, I understand the content of this course and am enjoying our class.

Sincerely,

Melissa N.

Alexander, P. A. & Jetton, T. L. (2000). Learning from text: A multidimensional perspective. In

M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading

research: Volume III (pp. 285-310). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Hicks, T. (2009). The digital writing workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kucer, S. B. (2009). Dimensions of literacy: A conceptual base for teaching reading and writing

in school settings. New York, NY: Routledge.

Entry 4

As I was reading, chapters 2 and 3 in Hicks (2009) stood out to me for a few reasons.  First, the Google Docs feature intrigued me.  The first time I read through chapter 3, I breezed by the screenshots of this program (Figures 3.3 and 3.4).  When I went back to reexamine the chapter’s contents in order to organize my thoughts for this blog entry, I noticed these figures and the way that a student’s revision history can be displayed using this program (Hicks, 2009).  Prior to reading this chapter, I had no idea what Google Docs was or what it could be used for.  I now believe that this could be an extremely beneficial program to use with students, as long as students have access to this technology and have parental permission to use the program.  The best feature of Google Docs, in my opinion, is its ability to show a complete revision history for a student’s piece of writing.  In this way, both the student and teacher can have a comprehensive and detailed account of every revision that the student has made to his or her writing.  In addition, the teacher’s comments that “helped guide revision” are also visible (Hicks, 2009, p. 48).  Rather than attempting to ensure that each student keeps and documents every rough draft and every revision made to a writing piece, teachers can utilize the Google Docs website in order to view all changes that a student has made to his or her document in one convenient place.  As Hicks (2009) implies, now the only issue will be students forgetting their passwords, both literally and figuratively.

Another portion of the reading that stood out to me, this time in chapter 2 of Hicks (2009), was the discussion of RSS readers.  While I have never created one of my own, the concept is extremely appealing.  Utilizing an RSS reader to have one central location for all of the blogs you post to or follow, as well as any other websites that interest you, seems like a fantastic idea.  However, I would want to make sure that I am extremely familiar with RSS readers, including how to use them and what all of their features are, before I introduce this website to my class.  I want to be sure that my students would use RSS readers appropriately and effectively.  I do appreciate Hicks’ (2009) suggestions for using RSS in our instruction of writing.  I especially like the essential questions that Hicks (2009) provides to guide students in their use and exploration of this technology.  RSS could be a huge motivator for students, as information is sent to them through their RSS feed, rather than them searching for it (Hicks, 2009).  Not only would this feature benefit students who lack motivation, but also students who experience difficulties with searching for ideas or starting a writing piece.  Since the websites are being sent to the students’ RSS feeds, all students would have to do is read through the content that was sent to them in order to gain ideas for topics to write about. 

While I was also not familiar with social bookmarking prior to reading chapter 2, I am not particularly enthusiastic about using this with my students.  I guess I am just having trouble grasping how it would be useful to use in my classroom.  Perhaps if I were more familiar with this digital tool, I would have a more positive attitude toward it.  I just feel that there are other websites and programs through which I could send pertinent links to my students, and that sharing all of one’s bookmarks publicly could be either extremely useful or extremely pointless and a waste of time.  I suppose it would depend on the websites’ relevance to class content, but I personally do not feel that this is the most effective method to use with students.  I much prefer blogs, wikis, and RSS readers to social bookmarking tools.

Overall, chapters 2 and 3 in Hicks (2009) provided me with a wealth of information that I had previously been unfamiliar with.  After reading these chapters, I now have numerous ideas and options for beginning a digital writing workshop with my future students.

Entry 3

Tompkins’ (2008) chapter about journal writing really intrigued me.  Journal writing is one of my favorite types of writing, so reading about various types of journal writing and how to implement these in the classroom was enjoyable for me.  I was especially interested in Tompkins’ (2008) description of dialogue journaling, as it is an activity I utilized in my tutoring sessions last semester for LTED 626.  My tutoring student was a reluctant writer; at first, he would only respond to my prompts with one or two sentences.  I decided to try using a dialogue journal and to format the journal in such a way as to make the journal like “a conversation written down” between my student and myself.  Using this method greatly aided my student in becoming more comfortable with writing.  My goal was not to improve his spelling and grammar so much as to help him become more willing to write by providing positive experiences with writing.  By the end of our tutoring sessions, my student would write at least a paragraph response in his dialogue journal and began to elaborate more in his responses.

One of the most daunting aspects when I consider using dialogue journals in a larger classroom setting is finding the time to read and respond to each student’s journal entries.  Tompkins (2008) has some good suggestions for dealing with time constraints, such as responding on a rotating basis or having classmates journal between one another, rather than between the student and teacher.  I would utilize either of these suggestions if I were to implement this in a larger classroom.  Hopefully students’ journals would be as rich and as successful when used in a larger classroom.  The experience I had using a dialogue journal with my tutoring student has made me a firm believer in the potential benefits of journal writing.  Not only can it help to provide students with a more positive attitude toward writing, but it can also allow students to view writing as a more personal, meaningful activity when they have the ability to decide the topics, content, and style of their entries. 

Another type of journaling that I look forward to using with my future students is double-entry journals.  I like that students can use these journals to record interesting facts or ideas from the text that they are reading and then respond to these ideas in the following column.  Double-entry journals seem to be a good way for students to make connections between the text and their lives.  These connections would help to make the text more meaningful to students.  In addition, students may also make connections between the text and the world at large.  Whether these connections involve social issues, political issues, or other global topics, students’ connections could spark meaningful classroom discussion.  If I were hired to be an English teacher, this form of journaling would be useful for my students to use while reading a text for our class. 

If I have access to computers and the Internet in my future classroom, I would consider having my students create a type of online journal or blog, much like we have for LTED 618.  In this way, students could write and respond to each other’s entries while also utilizing modern technology.  The use of computers may also help to entice students who are reluctant writers, as they could have the option of incorporating images and other features into their online journals.  Overall, I believe that using online journaling would greatly benefit my future students, as long as it is employed appropriately and as long as students are respectful of one another’s thoughts and ideas when responding to journal posts.  In order to ensure this respectful behavior, I would be sure to create a poster that I could hang in my classroom detailing appropriate communication.  In addition, I would monitor students’ comments to make certain that students are responding properly.

Entry 2

At my last teaching assignment, my students were middle-schoolers who were generally very eager to learn.  While not all of them were great writers, the majority of my students gave their best attempt whenever they worked on a writing assignment.  As far as Hicks’ (2009) references to technology are concerned, my students usually were more familiar with new technologies than I was.  I distinctly remember an instance when I wanted to create a worksheet in a T-chart format with a line down the middle of the page and two equal sides.  I was having trouble making a straight line down the page of the Word document; the line would always end up a bit off to one side.  One of my students was able to figure out how to create this chart correctly on the computer.  At this point, I realized that my students probably knew more about current technology than I did. 

While we only had three computers in my classroom, most of my students had computers at home and had access to computers at the library and other venues.  Additionally, many of my students had cell phones and were familiar with texting.  I would often hear discussions about Facebook and other social networking sites while students were gathered in the hallways between classes.  My students did not seem as familiar with using blogs and wikis, as the main new technology for the school at the time was the SmartBoard.  The school only had one or two SmartBoards for the faculty to share, and I did not have the opportunity to utilize this technology during my placement at this school. 

The school was a very traditional private school, and generally only essays and other standard forms of writing counted as writing.  My class did not create any digital texts, such as web pages, videos, or audio.  However, for their final projects for a unit on King Arthur, students were able to design a knight’s shield with symbols that represent their own lives and families.  It would have been interesting if I had been able to make this assignment a digital assignment in which students could design their shields online.  Then, students could potentially share their shields with one another and comment on them. 

Looking back, there are so many ideas that I would have loved to incorporate into a digital writing workshop for my class.  However, I did not have enough computers for the class, and I am unsure if the school had a computer lab other than the room in which they had their technology class.  In addition, I would have had to spend more time focusing on writing and teaching students how to utilize the technology used for our digital writing workshop.  Typically, I spent relatively little time teaching writing mini-lessons.  If I were to have implemented Hicks’ (2009) digital writing workshop, I would have had to spend more class time on writing than I had previously.  My main concern is that there never seemed to be enough class time when I taught this class, so taking away more time to devote to writing is a daunting idea.  Once I started to implement the digital writing workshop, I would likely feel more confident about time management and my ability to add workshop time to my class schedule. 

The students’ desks in my class were already arranged in groups of twos and threes, which would help to facilitate sharing and partner activities incorporated into our digital writing workshop.  To make the workshop successful, I would need to have a schedule in place and decide how much time to devote to writing, as well as how often students would be participating in the digital writing workshop.  In addition, I would need to determine how assess students based on the type of digital media they are producing.  In spite of these shortcomings, I feel that, had I known enough about digital writing workshops at the time, it would have been an interesting and successful experience for my classroom.  I definitely plan on implementing a digital writing workshop in my future classroom.

References

Hicks, T. (2009). The digital writing workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Johnston, J. (1980). King Arthur: His knights and their ladies. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Entry 1

As far as teaching writing is concerned, I have had very little experience actually teaching it.  During student-teaching, I would assign essays to students to be completed for homework.  In my future classroom, I would make time for writing in class, especially freewrites and journal entries, as I feel that these are very helpful for developing writing skills.  Also, I would utilize quickwrites so that students can briefly respond to a passage or idea related to the text that we are reading in class.  I would love to have time to conference with each student, but in a class of 25-30 students, I wonder how this is really possible.  I feel that I would not be able to provide the appropriate amount of time and focus to each student while also trying to manage the rest of the class.  Once I do have my own classroom, I'm sure I will find a way to accomplish this, as it is so crucial for students to have the ability to examine their own writing and discuss it.  Peer conferencing might be another way for students to critique both their own writing, as well as others'.  I'm sure there are other methods I want to incorporate in my classroom, but I can't think of any more at the moment. 

My experience with technology is not as vast as I would like.  I know how to use word processors fairly well, and I'm gaining more experience with blogs as well.  As far as most other technology is concerned, I think my students know more about how to use these technological devices than I do.  That will probably be my biggest challenge when implementing these types of technology in my classroom.  Also, trying to ensure that students are able to have the freedom to creatively produce written blogs or other assignments, while also incorporating course material may be challenging.  I'm currently stuck.  I can't think of what else to write.  There are so many things to consider when thinking about incorporating technology into writing assignments, and there is so much that I need to learn about technology (and probably writing too) that it feels a little overwhelming to address this question.  Once I learn something new, though, I'm usually good at remembering how to do it, so as long as I keep up with the new technology and take the time to learn from others who know this technology better than I do, I think I'll be able to effectively incorporate it into my classroom instruction.  I hope to have my students post on a blog or create digital media in a way that would give them a more positive experience with writing. 

In regards to this assignment, my main concern is that I will not effectively elaborate on my ideas or that I will be too concerned that other people will be reading my writing that it will affect what I post on this blog.  Again, I am stuck.  I can't think of anything else to write.  I am not sure if there is anything that I have not discussed here...I am comfortable with the rubric for this assignment and do not have any concerns about the way this assignment is evaluated.  I think it would be so much easier to write more about this topic if I had my own classroom right now or if I had more recent teaching experience than my student-teaching experience (two years ago).