What Can a Blog Be Used For?

In my children's literature class we discussed the importance of talking about books while you are reading or when you just get done reading them.  Most of the time as adults we do not read a book and then go and make a shoe box diagram of what we just read, rather we go and find someone who we can talk to about the book.  Student's minds think the same way a lot of times and it is important that they have the chance to discuss a book that they have enjoyed, or maybe not enjoyed.  I know we wrote about The Girl with the Brown Crayon in our blogs, but I can in vision an on going blog, all on the same page with the students ideas and thoughts about their own books written in it.  They can share their ideas and thoughts about books read as a class or even about books they are reading at home, this could give other students ideas as to what is out there to read.  I find that having all these different pages can get kind of confusing and it is hard to keep up with all the different topics.  I do not know a lot about technology but I know there are different ways to have a blog, I would find a different way for my class, but this blog that we have started has given many ideas for my future classroom.  

Assessing Students Writing

During my Tuesday Experience I have been able to observe many students doing writing activities and because of this have been able to tie what we have learned in class to what the students are doing in school. I never knew what students were capable of when it comes to writing, but after reading these samples and see them in school students have good things to write about. Sometimes it is hard to look past the errors in writing in order to see how great the ideas really are. In class we have learned to assess the students work both on how well it is writen when it comes to organization, fluency, and word/sentence variety, etc, and their spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We need to look at both aspects of writing when evaluating students work. There are a few students in my class at Whiting Lane who have great ideas but have a hard time organizing them and then writing them down correctly. Now that we all have this knowledge on how to assess the students work, we can then turn and help them become better in all areas of writing.

I was also unaware of the different stages that students go through in writing. I figured there had to be some sort of way to tell where they are in their writing but was not aware that these stages have been made up. I have learned that there are many ways to asses students spelling. All students have different ways of spelling and sometimes it is hard to see how they came up with the words, using the rubric we worked on today we can look at the stages and evaluate their spelling in order to put them in a category. Being able to look closely at something as important as spelling, we as teachers can help develop students weaknesses and also help increase their strengths.

Reading and Writing Connections Made in Tuesday Experience

A lot of what I have seen in Tuesday Experience has been reading and then responding to questions.  The students will read a short excerpt whether it is on a work sheet or in their Time for Kids magazine.  after they have read the passage they resond to questions using evidence from the text and their own ideas from real life to make connections.  This type of work is a way that they are practicing for the CMT's because that is basically all they are doing in the classroom. I like that the teacher has involved other things into her reading and writing time like the Time for Kids, this keeps the students updated on events around the world and important information that they should know about the U.S.  It is also a good practice for the CMT's comprehensive part.  Some of the stories they read in the TFK's are not that easy to understand, but with the prompting questions the teacher comes up with the students are able to relate to the text and find an understanding of it.