Sunday, October 2, 2016

Assignment One: Introduction

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.

2 comments:

  1. Assignment One

    • My educational journey, first the basics. My name is Tom Mudroch. I am 53 years old. My teaching career started in 1989 at a small college in Foshan, China teaching English. In 1991, I moved across the South China Sea to Tainan, Taiwan to study Mandarin Chinese and teach English. I lived in Tainan until 2008. During that stint here, I taught at language schools, gave private lessons, started my own language school, got married, we adopted a daughter, and I became pretty good at Mandarin (the more I learn about Mandarin the more I learn I don’t know). From 2008 to 2013, my family and I lived in Salem, Oregon. There I earned my Master’s in Teaching from Willamette University. In 2013, we moved back to Tainan and for the past thee years I was the 3rd grade homeroom teacher at an international school. This year I am working part-time teaching English at a university teaching. I believe I have plenty to reflect upon as I work through this course.

    • The literacy program at my most recent school consisted of a set of textbooks that we were expected to cover over the course of the school year. There was a reading textbook, 3 novels, a vocabulary workbook, and a grammar workbook. There was no alignment amongst these books. A significant challenge that I faced was that the school did not have a literacy block. Instead, I was allotted 5; 50 minutes class periods per week to teach language arts. A third issue was, 70% of my students were English language learners. This affected how I taught and how much material we ultimately covered. The students did keep journals and wrote responses to what they read across the curriculum but I believe I failed to create a workshop atmosphere for literacy that included explicit instruction and time to write, revise, and sharing.

    • On the other hand, I never felt pressure for the students to perform well on writing assessments. That was because the school was going through its first accreditation process and had only just starting giving the Measure of Academic Progress Test (MAP). So last year was the first year in which the school collected this kind of data to fret about.

    • In regards to my knowledge and training in the area of literacy, I can say that I have taught writing here in Taiwan with the primary goal of helping students perform well on standardized tests and the university entrance exam for almost 20 years. In addition, I have participated in the Oregon Writing Project, and have taken the Daily Five and Engaging Students the Workshop Way through TINT.

    • From this course, I hope to refresh my memory of past learning, learn about more ways to incorporate writing in my classroom and strategies for teaching writing. I know that perhaps this course was not designed with my specific teaching situation in mind. However, it is my opinion best practices are just that and can be adjusted to meet the needs of one’s students. I found with the other classes I have taken through TINT I came away with ideas and strategies about teaching that I was eager to implement. I am looking forward to that feeling.

    • Outside of the classroom I like going to the gym, going for walks, hanging out with other expatriates, and I still study Chinese.

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  2. Hello Tom,

    Welcome to class! What an amazing background you have. I have long wanted to teach overseas, but haven't had the opportunity to do so yet.

    I agree, I think you'll be able to take the fundamentals from this class and apply them to your situation. If you feel you need to adjust an assignment to best fit your needs just let me know and we'll be sure to work something out for you. Nothing is worse than wasting time and creating assignments that won't have relevance to your instructional practice.

    Looking forward to working with you this term.
    :D Mary

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