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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My name is Julia O. I teach in Hillsboro, Oregon. I teach a 1st & 2nd split classroom. I have been teaching for 14 years. I have 27 students in my class.
ReplyDeleteI have instructional support for a ½ an hour each day to meet with small reading groups. My current literacy program is ½ hour of small reading groups, ½ hour 1st grade whole group & ½ hour 2nd Grade whole group, for a total of 90 minutes.
Currently my writing portion is squeezed into a ½ and hour at the end of each day. My writing lessons consist of sentence frames along with a prompt for that day. Many years ago, I took a great training on writing and my school purchased the materials suggested called Writer’s Workshop. However the following year I was transferred to a different school and they did not use these materials. We do not currently use a writing program at the school I am at now.
In the past, it seemed like writing was a huge priority with our school district. It was included as a suggested goal for the year, trainings were available and we met frequently about monthly writing goals in our PLC’s. The last few years, it seems to be less of a focus. We do not even have a structured writing time in our schedule. It is expected that we include it in our ELA and/or Content.
I enjoy teaching because I love the children I work with. I feel overwhelmed at times with the demands of teaching and the grown up demands that take away the energy and focus I’d prefer to put into my classroom. Like all teachers I know I am stressed and tired.
My hope from this class is that I learn some effortless ideas to make writing fun and successful for my students.
Hello Julia, Welcome to our class. We look forward to working with you this term. :) I think you'll enjoy this text very much and come away with new ideas to implement into your classroom to make writing fun for both you and the students! :D
ReplyDelete