Pre-K... I think not....

This semester has been a great learning experience for me.  After spending an entire semester in a pre-k classroom I have decided that why I love my students, pre-k is not for me.  These students are so bright but at the same time they are so young it is their pre-k teacher's responsiblity to expose them to math, science, history, language arts for the first time in at least a school setting.  This is such a big responsibility and in my opinion it is very hard to do.  I am more inclined to find fun/interesting things for my students to do becasuse I would not want to turn students off to a subject.  I feel that students are so new to this information that if they do not have a good experience with these subjects.... you could lose them for life.  I know I am making this sound like a life or death situation but I am being serious... to me this is a big deal.  I would not want to bore a student to death with a topic and turn them off especially at this age.

Another bone of contention that I have with this age is that everything has to be read to them.  My students can not read anything for themselves.  I read their tests, reading passages, directions on the worksheets, etc. to them each day.  My throat is sore by the end of the day after reading that much each day.

Lastly I do love how innocent my students are.  When they learn to recongize a few words and can point them out in a book like door, frog, dog and other words like these it is the most rewarding experience ever!!! I will never forget tutoring my student for another class and her having the epiphany that she did about the sight words we had been working on.  She was so excited that she could recognize and say those words. As a student teacher who had been working with her and had seen the process she went through to get to this point... I was just as proud as she was!!!!  These are the moments that help me know that I am truly in the profession that I am supposed to be!!! :0)

Links and such....

Here are my links for my comments on student work...

http://wildcatwritersof804.blogspot.com/2011/04/creative-description-from-picture.html

http://wildcatwritersof804.blogspot.com/2011/04/lightening.html#comments

http://write2persuade.blogspot.com/2011/04/engine-vs-steel.html#comments


I think this was one of the harderst things I have ever done.....

A memory that will last...

Whew!!! What a week it has been. Between school work and student work, I feel that I have not had a chance to stop and catch my breath. 

This week for me had been quite stressful because I had to turn in my unit plan... I bet I scrapped my plan 4 times before I could finish it.  Note to self teaching (planning) pre-k is harder than it looks.

In other news, our school was on lock down both days I was there last week. Experiencing it from a teacher's stand point is much differnt than from a student stand point.  By this I mean instead of just following directions and procedures set down by the teacher, I had to implement what the prinicpal wanted.  Fielding questions was some what difficult because honestly I was never sure what was going to come out of their mouths.  One child told me it was not fair to keep them in from outside because they needed their recess... mind you these children are four and five.  Needless to say I was astonished.  To say that I was ready to leave on Friday is an understatement.  I was absolutely, positively wiped out at 2:30pm when we took them out to their buses.

One thing I do wonder is,do all teachers go thru training for these events? I know in my school there was confusion about what constitutes a soft vs. hard lock down... I think some sort of print out or something would be beneficial for each teacher to have to refer to.  Other than that I think that keeping communication between teacher and administration is important and maybe not  have so much on the announcements to freak students out.  This week has been one that I will remember... hopefully I will learn from it as well...

It's All in a Days Work....

Wow what a break we had... I really enjoyed my two weeks away from UGA.  The week at Fowler Drive was amazing.  I thought spending two days a week was a lot but it is nothing compared to a week.  This past week I learned more about my students than I have the entire semester.  One experience I will never forget is during center time, the students from my class made their own parade of instruments and played them as they walked together around the room.  That moment was the sweetest one I believe I have ever seen.  It was touching to see all of the students getting along and playing nicely.
As for literature in my classroom this week, we talked about the circus and what can found in a circus. During center time my teacher encouraged her students to create thier own circus in the art center. The application was nice because at the end of centers, she had each child come up and tell about their circus.  Some students had their circus so figured out they could tell you what color clothing thier clowns would wear and what you could find to snack on at their circus.  My class has so much creativity that it is really inspiring to work with these students and I consider myself lucky to be apart of it.
Onto the book, chapter 12 spoke about topics for writing workshops.  Since I am in a pre-k classroom things are a little different than in the first grade classroom I was in last time.  My example comes from my first grade classroom and not pre-k for me.  In first grade my teacher gave them topics to write about but in giving them topics they were allowed to pick from three each time.  The three topics that were given also were always related.  For example: write about your favorite pet, tell me about a pet that you would like to own, or write about and describe your pets favorite toy.  As the year goes on the topics build on each other and go from information to persuasive and so on. 
What she warned me about was the idea of publishing and making a book.  She was rooked into trying the book idea out on her class but unfortunately go stuck with an early date: October instead of January or February.  In trying to complete the book some of her lessons had to be rushed a bit and I noticed that her students seemed to be stressed.  Instead of writing and learning about animals for fun to make a new informational piece.  It became her is your animal, you have one day to research it, one day to draft, one day to revise and one day to rewrite.  While this sounds like a lot of time to an adult, in student world with only 45 minutes to one hour of work time in Language Arts this was not a lot of time.  As the days went on the students levels of anxiety seemed to rise as students were becoming more grouchy.  Needless to say I was glad when everything was finished a week later and things could go back to normal.  I think in school timing is everything and it would have almost been better to pass up the oportunity to make the formal book.  Instead I believe it would have been my class I would have taken that opportunity to make my own collection of students work and made copies for everyone in the class.  I would have waited until I felt students were ready to take on such an extensive project instead of rushing it.  This is only my opinion however and at all the students made it through it.  What doesn't kill us makes us stronger right?????

Publish or Perish.... Sounds like LIFE or DEATH...

   I enjoyed this weeks readings because I like to believe that I am a fairly organized individual whom will use the space in my classroom to the fullest. In chapter seven of Wood Ray I liked the section that spoke about the use of space in a classroom for writing workshop. Last semester I was assigned to a first grade classroom and my mentor teacher held writing workshop. During the time for her focus lesson she would have her students come sit in the floor on her rug and she would sit as well. In this classroom it was not as big of a deal for students to move to the floor because this is where she held morning meeting as well. I enjoyed observing her lessons on the carpet because each child truly payed attention to the lesson even though they were not in their regular seats. I noticed in the book that Wood Ray suggested having students switch up who sits where. I am not sure if this is for the older children or if the reason it worked so well with my students is because they are used to sitting on the carpet .But my students never needed direction as to where to sit. Additionally my mentor teacher did allow for her students to sit any where in her room they wanted when working on their notebooks. She believed students needed their own private space to think and work. I completely agree that students should have this freedom to pick where they feel comfortable to write!

   Chapter 8 taught me that writing workshops take time and deep thought to come up with and that using kits can be trouble some. I remember when I was in school one of my teachers had such a kit. Each week we had to pick a topic out of the hat and write a paper about it. That particular year I remember absolutely dreading picking a topic each week for fear that I would get a topic to write about that I would have nothing to relate to. For instance one time I got the topic, “ Write about a time where you, your mom and dad went on vacation”. Yeah... way to make me feel bad that my parents were divorced. I know that it should not have bothered me but if I could have picked my own topics I may have been more likely to write about my favorite vacation with my mom. I hope to foster a writing workshop where students are comfortable to write about things going on in their life. I want them to feel safe to be “real” with their classmates.

   The last chapter... chapter 19 was an interesting chapter. This whole idea of publish or perish troubles me. I read this as either publish your piece or fail. In class I learned that students should feel comfortable to start a piece and either finish it or leave it and start a new. The author makes a good point that students should have a deadline so that they are working towards a goal. However I do not feel it is fair to suggest that every student must finish every piece. I know I just asked you about abandoning a piece because I was at a dead end and could no longer add anything to it. So would it be fair to say I fail because I did not finish that piece or would it be better of me because I may write an even better piece? Such a conundrum and I believe that this is something that I will have to think about...

Ephiphany

   After reading this weeks assigned readings I had an ephiphany.  In high school, my junior year we had to complete a research paper in Enligsh class.  My teacher assigned us a topic a piece and then proceeded to allow us to research it.  After doing some research we started our first draft. When we thought we were getting near finishin our first draft we were aloud to make appointments with her to look over our work so far.  During our appointment she would look over our paper, ask us about the topic and what made us chose the facts we did to put into our paper.  Looking back now I see that she was using this time to look at what we had done with our paper.  I was struggling with citations within the text whether it be from a non fiction book, website, dictonary etc.  During my appointment she taught the how to cite correctly and make a bibliography.  I enjoyed my time I had with my teacher because it was one on one.  No other students were around and I felt that I could be real with her.  I tend to be a shy person so this made it easier for me to open up.  What I mean to say is that this week after reading about conferences it triggered memories for me of high school and my own expereince in a conference.  I do agree that they should be focused on the student but I do not think that the teacher should ignore all of the other students.  I love that the author suggests seeing different people all the time so that everyone gets an opporunity.  What I am not so sure about is not allowing opportunites for students to come to you instead of the teacher always choosing whom to conference with next.  I think I would like a few slots for people who really need to talk their piece over with me and then have the other slots for people I have not seen in awhile.
    Something else that I learned about that intrugied me is this idea of making time to share. I do not normally like to share anything I write or do.  I am a very private person when it comes to sharing things I have written because I know how others ridicule each other behind their backs.  However, I really would like to try the idea of having students share pieces of their work instead of the whole piece.  By having students pick their favorite sentence or paragraph from the text then we all get to see little clips of the big picture.  It makes it kind of exciting if you think about it because you do not know anything more than what is being read.  I imagine I could have picked one sentence from my entries to share and not been too embarrassed.  I plan to use this as an option for people who do no want to share their entire work.
   Lastly I would like to talk about this idea of grading or evaulating.  When I was younger and even in the 1st grade classroom that I worked with last semester there was a place for students to grade themselves.  Children and adults know what they do and do not do.  I think by having this element in evaluation of the work, we as teachers can get a better handle on what students are doing and how well they are doing it.  By this I mean if the work is kind of lower than expected and the student writes that he/she did not work on it very much then we know why the work is of less quality.  In my first grade classroom that I worked with last semester each student was very responsible and honest as to what she/he had completed.  Students were not ashamed to write no I did not do this or no I did not do that because my teacher made an atmosphere with her students as long as they were honest she would not get mad.  I hope to have that kind of patience when I teach.  In turn she allowed them to finish what they did not do in their spare time.  In short I do think it is important to have self evaluation of work in the grading process because it helps hold students accountable for their work.

Getting ready to teach writing workshop...

This weeks readings were very helpful.  I liked that she spoke in chapter nine about the five categories for teaching writing workshop: how the room is set up, how we use that room, what is taught in focus lesson  and conference as well what we chose to investigate and how we require writing homework.  Set up of the room and how we use it seems pretty obvious but I would have never thought about the focus lesson and conference as well as the writing homework.  I see after reading this chapter that I still have a lot left to learn.  I only hope that I can see a writing workshop in person with a great lead teacher. 

Something that I would like address and talk about that came up in chapter nine is the idea of setting up the room to teach.  In previous classes I have taken in college it has been suggested that by modeling works or giving rubrics it can lend itself to students doing less superior work.  I must say that I was relieved to read that the author believes that students should be exposed to such works of art to help promote creativity.  After all if a poem can be written about the sounds that overall buckles make in the dryer than anything is possible. :0)

So in chapter 10 we learn that one of the goals of the author is for students to read the world like a writer.  What makes this such an awesome goal is that she practices what she preaches.  In class she shows her students an entry of her notebook where she had written a story about a car that passed by with a canoe on top of it.  What she explains to them is that there is always inspiration around us to write about.  She writes a fictional story about the car with the canoe on top of it and I learned from this chapter how if students are struggling for a topic, they can look around and use ordinary things around the room to make a story.  I only hope in my future that I will be able confident in my own work to share it with my class or I could just bring in books to share I guess.

Last chapter to discuss... chapter 13...I would like to talk about focus lessons in general. I knew that the whole point for writing workshop was to be student centered... or at least I thought it was. However in this chapter I learned that the majority of the writing workshop is spent with students working on their pieces but a small portion is spent with the teacher teaching about a topic relevant to everyones writing.  For instance when trying to get students to work on poems its a good idea to show them an example and then suggest that they go back through their writing after you are finished with their lesson as many times poems can be found in an entry.  What the author taught me is that each workshop should have some instruction from the teacher to somewhat guide students after all they are supposed to be learning as they write. I found it also interesting that she said not to have students tell some of the works right now but instead suggest their piece maybe used for this topic and so on and so fourth.  So students are involved but not directly just yet. The main goal of the lesson is to stay focused so that students can learn.  I really enjoyed this chapter and I learned a lot!!! 

Looking at writing... a new perspective

This week represents my first full week of this semester.  I read chapters one through five in our textbook and would like to take a few moments to reflect on it.

Chapter one was an interesting read. I really appreciated the author explaining the difference between what the writing process is and holding a writing workshop.  When I was younger and in elementary as well as middle school, our writing class consisted of our teacher assigning us a topic and then going through the motions of the process.  It was painful in school to go through all of the steps of drafting, revising, rewriting, peer editing and then final rewrite.  There were times I can remember where we worked for two weeks on the same piece.  I think pulling every strand of hair out one by one would have been more fun.  In turn I learned to dislike writing.  Every time a teacher spoke of starting a new piece I just wanted to scream.  In my future classroom I would like to focus more on writing workshop.  I agree that it is important to teach the process but I want the focus to stay on the workshop itself.

Chapter two said what I believe many teachers think, if students write in all of the other subject areas is it really necessary to have a writing class? (Ray 17)  I agree with the author that yes it is necessary to have time for writing class.  It would have been nice to have time each day to write and almost keep a journal of everything going on.  It would have been nice to have time to just write what I was feeling and what I was thinking.  I plan to have time each day even if it is only 30 minutes for students to free write.

The next chapters I would like to discuss together.  It was funny to read what the author wrote when she said that people disagree that they are writers but instead reader’s when indeed many people write different things each day.  I know I write emails, text messages, bills, letters, and thank you notes.  I wonder if some one pointed this fact out if people would agree that they are indeed writers.  And lastly I would like to reiterate that a schedule is key to success of any classroom and so is lenience.  However, writing workshop does not needed to be treated like a fluid entity.  I agree completely that students need time to write and work on old pieces as well as new pieces.  Once established I believe that a writing workshop can exist with little instruction from the teacher.  In the classrooms that I have observed the best writing workshops were peer led.  I hope to apply what I have learned today to my classroom in the future.