Welcome to Essentials of Writing! We look forward to working and learning with you. In order for everyone to get the most out of the course, please be sure to read and respond to each others comments.Please try to keep your responses within one allotted "comment" space to ensure that the blog remains manageable for all participants.
Also, you may want to type your comments in a Word Document and either copy from Word and paste onto the blog or save it in a folder on your computer and then post it to the blog. I have written a couple of lengthy comments that I lost before I was able to post it to the blog. This extra step may save you some frustration later on this term.
Last of all, we will write our comments to your posts on the blog, so you will need to check back to the corresponding week for feedback (and to make additional comments if you wish.)
Let us know if you have any questions. You can email us, but please put the words "Question for Essentials of Writing" in the subject line so that we can respond in a timely fashion.
ASSIGNMENT ONE: Post your Introduction to the course Blog.
Introduction Post- Tell us about yourself. Where do you teach? What grade do you teach? How long have you been teaching? How many students are there in your class? Do you have instructional support? What does your current literacy program look like? (If you aren’t currently teaching let us know.) What is your knowledge/training in the area of literacy (be specific about your experiences teaching writing?) Does your district provide training in literacy –especially writing? If so, what exactly have they offered? Has your district been bogged down with getting students to perform well on state writing assessments – prompts? How do you feel about teaching? Are you happy at work? Also, let us know a little about you outside of the classroom: Interests/ Hobbies/Family Life? What do you hope to get out of this course? Post your reflection to the blog.
Also, you may want to type your comments in a Word Document and either copy from Word and paste onto the blog or save it in a folder on your computer and then post it to the blog. I have written a couple of lengthy comments that I lost before I was able to post it to the blog. This extra step may save you some frustration later on this term.
Last of all, we will write our comments to your posts on the blog, so you will need to check back to the corresponding week for feedback (and to make additional comments if you wish.)
Let us know if you have any questions. You can email us, but please put the words "Question for Essentials of Writing" in the subject line so that we can respond in a timely fashion.
ASSIGNMENT ONE: Post your Introduction to the course Blog.
Introduction Post- Tell us about yourself. Where do you teach? What grade do you teach? How long have you been teaching? How many students are there in your class? Do you have instructional support? What does your current literacy program look like? (If you aren’t currently teaching let us know.) What is your knowledge/training in the area of literacy (be specific about your experiences teaching writing?) Does your district provide training in literacy –especially writing? If so, what exactly have they offered? Has your district been bogged down with getting students to perform well on state writing assessments – prompts? How do you feel about teaching? Are you happy at work? Also, let us know a little about you outside of the classroom: Interests/ Hobbies/Family Life? What do you hope to get out of this course? Post your reflection to the blog.
Hello! My name is Kelly. I am currently teaching grade 1 ESOL at an international school in Beijing. This is my first year in China, and I'm still adjusting. In the past I've been a grade 1 and grade 2 homeroom teacher in the States and in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I pull out two groups of 7 ESOL students each, daily. Most of these students are Chinese or Korean, though we have a few European students as well. I am the primary reading teacher for these students, but not their primary writing teacher.
In the past I have used readers and writers workshop in my own classrooms. I have also been trained to use Six Traits Writing and Step Up to Writing. At my current school, the teachers are given a lot of latitude and autonomy with teaching literacy. Next year we will be moving to a co-teaching, push-in model, so I will share the teaching within the homeroom classes during the literacy block. I'm happy that I will get to focus again on more writing instruction, as well as reading instruction.
We have been doing push-in for a while. It is really effective to be able to collaborate with the reading specialist about specific students that we share. There is a significant difference in student growth.
DeleteHi Kelly! Welcome to our class. It's a slow start this term, but there's still a few weeks for people to register for the course. How exciting to be moving towards a co-teaching/push-in model next year.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to working with you this term!
My name is Kelly Norman and I am a first grade teacher in The Centennial School District, Portland, Oregon. I have been teaching for six years and I just recently realized that my first group of 6th graders is now seniors in high school, yikes.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, I have 26 in my first grade class. We receive Title I reading support where a reading specialist comes into my room for an hour of the reading portion of the literacy block. We are a Balanced Literacy district. This just means we start each day with a mini-lesson in reading (15 minutes) and conduct guided reading groups for 1 hour. During that hour the students are engaging in 1 or 2 guided reading lessons, independent reading, word work activities or partner reading/listening center. After the hour, we meet back as a class and reflect on the reading block. Writing is set up the same, but not strong and without support. We also do not get a lot of professional development for writing. This is my reason for choosing this course.
I do feel stress, especially at this time in the year. As I teach first grade, we do not have state testing. We do, however, give assessments to our students that align with the SBAC testing they will be doing later. I both agree and disagree with this task. The “bogged down” feeling is not so much the testing for my team; there are other things the district requires that takes up unnecessary time. Truly I want more time to talk about how to effectively teach writing to our students within the support system our district provides. That does not seem to have the priority; yet, The Common Core State Standards focuses heavily on writing.
I love teaching and I love the school in which I work. The work is difficult and requires a lot of time off the clock, but I am passionate about teaching. It is not as hard to put in the extra time and effort when you like your job. I often feel bad for my friends and family that work really hard but do not enjoy the work.
Outside of work I am pretty boring but really love my life. I have a huge dog that is more like a kid than a pet. My husband adores him. I just started dancing again, I do Irish step and Sean-nos dancing. I really love going to the movies and have since I was really young. Most of my weekends and summer I am spending time with friends and family in a backyard with a BBQ.
I am excited to read Reggie Routman’s book again. I read it while going to grad school, but it has been a very long time and my experience is so different. I am hoping that I take from this class a way to structure my writing that allows me to teach students to be independent writers. I want to also have skills to meet with students more regularly and effectively give them the support they need to improve.
kellynorman2578@gmail.com
Hi Kelly. I'm glad to see someone else in the course. And I'm excited that you're also working with first grade. I hope I'll be able to hear more about how you're collaborated with the other teachers to improve your literacy block.
DeleteI feel similarly to you about writing--for whatever reason, I feel like the emphasis is always placed on reading and never on writing when it comes to curricular support and professional development.
Hello Kelly,
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the class! We think you'll really enjoy re-reading this text...each time I do I come away with even more new ideas.
I'm intrigued...being of Irish decent (my husband and I are actually dual citizens) I know about step dancing, but I don't know about Sean-nos. I'm going to have to Google it. :)
I'm at a K-2 school and the SBAC is also big here on the East Coast.
Looking forward to working with you this term.
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