Ramblings for Week Five March 30-April 5

You do not need to post ramblings this week because you will be setting up response groups and starting to decide what you will write for a personal narrative/memoir. You all should have received an email with your group instructions for the week. The length, genre and topic are up to you. I have had poems, scripts,short stories, and traditional essays completed for this assignment. This is your opportunity to write what you wish, how ever you wish. Use your group to brainstorm possibilities this week. And be there to respond to other group members. Write on!

Week Five March 30- April 5: About the Readings...

This week's readings deal with teaching to standards and an article about mandating teaching practices. The National Council of Teachers of English has developed their own set of standards linked here. Review the Alaska content standards for writing for your level.

In Chapter Five, the text states that "State curriculum documents and assessments are now carrying a new message: writing should no longer be "the silent R" of learning...Improving writing is now seen as important for learning subjects other than English." Here are a few ideas to discuss in regard to the reading:

• Do you feel both these statements are true at your site?
• How important are state standards to your daily teaching?
• How "mandated" is what you do?
• Have you ever been forced to teach in a way you did not feel was a good fit for your philosophy or style?
• What are some of your own "standards" or goals as a teacher of writing?
• If you could change or revise some of the state standards, what changes would you make?
  

Let's save discussion about assessment and qualifying exams for next week.

Week Five begins National Poetry Month

As some of you have already noted, this week is the beginning of National Poetry Month. If you have some favorite sites, lessons or poems you would like to share, post them at this link. Here are a few sites I use and have found helpful in teaching poetry. Poets.org has some suggestions for easy ways to include poetry along with other resources and poems to share. I also like that it includes a section on Alaska. This is another link to ideas for all grade levels from Scholastic.

Week 4: About the Reading and Personal Reflections

March 23-29
Use this link to post your weekly conversation on the text and your own classroom. The text chapters two and three deal with learning to write and writing to learn. So many studies are covered that it feel a bit like the Readers' Digest of writing! Let's deconstruct a bit. What strikes you as particularly provoking, challenging or helpful?

Your assignments this week also include a reflective piece on a typical day in your classroom. What works,and what do you wish worked better? (I called it "A Day in the Life" or "The good, the bad, the ugly." Pick any title that fits your musings.) You may post that writing here or if you have a personal blog, you can post it there with a link here.

Ramblings For Week Four, March 23-29

Georgia Heard is another of my favorite writers who specializes in encouraging others to write. She has a range of books for teachers and for writers that you may have already discovered. Check out her website at http://georgiaheard.com . Many of her books focus on the teaching of poetry. Perhaps my favorite, however, is Writing Toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Find Your Way (Heinemann), a thin, inspirational volume that encourage us to write from close observation and past personal experiences. She challenges us to see the ordinary in an extraordinary way. On her website she writes: “Whether you are a student, teacher or a poet I believe our challenge is to find the poetry all around us every day. Children are often the best teachers of this. That's one of my goals when I teach poetry is to help every student find the poetry inside.” Perhaps we can try to find what is inside us or buried in our ordinary lives for our ramblings this week. Your goal is two posts.

Another outstanding Heard publication we may look at later is The Revision Toolbox which gives all teachers tools for approaching revision with students.

Getting started on the Virtual Tour

Even though we can't meet in person, you can share your classrooms through a virtual tour.
During the next two weeks, you should be working on a virtual classroom tour. This assignment has two goals. First, all of us will get a sense of the wide variety of schools and classrooms represented in our Virtual Institute. Secondly, I would like each of you to play around a bit with using technology as a means of publishing writing and sharing your classroom. Your tour should include several photos with captions or narration.

After you have taken pictures and written about your classroom, pick a specific place to share your work. You can create a blog like mine through Blogger; you can create a website like the one on which I have put the assignments; or you can create a PowerPoint and share it with us on Google Docs at docs.google.com . The Google options are free and relatively user friendly.
Each venue has a brief tutorial about how to use it most effectively.

If you already have a website or Blog, you can place your tour there and share the link with us by responding to this post. If all this technology drives you crazy, please just send me a PowerPoint, and I share it with others. The most important part of the assignment. after all, is sharing your classroom with the rest of our class.

Caitlin has already finished her tour and published it on her Blog which is on WordPress, another place you might consider putting yours. She has done an outstanding job. I am posting hers as a model; however, I don't expect all of you to have one with this much detail. I am sure you will enjoy her photos and accompanying narration. This is a link to Caitlin's tour.

Ramblings For Week Three, March 13-22

In honor of the Irish (I was blessed with an Irish mother), you might consider a toast, joke, limerick or other such "blarney" for ramblings this week. If you wish, you may limit rambling posts to only one since you are also responding to our readings and beginning to create the virtual tour of your classroom.

Last week's posts would have given even the likes of Yeats, O'Casey, or Joyce a wee pause. Well done, lads and lassies!

Week 3: About the readings....

Week beginning March 16:
Not much has been written yet about our readings. Use this as a place to discuss the readings for last week, this week, and the first chapters of our text Because Writing Matters. (I hope more/all of you have a copy by now.)

Some guiding questions for thought:

• What do you see as your role as a teacher of writing? Rickards and Hawes see writing teachers as "models, coaches, assessors, planners, and consultants." Do you see yourself in all these roles? Which roles are the most problematic for you?
• Let's keep the piece by Higgins, Miller and Wegman in mind throughout our Virtual. They challenge some current practices and reaffirm others. Do you feel the article offers support to your beliefs or contradicts them in any ways?
  
• In Because Writing Matters, Nagin starts by asserting that "writing is a complex activity: more than just a skill or talent, it is a means of inquiry and expression for learning in all grades and disciplines." How does this view affect the way we might approach our teaching? Why is writing so complex and what challenges does it pose on our schools?

Do not let these questions limit your discussion. They are just a few suggestions that might help start a conversation. Post at least once here this week.

Ramblings For Week Two

Last week's Ramblings got us off to a great start. Here is more inspiration from Natalie Goldberg, author of many books on writing including two of my favorites, Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind. She writes:

"The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise. You may time yourself for ten minutes, twenty minutes, or an hour. It's up to you....What does matter is that whatever amount of time you choose for that session, you must commit yourself to it for the full period." (Writing Down the Bones)

"A writing practice is simply picking up a pen, a fast-writing pen, preferably, since the mind is faster than the hand, and doing timed writing exercises. The idea is to keep your hand moving for, say, ten minutes, and don’t cross anything out, because that makes space for your inner editor to come in. You are free to write the worst junk in America." (interview)

So in the Virtual Open, you are challenged to take just ten minutes out of your day to write. The next step is to post your writings in Ramblings. Post at least three times each week. The important thing is to practice writing. As Goldberg says, "The more you do it, the better you get at it."

Join --Once Again

Just when you thought you were completely connected, I discovered a newer gadget to help us communicate. Please also JOIN under the sidebar label "Connections". This should help us communicate and share more easily. So join in now and see if you are even further connected. I would also like you to create a GMail account as we mentioned on the audio. This allows us to chat during office hours and synchronous discussion. Try completing all this before our next audio on Monday so we can troubleshoot if you have problems.

Ramblings For Week One

 

This is your spot to start a conversation, post a reflection, poem, random thought, or anything you want to write. These are NOT polished pieces; rather they are a chance to play around with writing. Have fun. Also respond to others who post. Your goal is to post three times a week. The picture is one that I took only two weeks ago in Kruger National Park in South Africa.