Blog #8

 

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mfpzeESBLwNt25k-afi4AvmTGlakdQluN3yK-k5YK6E/edit

Blog #7

I just taught my first 45 minute lesson two days ago, and I taught it in a group with three of my peers. This was definitely a challenging assignment because the longest I had ever taught was 15 minutes, and it was to a group of 3 peers/students. So to jump to 45 minutes, teaching in a group, and teaching to a classroom of students was really difficult for me. However, I was really pleased with how I did and how our group taught as a whole. If I'm honest, I don't see how this experience is entirely applicable to teaching in the future. I understand the idea of becoming accustomed to collaboration with other teachers and planning a unit or lessons within a unit, but I've never seen teachers teach together, so that part is a little odd for me.

 

With this assignment, my group taught on how to make our creative writing more vivid (using specific verbs, adjectives & prepositional phrases, and similes & metaphors). My part was the adjectives and prepositional phrases, so I was in charge of coming up with how I wanted to present these skills in a way that students would understand and in a way that would be engaging. I struggled with this at the beginning because I only had about 10 minutes to teach my part of the lesson, while making sure that they understood what I was telling them. After our group decided to use a mentor text (Fahrenheit 451) as the foundation for the lesson, with each of us incorporating it in some way and discussing it with the other teachers (Aly, Heather, and Lauren), I chose to use pictures and group interaction to convey my points.

 

I chose to use the students as a tool in the lesson by asking them to define an adjective and prepositional phrase and get them to provide examples of each. By doing this, I was able to quickly gauge what they already knew and guide them to where they needed to go. This also enabled them to become more involved in the lesson. I used a picture from Aristocats as an example for the class to look at to help them think of unique and specific adjectives. Then I provided them a list of prepositions and a few examples of prepositional phrases to help them in creating their own. I feel that I effectively taught this information and this was because of the time I spent in preparing for it and working with my group members (which wasn't easy at times). At some points, I feel that I could have done better explaining what I wanted them to do, and if I had instructions on the board, this may have been a little bit easier. It was also tough, because at one point I asked the class to get into pairs, but no one moved to do so. So while I was explaining what they were to do, I said that they could just stay in the groups they were in (I was trying to roll with it and not make a big deal out of it, but I was told that it was somehow confusing for a few students).

 

Overall, I think that I did a good job in preparing for and teaching this lesson, even though it was a large struggle for me and a huge time commitment when I had a lot of other things going on. I also think it was a tough expectation to teach after not meeting with the group for a week and on the day coming back from Thanksgiving break, but I feel that we did well regardless. My group members were helpful in this process! Aly stepped up as the leader for the group and became the moderator for the lesson, in charge of transitions and the opening and closing activities. She was also the main person to work on the lesson plan and prompt us to put our parts into it. Heather volunteered to create a worksheet for the presentation and then we all put our pictures on a Google slideshow. It was difficult to find times to meet with our group and/or having all the group members show up to the meetings, so this was an unfortunate obstacle that we had to deal with (as in all group projects).

 

In the future, I will definitely be including more visual instructions, either on the board or on a handout because even though they were very simple instructions, not all people can follow them just by listening. Even though I know in my mind what I want them to do and what my expectations are for the students, they don't know that, and it's my responsibility to make it clear. Overall, it was a tough project, but it definitely taught me how to be responsible for myself and how to work in a group in a difficult situation.

 

 

Blog #6

 

For our Literature Circles discussion groups, I read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. This was a funny and intriguing book about the uses of punctuation (I know it sounds nerdy, but it was actually really cool)! This book was a great refresher on the general uses of punctuation and how they increase the overall quality of your writing, teaching me a few new things to incorporate in both my own writing and my future classroom. This book taught me three main lessons that will help guide me in my future writing and teaching students how to write in the future.

 

1. The Importance of Punctuation



"To be fair, many people who couldn't punctuate their way out of a paper bag are still interested in the way punctuation can alter the sense of a string of words."

Here, Truss is stressing to us, in her usual humorous way, the importance of punctuation, even though most people don't realize it. In this sentence, she is referencing those fun sentences where you place a comma in between different words to change its meaning. While I like punctuation and its variety, I don't think that I've ever stopped to fully consider how important it truly is. Without a question mark at the end of a sentence, someone could think I was simply stating an opinion. Without periods anywhere in my writing, my train of thought would be hard to follow as I would keep rambling on with no definite end. Punctuation is "a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling."

In my future classroom, I will have to convey the importance of proper punctuation to my students if I hope to see them become successful readers and writers. Without punctuation, all of literature and language would be lost. I could incorporate those fun sentences into a mini-lesson, showing the students how punctuation can change what the author is trying to convey. By using punctuation correctly, my students will be able to succeed and rise above most others in our society who still fail at where to place a comma in a sentence.

 

2. The Changing of Punctuation

"It is useful to remember, however - as we struggle to preserve a system under attack - that a reader from a couple of hundred years ago would be shocked by present-day punctuation that we now regard as flawless and elegant."

While punctuation definitely is important, we must all remember how much punctuation has changed over the years. Taking a quick look at Shakespeare's writings will reveal the changing punctuation and spellings of the English language, so much so that most people struggle to understand what he means. I learned, through this book and some of the discussions in class, that some punctuation is a choice of style (for example, not all people see the necessity of the Oxford Comma, even though I believe those people are wrong).

As teachers, we cannot change our students' writing style by forcing rules upon them that we follow. We have to take a step back and look at their content before attacking their mechanics. It's important to show them how writing can help them before we lay out all of the rules they must abide by. After they see the importance of writing, then we can slowly work towards correcting their mechanics (at least the ones that must be followed). After all, the rules could change in the next 10 years for all we know.

 

3. The Capability for Punctuation

"If I did not believe that everyone is capable of understanding where an apostrophe goes, I would not be writing this book."

Here, Truss is explaining why she chose to write this book: she believes that everyone is capable of learning how to properly use punctuation. I used to think that some people would just never learn how to properly use punctuation (and taking a look at any Facebook post would prove my point), but it may be that they just don't care enough to learn. It's not that they are too "stupid" to understand how a comma is used, it's that they don't see the importance of it (refer to point #1).

While teaching in the future, it will be my job to spur my students on from not caring about punctuation to seeing it's importance and taking the time to learn it. I will have to approach all of my students through lessons and activities with the though that they are able to complete that which I am asking them to do. My students will all be capable of learning how to mark their sentences properly, and it's my job to take them to that point of success.

 

 







Blog #5

While reflecting back over when I taught my Grammar RX lessons and completed the writing diagnosis assignment, I can honestly say that I've learned a lot! My first Grammar RX lesson focused on the sentence in general, including subject, verb, simple/complex/compound, and prepositions. While I can generally identify the subject and verb in a sentence, I had forgotten what prepositions were and how they were used. I realized that I use them all the time in my writing, but I never thought about them as prepositions. While teaching this part, I was able to show my classmates how a preposition is anything a squirrel can do to a tree (on, in, around, about, into, for, etc.), incorporating how I was taught the use of prepositions. This was a great refresher for me and enabled me to better teach this aspect of sentences. Along with teaching a few lessons, being the student was also really beneficial because I got refreshers on the "basics" of English that we tend to forget about when we move on to more advanced literature and writing practices. This helped me remember the basics because that is generally what I will be teaching in the future.

Grammar lessons must be exciting and interesting to the students if we expect them to pay attention and learn the material. By knowing this and thinking about how I feel about boring grammar lessons, I tried to make my lesson engaging. The students were able to work both individually and as a group to accomplish the tasks on the worksheet and the other activity. By doing this, I was keeping them from both silent work and lecturing, hoping they would receive the information easier. I did have to deal with a problem student (Aly), but she was creating distractions to show me how to better keep control of my classroom and the lesson itself. Heather helped out by asking a ton of questions that she already knew the answers to, forcing me to better explain some terminology and to show that I truly understood what I was teaching.

Also, by working with the Writing Diagnosis assignment, I was able to put into practice what we've learned about editing essays. While before I would tend to mark every error on the paper, making it overwhelming for the writer, this time I forced myself to focus on patterns. Instead of circling every comma error,  I would circle a few and ask the student to use those to find the other errors in the paper. This forced the student to take responsibility for her writing and saved time on the editing and grading for me. In my written response to the student, I pointed out 3 main error patters in her paper and explained to her that once she corrects these errors and works on keeping them out of her work in the future, her writing will become better and elevated above what it is now.

All of these assignments pushed me out of my comfort zone, making me work harder to improve my abilities and strategies with the students. I hope that in the rest of this semester, I will get more opportunities to do this because I feel more prepared for the classroom already!



Grammar RX Lesson #1

 

So, for my first lesson, I really enjoyed this topic because I feel like I had a wide range of angles to take with presenting this information. I've shared my lesson plan, worksheet, answers, and activity here; I hope you like it!https://docs.google.com/document/d/11AnjRt94Ekmdy6OLqUHHpIJbnQZGHYaenceZ2PpBeH0/edit?usp=sharing

Tutoring Experience: What I Learned Through It

 

I don't know about anyone else in the class, but I walked into my tutoring session with a wrong perspective. I met her in the fishbowl with the thought that I had some things to teach this girl. As a freshman, she could gain a lot from me reading over her paper and giving her feedback. I had an arrogance about my skills and thought that she needed my help. How wrong I was.

 

Kylea came into our session with an essay that made me rethink my skills... in a good way. She was a great listener and tried to grasp the few things that I noticed could use some help, but her paper completely exceeded my expectations. After reading other past examples of WIFYS students' papers in class, I had a negative opinion of what I would see in hers. Thankfully, though, she brought her paper to life and conveyed her point extremely well.

 

I asked Kylea what they were to write about, and she said a place that was either important to them or had a special meaning. She chose to write about her grandma's house and all of the family gatherings, whether for holidays or for Sunday meals, that took place there. The amount of description she had in her essay was AMAZING!! She truly made me feel like I was part of the family by being able to relive those moments with her. The color words she used to describe how her grandmother's house looked and the brilliant sun that shone across the grass and pine trees in her backyard put the reader in the home. She went on to lay out the extravagant meals her family had (mainly several different kinds of Spanish food and desserts that I won't even try to spell for the fact that I know I will butcher them). She recalled how she was taught to cook a certain dish that is now her responsibility to make for the family and how she would spend the night with her grandmother. She had a great conclusion where she revealed to the reader the safety and security she feels in her grandmother's home and how special it will always be to her.

 

Now, just from my sporadic recall of her essay, I think you can get the idea of how great the content of her essay was. While she did a great job telling the story, she had a few mechanical errors in her essay that are pretty common. Comma usage was a big pattern that I noticed throughout her work. Thinking back on how much I struggled with commas and learning where to put them gave me the ability to relate to Kylea and reassure her that it is a common mistake for writers. She specifically excluded them in a few main areas: 1. after introductory phrases 2. before and after modifiers 3. before her conjunctions. After marking where they should go and explaining why they go there (because you pause when speaking there, because the modifier adds details that are necessary, because you have joined 2 sentences together), I believe that she understood and could make the changes in the future on her own. In her introduction paragraph, she had some repetitious syntax, mainly starting sentences with "It's" or "The" rather than changing them up for some variety. I was VERY pleased when she asked how she could change them to sound better (it reassured me that she was paying attention and genuinely cared about what I had to say). I was able to walk her through one example where she could take out some extra words and combine sentences to get rid of the repetition (it was a very fulfilling teacher moment!). Other than a few spelling errors and other minor mistakes, these were the main patterns I saw in Kylea's essay.

 

I was so happy to be able to work with her because I felt like she taught me more than what I was able to teach her. She brought to light several of the aspects of grading essays that we've been discussing in class (pointing out the good things you see, finding error patterns, great content with poor mechanics), so she enabled me to address these situations in real life circumstances. She far exceeded my expectations, and I am excited to see how she may grow from this experience like I have.

 



My Thoughts on Autumn

 

When I think of Autumn, I think of leaves. The changing color to their fall to the ground to their crunch under our feet. Leaves symbolize autumn and all the changes that go with it. The heat of summer starts to fade, and the coolness of October is ushered in. The big, green trees of August turn into the read and yellow trees of September. The shorts and t-shirts we wear are gone, and the jeans and comfy sweatshirts appear, setting the stage for the best season to appear. While the beginning of fall is a happy, cheerful time, the end of fall is gloomy. The coolness we longed for is gone and the harsh winds and low temperatures of December come. Pumpkins are rotting, trees are bare, the grass is brown, and the sky is gray. We bundle up in layers to shut out the cold as we battle the dryness that takes over our hands. When we long for the beauty of fall, we tend to forget about the misery that follows soon after, choosing to rather focus on the here and now that we love so much.

 



Teaching Strategies

 

In our book, "Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing," Constance Weaver presents the English/ Language Arts classroom in a new light that introduces teaching strategies and ways of thinking that haven't been done much before. Let's explore them, shall we?

 

1. Teach grammar in the context of writing.

Teachers often teach grammar as its own thing, which we can understand when we realize that we tend to teach the way we were taught. Because of this, isolated grammar has become tradition in the classroom, but research shows that students grasp and can apply what they learn when it is paired with writing.

 

2. Teach students to edit their works for "appropriate words and grammar" (5)

When we teach students to edit their own work for "appropriate words and grammar," we help them understand the importance of what they say and how they say it. They begin to better grasp their abilities as writers when we let them do their own editing, rather than it all falling on the teacher's shoulders.

 

3. Encouraging students to widen the audience of their work past the teacher.

By increasing the number of readers, the writer begins to take a deeper interest in their work and the message they convey through it. This can be achieved by having writing contests within the schools, having the students enter statewide or national writing contests, and getting their work published in a local newspaper.

 

4. Focus students on the function of words rather than analyze sentences.

Most students don't think about nouns, verbs, or modifiers when they are writing, they just write. Even now, I don't have to think about what noun or verb form I am using, it comes naturally. So rather than wasting precious classroom instruction time on labeling parts of speech, teachers must show students how words are used to convey different meanings, no matter what form they are in.

 

5. Application over Memorization

Students tend to have a negative attitude towards English class, in general, but especially towards grammar. Sadly, our students have been taught that memorization is key in learning instead of the application of what they are learning. When we show them how to apply these lessons to their lives, they learn and understand so much more easily.

 

6. Rules are pointless in real life.

Ever heard of the phrase that "rules are meant to be broken?" Well, I think that definitely applies in the writing part of English class. When we drill rules into our students' heads, they tend to shrink away from writing for the fear of making a mistake. However, if we should them models of other writers and how they write, it's an encouragement that writing should be free.

 

7. Is the red pen helpful or harmful?

As future teachers, we need to pause and reflect on our own experiences with the red pen. While I  like the idea of it because it gives me something to work on, I have to remember that most students see it as scary or daunting, and they don't want to deal with their papers when a teacher hands it back slashed to pieces. We need to give advice, point out what they did well, and give them a few aspects at a time for them to work on.

 

8. Writing is recursive.

Teachers MUST understand that writing isn't "once and done." While this may be the way it used to be taught, we know now that this is a very ineffective strategy. We must show our students the process of creating a piece of writing (prewriting, drafts, editing, revising, final copy). All good writers move freely from step to step and back again; it's a recursive process.

 

9. Reading and writing must work together.

If we want our students to succeed in writing, we have to have them succeed in reading. The two go hand-in-hand, and all great writers have to be good readers. By spending time with their noses in books, students will see model after model of how to write, and write well, along with opening their minds to a wider vocabulary.

 

10. The Writing Workshop

Throughout my time in high school, I saw the effects of writing workshops on my level of work. If a teacher wanted us to write an essay and turn it in a week later, with no other interaction, I sought after approval of what the teacher wanted, rather than expanding my skills. However, when they incorporated workshops, my skills improved because I knew that other peers would be reading and critiquing my work (and who doesn't want to seem smart to all their classmates?).

 

 



Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way"

As a class, we just finished reading "The Mother Tongue." I know that along the way and through our presentations, we've discussed with each other what we liked and didn't like about the book. However, I feel like laying out a few aspects of the book that really got me thinking is a good way to interact with the text itself, but also, it allows me to think aloud about some things we didn't discuss in class.

So, here goes nothing...

1. "Indeed, such is the demand to learn the language that there are now more students of English in China than there are people in the United States" (Bryson 4).
I feel that this quote is a nice introduction to the book, and it sets the groundwork for a lot of the different aspects that Bryson investigates in the English language. This quote caught my attention and immediately made me think about all that we, as Americans, take for granted. Until reading this book, I never stopped to really think about our language, its uniqueness, or its high demand globally. I never considered that people are seeking after knowing the language because it was just handed to me. I feel that we take our language for granted most times, and this quote really opened my eyes to that fact.

2. "Sometimes the changing connotations of a word can give a new and startling sense to literary passages..." (Bryson 81).
This quote JUMPED off the page at me the first time I read it. Again, this book has opened my eyes to so much about our language that I've never thought about, and for that, I am appreciative! This quote summarizes why teachers/professors always stress the importance of context (both in the book and the historical time period when it was written). Reading a poem today that was written by Shakespeare hundreds of years ago, we could possibly interpret it a completely different way from how he meant it just because we attribute meanings to a word that weren't there long ago. It is very important to read, reread, and research when unpacking a piece of literature.

3. "What is certain is that the number of words we use is very much smaller than the number of words we know" (Bryson 164).
Are we just creatures of habit sticking to what we like best, or are some words so specific that a time to use them rarely appears? This is the question that popped into my mind when reading this passage. When you really stop to think about it, we do tend to use the same words over and over again just in a different order (unless you're writing an essay, then I think we all right-click and use the synonyms option to make ourselves sound smarter...at least I do...). In response to the question, I think it's a mixture of both. We are simplistic people, but there are words that hardly ever need to be used. Good job, Bill, you got us thinking.

History is Present

Throughout his novel, Bryson presents the history of the English language. But if you look close enough and stop to really think about it, I think that the history he talks about is very much present today. Just like how Shakespeare created 10% of the words he used in his own literary works, people all around the world are making up words for new situations. Two examples of this are in slang and technology. Slang incorporates any of the words from "swag" to "lit" to "bruh." These are most prominent among the younger generations in society, and they can often give us a bad name. Technology and its advancements have also increased the number of words we use today that weren't used in previous centuries. The pilgrims on the mayflower didn't have any need for an "iPhone" or "Microsoft." Native Americans weren't concerned with updating their "software" on their "computer." Pioneers weren't rushing home to "binge watch Netflix" or check how many "likes" their "Instagram post" received. These are just some basic words that most people know and use on a daily basis that weren't even thought of 100 years ago. So while our vocabulary is changing, our patterns of advancement aren't.

Future...To Be or Not To Be

The future of English is in question, here, and to be honest, I don't know what that looks like. I mean we're soon going to have cars driving themselves and we already have drones dropping packages on your doorstep, so whose to say if we are even still talking in 20 years. Now this is being a little dramatic, but who can honestly know. I think it's scary to think about. Will the rules of grammar and sentence structure still be in place when we have kids, or are things going to change so much that we won't even be certified to teach? I feel like English, like our country, is heading down a dark and scary path where if we don't back out soon, we will be doomed. But, hopefully I'm wrong. I mean, I don't want that to happen, so I think that's where we, as future educators, come into play. I won't let English go down without a fight. WHO'S WITH ME??

 

 





 

 

Hey, I'm Rachel! I'm glad you decided to stop by and check out my new and exciting blog, at least I hope it's exciting. I am currently starting my second year at Shippensburg University where I am majoring in English with a Secondary Education focus. In my free time, I like to read, bake, hang out with my 3 cats, and binge watch some amazing shows on Netflix. I hope to be a great teacher one day, and while I love the little kiddos I teach during Sunday School at church, my dream is to be a high school educator. I have a passion for English and literature, and I hope to instill that same love for reading and writing in the kids that walk into my classroom in the future.

While I hope to be a great teacher in the future, I have fears and worries of my own. I love the subject and most, if not all, that comes with it, but grammar and all of its rules can be daunting, intimidating, and scary to think about having to teach others. I struggle with not wanting to make a fool of myself in the classroom, either in front of my peers now or my students later on down the road. However, while I have my own fears and weaknesses, I do have a love for English and grammar that may be odd to others. I actually really enjoy spending times editing and revising essays. For some reason, I find it oddly satisfying to insert commas where they are needed or change a word to a more suitable one for the context. I enjoy writing essays, if they are under 7-8 pages long, and I feel I can better communicate my knowledge and skills through writing than through exams.

Because I will be forced to teach grammar in my career, I hope to do it in an effective way. I can't remember the last time I had a grammar lesson in school. In ninth grade, I remember talking about essay structure and varying sentences, but an actual grammar lesson would have probably been all the way back in middle school. I'm glad to be in this class, because not only will refresh what I know, but it will give me tools to teach it effectively in either middle or high school. Because I haven't had any grammar lessons, at least that I can remember, in such a long time, I have had to rely on teacher feedback on essays and from examples of my peers.

Needless to say, I have some major pet peeves when it comes to grammar! I love staying connected to friends and family that I don't see much, but I also HATE getting on Facebook or Instagram and having to deal with people who write as if they've never seen the inside of book, let alone a school! The "confusion" over using the words "your" or "you're" makes absolutely no sense to me, but it's something we are all forced to deal with on a daily basis. Also, I know some people are not the best spellers, and I can be one of them, but it gets to a point that is a little ridiculous. When people use "defiantly" instead of "definitely" or "loose" instead of "lose", it gets on my nerves. While I love grammar and the art of it, I understand that not everyone gets it or likes it in the same way, but they should at least try.

"One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil." ~Friedrich Nietzsche