Professional Ponderings

Horay!!! I survived my first day of student teaching! I hope everyone else had a good day as well.

Since we are all going to be having less time to do anything soon, I decided to give a few time saving tips that I have discovered this past year. They have helped me to survive my busy schedule with school, teaching and a baby, and to maintain a small bit of sanity.

Food!

We all need to eat and PotBelly and Brueggers don’t cut it every day. The following websites have easy and good recipes.

Kraftfoods.com is obviously sponsored by Kraft, but it has easy recipes that take very little time. Many of them can be made ahead and/or frozen. You can also sign up to receive recipes by email and they have a seasonal free cooking magazine. Most of the ingredients are just siting around in the pantry, and don’t worry store brand groceries cook just fine in the recipes.

http://www.campbellkitchen.com Campbell’s soup and their related products also have a recipe website. If you ever need to cook something fast take any cream soup, some chicken and whatever else you have on hand mix it together and bake for about a half hour.

Rachel Ray Has a searchable archive of many of her recipes. Her 30 minute meals take 30 min or less, even if you are awkward in the kitchen.

My favorite Recipe: Flat Bread Pizza

• Heat oven to 400
• Cut up vegetables
• take flat bread (I like Flatout Wraps) and place on a cookie sheet
• Spread spaghetti sauce on
• put on toppings and cheese
• Cook for about 15 min

To make cooking even less painful fill your sink when you start cooking. That way you can throw your dishes in the sink, let them soak. While the food is cooking rinse them and you are done!

Stick a serving of whatever you cooked in a Tupperware (or the ziplock or Glad type) container for lunch the next day and freeze whatever you don’t think you are going to eat before it goes bad.

As for the readings. I feel like I am technology-overloaded. Maybe it is because I have been studying media since 1999 and have been aware of many new advances in the communications field. I think that many of these new technologies can be used in the classroom but that we need to remember TPCK and use these resources responsibly, effectively and appropriately. Using a blog or a wiki just to use one is pointless. (Now I love doing blog postings for class way better than normal journals) So just think before using a technology tool: “Am I using this because it will advance my students’ learning or am I using it because it is cool?”

Here is a Wiki site that is fairly easy to set up and use: PBwiki.com

Sorry I missed all of you in class today.  I just couldn’t rationalize driving my daughter out in this questionable weather.  For some reason people forget how to drive in the snow.  MMMG group (Emily, Jacob, Joe, Eugene and Rob) I’ll send you a note about compiling our stuff.

I have actually seen with my own eyes 12 year olds excited about grammar. I know this sounds rare and straight out of “The Twilight Zone”, none the less it is true. The key is they learned grammar along with usage. Williams does a great job at distinguishing the difference between grammar and usage: “Grammar is how words fit together in patterns to communicate meaning, Usage is about the words we choose to communicate meaning” (171-2) I think that this distinction helps put teachers, students and parents in a position to understand what issues in writing really are, as well as to begin a discussion about where they come from. (My cooperating teacher uses the Kansas method of grammar instruction, she took a seminar on it)

The most important thing, though, that I gleaned from this chapter is that we need to focus on discussing usage issues. However in order to have a common language to discuss these issues by we need to have some type of grammar instruction. When going through the common usage mistakes I was racking my brain to remember what parts of speech Williams was talking about.  If we taught grammar with usage in some type of context maybe we could improve writing.  Who knows though.

Another thing I kept thinking about is our favorite linguistics class.  It seems as if what we learned in there applies to teaching of grammar/usage. The problem is it was not taught in relation to teaching English.  Maybe if it were in the grad program, or related specifically to the teaching of English it would have been more beneficial.

Here is a link relating to grammar www.grammarandmore.com . It has some tips, activities and articles on teaching usage and grammar.

All right I tried to read Williams. I thought hey my head is swollen up like a balloon, Williams has to seem better in this condition. Nope couldn’t do it. (look up mumps and that is what my head looked like, no I don’t have mumps I was immunized)

Anyway Assessment, woah what a heavy heavy loaded word. I typed it in to Google and it came back with about 210,000,000 results! Does it mean testing in the traditional sense? How about oral assessment-spoken tests? Obviously here we are talking about writing assessment. I know lets use Rubrics! These are supposed to be an objective form for assessing students writing. Now I love rubrics. As a student they let me know what my professor is expecting. As a teacher it lets my students know what I expect and shows them that they did not get a bad grade because “I don’t like them” but because they did not meet the criteria. The Wyngaard article has a slightly interesting rubric

Excellent Writing:

On reading the opening paragraph(or paragraphs), the reader gets hooked because the imaginative writing engages the reader’s curiosity and/or resonates within the reader. The reader is excited about this text and stops thinking about other things. The writing speaks to the reader in an original, and/or moving voice. It is transporting; the reader can’t put it down.

Good Writing:

The writing is interesting and solid. The writer uses a compelling voice and/or some originality but doesn’t engage the reader wholeheartedly. The reader might suddenly feel hungry right in the middle of the second paragraph and need to go to the kitchen for a cookie. The reader then comes back and enjoys the rest of the story.

OK as someone reading these narratives the difference between the first and the second could be the difference between reading my third narrative and my sixtieth. The two narratives could be the same but after reading dozens of them I might just need a cookie!

This rubric is flawed. Although I get what they are aiming at. They want students to go for that writing that hooks you from the start and you won’t want to put it down. However it is subjective not objective like a rubric should be. Now I may be weird but I can be completely fascinated by a microbiology textbook (FYI if you ever want to take a cruse never read about microbiology, but that is a different topic). Most others scream at this thought. Many others are intrigued by Jane Eyre and Other such novels (I on the other hand run screaming!) This rubric would give these different voices different grades just because of the subject matter.

A rubric needs to keep in mind that it needs to be somewhat OBJECTIVE!!!

OK done ranting.

Rubistar is a site that lets you look at, analyze and edit rubrics. A fun little tool to get your brain going on assessment!

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

This is a link to a writing page with various articles and tips on writing with voice,and other areas of writing

http://www.efuse.com/Design/wa-voice.html

If only I knew that it was O.K. to fail on a first draft. If only I knew that it was OK to make errors and that it was more important to get the words out on the page. If I knew these things I may not have this apprehension before a paper is due, that the first draft is the same as the final draft and that it must be perfect. But, alas, it is a long painful process to suffocate my inner perfectionist.

Now on to voice. I think that one great way to get students to develop a voice is to have them write a blog. Just like we each are writing a blog and developing our own voice, students can do the same. Blogging is a low-pressure environment. It does not have the feel of a paper. It instead has the freedom of a conversation. Students could draft their writing on their blogs, free write, sketch ideas. From there they could write another draft with their first one done under very little pressure therefore hopefully having true voice and great ideas.

There are many sources out on the web for the 5P essay.  Of course many of them are sites that you can copy essays from (just be aware).  However there is a site that offers help with writing the 5P and other Eng. Lang. Arts tools.  Factmoster.com is focused more towards elementary and middle school than HS but is a good site to direct your middle schoolers to.

factmonster.com

So the 5 paragraph is bad, the 5 paragraph is good. Wait it has its merits but we need to go beyond it, maybe add a poem in the middle of it! Everyone has their opinions of this fun little essay.

I think of the 5P as the basics. In music you need to learn your scales before you can do Jazz improv. Knowing your scales helps you to site read music better too because you have an idea of the underpinnings of what the piece is written on.

I remember practicing my scales over and over and over, hating every moment of it, but knowing that when it came time to audition or play a 32nd note run in a piece I would be able to do it, because I knew my basics.

In English the 5P is one of those basics. I hate writing it, I hate reading it, but it gives that same necessary foundation that my scale practice did.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t go beyond the 5P. Writing in only the 5P format would be like an orchestra opting to play scales in a concert instead of Dvorak’s New World Symphony (a beautiful piece if you are not familiar with it). However the 5P has its place just like scales.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of helping students edit their compare/contrast essays before they printed the final draft and turned them in. After two I was sick and tired of reading “There are a lot of similarities and differences in “The Iditarod Trail” and Balto.” The formulaic approaches left me thirsting for something of substance. Many students wrote very little, thinking that as long as they followed the formula they described the differences. The repetition of “In “The Iditarod Trail” X happened. This also happened in Balto.” made me scream. Just because the students followed the formula did not mean that they could write. It just meant that they could repeat what someone said, since most of the essays were duplicates of each-other.

I understand the need for students to learn how to write a comparison/contrast paper, but there has to be a better way to teach it.