Writing

When I was in middle school I loved to write poetry and stories. When I got to high school I had the privilege of being in a creative writing class where we published a book with all of the writings from each student in the class. At first I didn’t really like the idea of having a blog it was just one more thing to add to my agenda of things to do throughout the week. I did feel as if it was a chore but my idea of it has changed because I feel that it is helping me to strengthen my writing skills and expand on topics we have talked about in class. It is also a great resource to have for the classroom if student’s parents wanted to interact with you through a different source of communication. I feel that my idea of writing has changed because at first I was wondered about how I was going to teach students to write when I am not the best writer in the world. Also I feel that this class had broken down the steps in a way that I can remember and has given me the opportunity to see different examples of how to teach language arts through observations.

As far as the book I didn’t have any idea what I was going to write about. Then I decided to write about something that is dear to me and that is friendship. My story will cover adjusting to parenthood and how life can change in the blink of an eye. It was also cover how friendship can change over a course of time because you both are growing up into adults.

How Reading and Writing Can Affect One's Social Life

When dealing with a disability or delay in either reading or writing a person could feel left out or unworthy because they don’t know how to communicate with others. Socially this could hurt someone very bad because in the world we live in now you need to know how to do both. Children and adults could get picked on because they cannot read or write. Children love to read books and discuss them and if you can’t do either of these children will not want to participate in different activities causing them to withdraw themselves from the people in the classroom. I have found that students get frustrated with teachers when asked to read something out loud or write something on the board if they are unable to do so. When I was in the first grade my teacher had me and some other students write our journal entries on the board. I felt really bad for doing this because all the students in the class were going to see our journal entries. I wasn’t the best speller and I wasn’t that good at grammar either. She then asked the students what was wrong with the journal entries. She wrote in grammatical errors that we had done and I felt so bad because I felt that this was a journal that we wrote in as a leisure thing and it was only for her to see. After that incident I was discouraged from sharing any type of writing in my classroom.

As a teacher I would try to address this issue by allowing the student to have one on one tutoring or communicate with the student through a journal to allow them to improve their skills in both. Our book stated that some students did well with journals and it helped them to express their feelings about different things going on with their lives. I believe that students feel more comfortable with writing things down. This allows you to get things off of your mind in a fast and convenient way.

My First Day at Northwood

I went to observe Mrs. Ruff’s third grade class on Friday. I had a great time because Mrs. Ruff was very nice and the students were very welcoming of me. The students were doing a lesson on similarities and differences of animals. When I arrived they were pre-reading a couple of books, that Mrs. Ruff had brought to the class, about different animals that they could read on their own. Mrs. Ruff asked them questions about the title, pictures in the book, and read some of the interesting facts out of the book. Before hand the students had the opportunity of selecting two animals in which they printed information off on them to compare and contrast. Mrs. Ruff demonstrated what she wanted them to do first by giving them an example on the board. The school is starting to use different types of graphic organizers. On this day the class was using a double bubble which is similar to a Venn diagram. The students were doing a very good job with coming up with differences of the animals but had a difficult time trying to find similarities. Some of the choices the students picked even stumped Mrs. Ruff and I. I also had the opportunity to walk around and help some of the students with their assignment.

Lauguage Learning

When I was younger I remember I learned language from my mother reading different books to me and by using nursery rhymes. I had a book with every single nursery rhyme you could think of in it. That was my favorite book and I still had it until a couple of years ago. I also used the popular program called Hooked on Phonics. I found it very easy to learn language from this device because you got to listen and visually see a word as you were practicing it over and over again. As I was going through school each week we got some spelling words and we would go over them in class once and then on Friday we would have a spelling test. I think that this was a horrible way to teach phonics and language in the classroom because we were not encouraged to learn the words or use them every day. Most students just memorized them for the test then after the test we couldn’t remember them because we were not taught to use the language.

As a future teacher I fell that you have to understand that every child learns differently and it is your job to come up with an array of activities for students to learn language.

The Reading Process

1. Discuss the difference in aesthetic reading and efferent reading. Do you have a preference for one or the other? Which do you employ the most? I feel that aesthetic reading is reading for pleasure and efferent reading is reading to gain or take away information from the text. I have a preference for aesthetic reading because I pay more attention to the details of the text while I am painting pictures in my mind of the different things that are going on the reading. I found that I enjoy reading better when I am reading aesthetically. But sometimes I do enjoy efferent reading when I am learning something that is interesting to me like certain statistics or something that I can relate to personally.
   
   2. Discuss the five stages of the reading process providing examples of each. Pre-reading is going through the text and looking at pictures or getting background information about the book. An example of this would be to have students look at the pictures and guess what they think the book would be about. Reading is going through the text and reading the book through shared, guided, independent, buddy, or reading aloud to the class. An example of this would be the teacher having a jumbo sized book on a chart board and reading the book to the class. Responding to the reading is having the students share their opinions and ideas about the book. An example of this would be having the students write in journal or a think, pair, share activity. Exploring the reading is the act of going back through the reading to get a deeper understanding of the work. An example of this would be going back through the book and finding new vocabulary words that the students might not understand. Applying refers to the student’s further building on their experience with the book. An example of this would be to have different centers set up geared toward students using knowledge from the book to complete different activities.
   
   3. What factors are important in developing capable readers? It is important that capable readers have a good sense of word definition, fluency when reading, broad range of vocabulary, and have a good understanding of the reading.
   
   4. Often, students participate in reading through different means. What ways are there to read and how could the students use the reading process in the classroom? There are a lot of different ways to read from aesthetic, efferent, buddy, shared, guided, independent, and reading aloud. The students can use the reading process in class to strengthen reading skills and to also practice reading. They can also use the reading process to strengthen comprehension abilities and writing skills.