Week 4

Wow! I guess its been a while since I have thought about punctuation and its role in how readers understand what is written. Also, the worksheet about punctuation is a great tool for students to really demonstrate their knowledge about punctuation, but also describe it in their own way. I was also really happy to have read Up, Up Down as a class. That was a really cute way to have read a story like that, and I know that a classroom full of kids would have really enjoyed that.
This week was also the first week that we worked with our peers on our writer's notebook. To be honest, for some reason sharing my notebook made me kind of worried just because although its not too terribly personal, it still contains some of my own thoughts and observations. I guess I just would feel uncomfortable if someone read it right now because its still unpolished and my partner and I are still getting to know each other.
I also really enjoyed the Craft Lessons book and presentations. There were some really great suggestions about some really cool lessons, and it was great for me that I didn't have to read an entire book to learn about all of them because my classmates presented them to me! I really liked working in groups a lot for that part of the class.

Week 3

In class this week we listened to a story about an 11 year old girl who was telling us all about her birthday. I really enjoyed the rich, descriptive language that the writer used to describe everything, however I really felt sorry for the girl because she was getting made fun of by many of her classmates. I remember that was a hard time for me too, just because it was a time where you realized that you were growing up and that people who you grew up with and knew from school all of your life started changing and deciding who their "real" friends were.
We also began our field experience this week. I was so excited to be immersed in the classroom, and I am excited that I have the unique opportunity to help in the 4th grade classroom. Two of the fourth grade teachers and the librarian are working together so that they can help their readers to get the most out of their language arts time. The classrooms switch and get mixed around, and because the librarian is taking some of the students, the groups for each teacher are smaller, which means more one-on-one time for the students and teachers.
One teacher works with teachers who are low-level readers, one is working with students who are at grade level, and the librarian is working with the high achieving students. I sat in with the librarian this week and she did a really great job with the students. She is implementing technology into reading by having each student read a part of a story using their best character voices and turning this into a youtube video that they can share with their classmates and their parents. She chose some really interesting poems for the students to read aloud which really helped them to connect to the text by using different voices. For instance, she read a book about different dogs, and she passed the book around and let each student read the story in the voice that they thought the dog would have. It was really fun and engaging.
The fourth graders also go to their specials during the time that we visit the school, so we get the opportunity to rotate and see literature in art and music, and we also get to observe gym class. I just really enjoyed my first day in field experience and I can't wait to get back in the classroom!

Learning to Spell

I really enjoyed learning about spelling and the different techniques teachers use to help all students with spelling. I had never really considered people having trouble learning to spell using the typical spelling list, but I can see how there could be flaws with a system like that. It was also really interesting to learn about the process students use to figure out how to spell words that they don't know. I guess I never thought about how student use a misspelled word as a place keeper, or how students with higher level thinking skills substitute other words when they can't figure out how to spell the original word. Switching gears: I really, really enjoyed decorating my writers notebook because it was such a great way to personalize something that stores my personal thoughts and ideas. I just feel as though I connected more to the notebook as MY notebook instead of just another notebook for my class notes. I can't wait to fill it up more both on the cover with pictures and inside with thoughts.

First Day of Class

Today in class we looked at several pieces of literature. We started the class by reading two books The Relatives by Cynthia Rylant and The Leaving Morning by Angela Johnson. They were both really interesting stories to begin a new class with because they talked more about leaving something, rather than starting something new. In other classes where teachers have chosen to start a class with a book, its usually one that I have heard of or at least one with a very optimistic and exciting feeling. I don't know if I got that feeling from either book, but it did get my attention. It also left me wondering why exactly both of those books were chosen.

Toward the end of the class, I really enjoyed reading the little bits of House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Never in a Hurry by Naomi Shihab Nye.  Although I don't like writing an analysis, I really do enjoy analyzing literary works, so I really liked

that everyone got a chance to share what they got from each work in terms of what each author said and also what the text

structure itself said about the work. Talking about this as a class and then writing our own piece about our name was a  

smart way to help us to not only think like a writer, but also to practice writing in our Writer's Notebook. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the content of the first class with the exception of the length (which I'll have to get used to), and I'm

actually excited to start writing and documenting things on this blog and in my notebook.