Week 12

I really enjoyed looking at the digital stories last week.  The ones we watched in class were very interesting and the voices in the stories were very powerful.  I am also excited to get to work on my published piece from my writers notebook.

Week 11

This week's field experience was very chaotic because the class I am in had a substitute.  It was very frustrating to realize how little would get accomplished today.

This week's class seemed to go extremely fast.  I like the idea of publishing one of our writings from our writers notebook and am pretty excited about my idea.  I also enjoyed looking at and hearing about the pictures people brought in. 

Week 10

It was really fun seeing everyone's multi genre projects this week.  It was interesting to see all the different types of writing that are possible and that kids can be exposed to in the classroom.  I wish we could of presented them individually in front of the class so we could've seen everyones best presentation, but with such a large class and time constraints setting them up around the room worked almost as well.

Week 9

Today was very fun I really enjoyed reading the story with the four voices.  I thought it was interesting to see the different points of view from the different characters in the story.  It was also fun picking a different character and writing what they were thinking during the story.  With this we were able to see what the bit only the different points of view from other characters that didn't have a vioce in the story but we also got to here how other people would portray these voices differently.

Week 8

Looking at and evaluating our journals last week was very helpful.  Many of my entries are stories and rants.  I always seem to forget that we can write anything we want in our journals.  If I would remember this writing in my journal wouldn't be such a chore.  I think the main problem is that I am stuck in the ways of how I have used journals for other classes. 

Week 7

Looking at the different articles in the newspaper was a cool idea.  I had never consider there to be so many different types of articles in a newspaper.  It also gave me some good ideas about my multigenre project.  I really enjoyed doing the public service anouncement and I think it could be a neat part of my multigenre project.

Week 6

As a teacher of writing I haven't really taught any writing yet other than teacher students how to sound out letters.  The kindergarten classroom's writing lessons mainly consist of them drawing at this point and sounding at simple letters to label their pictures.  It is very interesting to see the students trying to write and spell the best they can.  Many of the students can sound out the letters to get the basic letters in a word correct but they lack the skills to know about things such as silent "e".

Week 5

This week we taught our lessons to the class and I chose to do mine over Urban Legends and Myths.  I always find it more difficult to teach a lesson designed for a child to my peers because I don't talk to them the same I would talk to a group of students.  I don't think this kind of teaching is very representative of an actual classroom setting but the experience and practice are still very helpful.

Week 4

I found the lesson on punctuation this week very interesting along with the book Eats Shoots and Leaves.  Its really cool how you can add puncuation in different parts of a sentence to change the meaning of it completely.  It reminded me of a lesson from high school where the teacher showed a letter from a parent to a child.  The first letter was nice and congratualatory, but after changing the punctuation the letter showed that the mother was angry at her child.  I also enjoyed the mini lesson presentations. The Craft Lessons book has many great ideas for lessons and is one of the few books that I feel a need to hang on to and its not just because the bookstore won't buy it back.

Week 3

I really enjoyed the article Eleven by Sandra Cisneros because as elementary teachers I think we need to be able to see ourselves at every age.  I also enjoyed looking deeper into stories and noticing different things. I have always found it interesting to hear what others pick up from stories that I didn't. 

Week 2

Last week was very interesting we decorated out writers notebooks with things that represented us and shared them with our tables.  I really enjoyed sharing things the things that represented us.  I am also enjoying the writing in my writers notebook more.  At first I thought it would be like pulling teeth but its way more enjoyable than that.  Learning about different ways to teach students spelling and coming up with spelling words was also interesting.  It made me think about how my previous elementary teachers taught spelling and how it can be done to be more beneficial for students.  Like taking words they misspell from their writing and making them into individual spelling lists for students.

Class 1

The first class of E-339 was very long, but by it not being complete lecture I think it will be more interesting.  The two stories we read at the beginning of class were interesting because I've always enjoyed people reading or telling stories.  I also liked the articles about origins of names and the activity we did.  The origins of names is a very interesting subject.