Keeping Black Students in Schools & How to Keep Rewriting Alive in Schools (4/18)

Hello all. I hope you're having a good day. I'm glad you found your way onto my blog. Take a seat, pour yourself a cup of matcha tea, and read on. For this week we scavenged the internet to find posts from educational blogs that we found interesting. I found two articles, Having Just One Black Teacher Can Keep Black Kids In School and How to Keep Rewriting Alive in the Classroom. Both articles stood out to me by having significance for future teachers.

Having Just One Black Teacher was an important read. I fully realize that I don't fall under the category of black teacher. Nonetheless some stats found in the article stood out to me. "Having just one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade reduced low-income black boys' probability of dropping out of high school by 39 percent, the study found." I believe that is a very significant percentage. The main idea of the article was that black students need role models in school.

Another important idea was "If a low-income black boy never sees anyone in the classroom who looks like him, Papageorge [researcher] says he might conclude, 'Hey, college is just not for me'. And then why would you work hard in school?'" I think that this is a terrible thing for a young student to say to themselves. I didn't realize how important it was for students to have a role model. By having more teachers of color in the classroom, we will have more students of color crossing the stage.

The second article was related to many concepts we've brought up in class. It focused on the concept of writing and rewriting. The article states that students are trained to create writing on the spot because of high-stakes testing. They are forced into conventional writing that produces poor results. The article includes a quote from Roald Dahl, "good writing is essentially rewriting." The article also included an activity that allows students to see how time affects their writing. Some students are given clay and are told to make something with limited time, while other students are allowed unlimited time. This is related to the writing process and how different the end product is with restricted time.

Both articles were enlightening and fun to read.

Here they are, for your viewing pleasure:

Having Just One Black Teacher Can Keep Black Kids In School: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/04/10/522909090/having-just-one-black-teacher-can-keep-black-kids-in-school

How to Keep Rewriting Alive in the Classroom: http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/01/23/how-to-keep-rewriting-alive-in-the-classroom.html?qs=writing

Assessing Student Writing (4/11)

This week we read selections from Gallagher and Christiansen along with an article by Patricia Dunn. All readings focused on a theme of instead of correcting everything students do wrong it's more effective to show them what they're doing correctly. There was a chapter in Teaching for Joy and Justice in which Christiansen mentions she doesn't even grade papers! Our classroom discussion today focused on these issues with everyone sharing great points of view on how they feel about grading.

Gallagher wrote about his Ten Tenets of Teaching Editing Skills. One Tenet that I focused on for a quickwrite question was the tenth- Repeat After Me: "I Am Not Superman. I Am Not Superman. I Am Not..." This stuck with me because it is a good practice for a teacher to be in. Learning from what people shared in class today, teachers have a lot on their plates at all times. It is good to remind yourself that you can't do everything all the time.

Christensen wrote about how she also focuses on giving students constructive feedback. She does this by not grading her students' papers. They either pass the assignment or have to rewrite. I believe this is a very effective way of getting students to complete their work with more creativity. They are less held down to the idea of receiving a grade allowing them to work more extensively. Without a grade holding them down they can write how they truly feel.

The article that compared teaching new drivers to new writers included many similarities. You can not force good driving or good writing down anyone's throat. While some people should be told how to drive with immediate instruction, "Stop now!" "Speed up!" most writers don't function this way. All of these readings helped me understand that there are multiple ways for students to improve their writing.

Rhode Island Writing Project

On Saturday I attended the Rhode Island Writing Project at Roger Williams University with some awesome people.

See:

The talk itself was informative and interesting. Linda Christensen, the author of Teaching for Joy and Justice was the keynote speaker. Other speakers were Aimee Marsland, an excellent English teacher at North Providence High School and Brittany Richter, an equally excellent middle school teacher.

Linda touched on many subjects including teaching students with different backgrounds and understanding where different vernaculars come from. She broke the speech up with things like a video of a slam poet defending her mother's accent and an activity in which we would take on a role of a person whose language was silenced.

I learned a lot from the speech including how to reach students of many different backgrounds. The speech was ended by an incredible performance by Brittany's students. They all worked for hours on several slam poems. Each one focused on different topics such as how the military is viewed and how they themselves are viewed in society. Each poem gave me goosebumps. 😊

Sarah, Kelli, and I attended The Importance of Putting Down Roots: Greek and Latin Roots Studies. This was an interesting talk held my Mary Rafferty and Kimberly Reynolds. It focused on a small lecture followed by a few literacy games. One involved creating new words using roots such as pre- and anti-, base words, and suffixes such as -ology and -able.

The conference was a great and fun experience overall, I plan on returning next year! 😁

6+1 Traits of Writing (3/28)

This week, we read the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing from Education Northwest's website. The six traits are: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions, and Presentation. See? 6 + 1. I enjoyed this reading. It was short, sweet, and to the point. Maria and I are co-teaching on this for class on Tuesday as well, so it was nice to have an article that was clearly written.

I hadn't thought about some of these traits while writing before. Presentation was one example. I had never thought about how my words appeared on the page before. I believe that this trait is useful for papers that are handwritten. Presentation would matter a lot in this case. You would want the reader to understand your writing first and foremost. But I believe that the writer could add in their own style with the way they write. This would allow the presentation of their paper to take on a new light. It would be another way for the writer to express themselves along with their ideas.

I liked the description of word choice as well. The article states that, "Strong Word Choice is characterized not so much by an exceptional vocabulary chosen to impress the reader, but more by the skill to use everyday words well." I thought this was a great way to put it. You don't want to bore your reader by using extraneous, superfluous, nonessential, supplementary language. You want to speak naturally and use everyday language.

These traits will help many students grasp the idea of writing better. If they have a checklist to go by they can organize their thoughts clearly. Everyone can benefit from using these traits in fact. They're a great strategy if you're thinking of what to write or have writer's block. I know I will use them in my future writing.

This video shows an example of the 6+1 Traits in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23af-ASifr4

Teaching Writing to Bilingual Students (3/21)

Teaching writing to bilingual students is a challenge posed to many teachers today. More pressure is added to these students not only attempting to learn a second language, but how to write and communicate ideas through writing in a foreign language. Authors Pahl, Rowsell, and Danling Fu offer insight into teaching these students.

Pahl and Rowsell had an interesting article called Conceptualizing Artifactual Literacies: A Framework. In this article, the authors suggest that objects that people keep with them over time are important to defining who that person is. This is relevant for an English language learner. They will bring objects, or artifacts with them when coming to a new country. These artifacts, ranging from anything from toy cars to suitcases, build that person's identity. This influences writing as well. A child in elementary school learning English tasked with a writing assignment will most likely write about their favorite toy. An important quote I found from this reading was, "A text therefore is composed of visual as well as linguistic elements." People write from things they hold dear to themselves.

The chapters from Writing Between Languages book by Danling Fu had interesting information on ELLs. One thing I learned from this reading was that ELLs often find difficulty in expressing their ideas in writing English, so they copy sentences down to write. I found this interesting because this is a resourceful way to write. It is isn't the preferred method to write of course but I believe if I was attempting to learn a new language I would use this same strategy. Another point that Fu brings up is that non native English speakers need to practice writing in English consistently in order to become better. This is something to keep in mind when going into the field of teaching. ELLs will need a large amount of time to practice their writing, speaking, and reading English. Both authors gave me important insight into the world of English language learners.

Quickwrite for 3/14

2. Gallagher provides many great examples for modeling writing for students as well as giving plenty of time for students to practice writing. Modeling can be used most effectively in the classroom when giving students a writing assignment. I think getting the students into small groups and going around to each group to give modeling examples would be effective. This way, they get the ideas of how to express their thoughts more effectively and can also bounce ideas off of each other. Giving plenty of time for writing helps out as well. I believe having students write a quickwrite at the beginning of each class on any topic- thoughts of the day, their favorite sport, a fond memory, can help foster better writers.

   I have found success after plenty of practice time with writing. I find the more I write, the easier ideas come from my head onto the paper. This idea relates to many things in life. The more you practice a song on an instrument, the better you will be able to play it. The more you memorize the lines of a play, the better you will be to recite it. Practicing writing with students will allow them to hopefully enjoy the idea of it more as well as be able to create an outlet for them to express inner thoughts.

   When I was first introduced to the compare and contrast essay, I was confused on what I had to do. I understood that I needed to compare the likeness and differences of an idea, but I had no idea on how to go about doing that. My teacher had to model the idea to me. She gave me Venn diagrams to look at with one circle capturing one idea and the second capturing separate ideas. With the middle section being similarities between them both. She also gave me examples of other compare and contrast essays that had been written to give me a better idea on what to do. The modeling helped me create a compare and contrast essay.

Teaching Effective Writing Strategies (3/14)

Hey guys. How's everyone doing? I hope you're having a good day. Alright enough small talk- let's talk effective writing strategies. After reading both the chapters in the Gallagher book and the article The Policy of the Paragraph I learned many strategies in teaching effective writing strategies to students. I found the main idea from Gallagher was the combination of students reading more along with help from the teacher allowed them to become better writers. The Policy article focused more on avoiding harmful essay formulas.

The Policy of the Paragraph recounts a story in which a student runs out of the room, upset that she is limited to three ideas on an essay when she has five. This upsets her teacher, Michelle Kenney as she wants all of her students to be as creative as possible. This is where the main idea of the article comes in- the rigorous essay formats are more harmful than helpful. The unfortunate part is that most students need to use these formulas come test time. This prompts the teachers at this school to create their own writing strategy- PEAS. It stands for Point, Evidence, Analysis, So-what? The article ends with an idea that resonated with me. We don't want to teach "good enough" writing but unfortunately we do because of things like state testing.

Gallagher had several good ideas when teaching writing to high-schoolers. One of his main ideas was that the more students read, along with help from the teacher, the more effective writers they will become. It wasn't a simple one to one ratio: the more reading a student does, the better the writer. The teacher needs to help the student become a better writer. This includes teaching them the effectiveness of rewriting and revising. Going back and fixing mistakes on an old essay helps students become better writers. This is something I will practice in my classroom one day. I want my students to become effective writers and teaching them to read more and revise their work will help me achieve that.