Reflections of Course Content

So far in Teaching Language and Composition I have learned many activities to help build a better writing classroom for my students. Like I explained in a previous blog post, I love the idea of the traveling journals with specific topics to focus on. I feel like this is a great way to get students writing, and they help students continuously write. I want to try something like Erin Gruwell and have students just write journal entries daily. The entries can be about whatever they want, but it is a good way to help kids release their thoughts and get them to write. I think that if I had a criteria of how many posts they need to have for the week will be efficient. I don't need to read the entry, only if the student allows me to read it then I will. Journal writing can be very effective.

I also was surprised by the standardized test writing scores. I was shocked that so many of my peers and I had different responses to the grading. What shocked me even more was the fact that my peers and myself have different grading standards compared to the state requirements. This is a difficult situation because this type of grading can be very objective. As a teacher, you need to be cognizant of what is suppose to be in a student's writing. I fell in love with Kelly Gallagher's philosophy of writing. He makes the rubric with the class which I 100% agree with because then the student knows what is expected of him/her. I also like the fact that he personalizes the rubrics to fit each individual student. Each student will have two different comments on the bottom of their rubric for what he/she needs to work on in that particular writing piece. This helps that student perfect the area in which he or she is struggling. My cooperating teacher also values Gallagher's philosophy and I am glad we both get to apply his methods to our classroom. Visit his website for more details.

I am teaching Career Portfolios for my Strategy Demonstration. At first, I was hesitant because I didn't think this was too relevant to an English classroom, but I was wrong. I have found a great idea on a website that I am excited to share with the class. I am almost done preparing my lesson and look forward to presenting it to the class. I will be focusing on a Grade 11 indicator.