Monday, December 16, 2019

Closing Remarks

Closing Remarks 
The LIT Bloggers would like to take this opportunity to thank our Course Lecturer and fellow
colleagues for viewing and commenting on our blogs with constructive feedback. This has helped
us grow tremendously as teachers of writing. The purpose of this blog was to reflect on the various
classes by writing about interesting or impactful concepts and practices modeled by the Course
Lecturer and to provide efficient suggestions for further sessions. Additionally, the intent of the
blogs was to incorporate technology in the writing classroom. 
Through these blogging sessions we have acquired a wealth of knowledge and skills as it relates
to incorporating ICTs in the writing classroom. Of course, it does not limit us to the writing classroom
but also to be applied across the curriculum. The experiences gathered from these blogging sessions
have really helped us grow professionally and has impacted us in our everyday lives personally. For
example, we now see blogging as a form or personal satisfaction and a leisure activity as it strengthens
our communication skills. Moreover, we are better acquainted with using technology in our classrooms
not only as teachers of writing but generally in the 21st Century classroom. The use of the podcasts
were really a step away from our comfort zones and this has really motivated us to use ourselves as a
resource in the classroom. 

With this being said, we would like to end with a quote: “The mission in life is not merely to survive,
but to thrive, and to do so with passion, some compassion, humor and style.” We are grateful for 
your wavering support. Thank you! 

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Beverley's Podcast



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Ryan's Podcast



https://tech-savvywriters3.blogspot.com
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Kashey's Podcast



The importance of washing your hands














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Sunday, December 15, 2019

Week Eight (Editing)

      This week we continued our mini lesson sessions. This session intended to give us an opportunity to experience and practice of the teaching of writing. It enabled us to test our skills and knowledge gathered from the LIT lecturers. This week, my partner and I taught the editing process. This task was a challenging onto me because it was my very first time teaching Language arts. Amongst the challenges were the preparation of the lesson plan which demanded my understanding of Language arts lesson planning and teaching techniques. Five students were selected to formulate a class to ensure that the lesson was executed. Using the previous pair’s revising piece. 
        The acronym CUPS was used to direct this lesson. Capitalizat, Usage,Punctuation and Spelling. With the use of this acronym, editing the piece was less challenging because it was used as a guide to walk through this stage of writing. To begin this lesson, we first reviewed the writing stages which were done previously. The students were then given words which they were to create sentences using the appropriate punctuation marks which included commas, exclamation and question marks and full stops. We discussed the uses of punctuation marks. A comma (,) is a punctuation mark that represents a slight pause in a sentence to separate words and figures in a list. An apostrophe (‘) is a punctuation mark that is used to show possession. A full stop (.) is placed at the end of statements and sentences that tells about a subject. For example: Peter is going to the supermarket.Question mark (?) is placed at the end of a questions or sentences that asks about a subject. For example: Is Peter going to the supermarket? Exclamation marks (!) is placed at the end of exclamations or sentences that express strong emotions, loud sounds and commands. For example: boom! Bang!. 
       We then looked at capitalization, a capital letter is sometimes called an uppercase letter.it is bigger than the lower class letter and extends beyond double lines. Capitalization is writing the first letter of a word as upper case and the remaining letters as lower case. The pronoun I must always be capitalized.The first word in every sentence must be capitalized. Proper nouns must always be capitalized. Always capitalize the first and last word in titles. Check that your sentences all starts with a capital letter. Also capitalize all proper nouns. For example: (names of people, places, days of the week,etc.). 
        After which we focused on word usage and spelling, The way in which words are used in context, especially with regards to their meaning. Read over to check for words you may have spelled incorrectly and may confuse the reader. To correct those errors you should check the dictionary or ask someone to check it for you. focus on the beginning sounds then other letter sounds inorder to search for the right place in the dictionary. To end this session, w reviewed the acronym CUPS. 
       This assignment provided an opportunity for my peers and I to learn from each other. It also provided an experience for us as teachers to teach the writing process. I recommend that we have a real life experience in the general educational classroom. Photo depicting the acronym CUPS:

Video explaining the editing stage of the writing process:






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Friday, December 13, 2019

Week Seven (First Drafts)

The Writing Process: Drafting- The First Draft. 
This class was particularly pragmatic as we assumed the role of teachers of writing. We were therefore expected to demonstrate a variety of skills, techniques and tools demanded by teachers of writing.  We were fortunate to have been given the opportunity to execute a 20 minute mini-lesson to demonstrate what is required of the teacher of writing in teaching each stage of the writing process. Moreover, we had to use the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model in order to teach writing. The mini-lessons were done in pairs where each pair selected a stage to execute during their mini-lesson.  My pair focused on the creation of the first draft. The genre used was descriptive writing and the lesson was created for a grade 3 pretense class; students in the class pretended to be grade threes. Prior to the drafting process prewriting was done and so the ideas used from the prewriting were used in drafting. Subsequently, the same draft created was used in the revision and editing stages. This was done deliberatel so that we can see how each stage is taught as it unfolded. 
The prewriting group focused on brainstorming and used the five-senses cluster in order to graphically
represent ideas before drafting. The teacher created a five-sense cluster for his worst experience which was
a hurricane/stormy weather. The students were then asked to produce a five-senses cluster for their worst
experience.  
We (my pair) then used the five-senses cluster from the prewriting group in order to create the first draft with the students. The teacher (my peer), created a draft from the five-senses cluster provided by the prewriting pair in the prior mini-lesson.  He then read aloud and said his thoughts aloud while he wrote his ideas as he modelled what is required when composing the descriptive piece or any piece for that matter during the drafting stage. Furthermore, I gave students the opportunity to work in pairs in order to talk about their worst experiences. Students then shared it with the class. Using their individualized five-senses clusters, they were given time to write their first drafts. While students were writing their first drafts we went around providing guidance to them.  After this, students were given the opportunity to present their first drafts before the class. 
I wish more time was given to us in order to execute this lesson so that it would have reflected as accurately as possible the allotted time for a Language Arts class. This way adequate time would have been given for each activity so that students could have fully develop their ideas while writing. Additionally, if this lesson were implemented in an actual grade 3 classroom then more realistic and authentic experiences would have been created so that we as teachers of writing can see the real issues and challenges which are experienced in the classroom. For example, the diversity of students and meeting the needs of different levels of proficiency as it relates to writing.  This mini-lesson could have possibly been done during the practicum sessions as students were placed in pairs at schools. 

 For further reading on strategies for helping students become good writers see link below: 


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Sunday, November 17, 2019

Week Six (Poetry)


Poetry!
This week's session  we focused on another genre of writing , introduction to poetry. Our lecturer began by informing the student teachers that there are misconceptions about poetry. Some misconceptions include poetry always rhyme, does not make sense , is something we have to do, uses a complex language and lastly I cannot write poetry. The course lecturer then asked students  to explain their understanding of poetry. She then called on both volunteers and non volunteers to give their response; individuals were able to define the term poetry. In addition, she gave us a simple definition of poetry it is a literature that expresses, ideas, feelings or tells a story in a specific form and stanzas. She elaborated that lines are to poems as sentences are to paragraphs. Also, stanza are to poem as paragraphs are to essay. We also looked at the different types of poems namely: formula, color, free from, concrete,rhymed and limerick. Moreover, we focused on syllable and word count poems such as cinquain ( 5 lines), diamante (7 lines) and haiku ( 17 syllables). Our course lecturer read to the class an example of a cinquain poem which goes like this:
Mice
Little, quiet
Running, crawling,jumping
Bear holes in mama,s furniture
Demons

After reading the poem, each student teacher was given a few minutes to create their own cinquain poem and a few were selected to share what they wrote. To conclude the session our course lecturer asked the students, Do you think poetry can be incorporated during instruction across the curriculum? What really stood out for me in this session was poetry can be used in the classroom in any content areas during instruction so that students can better understand the concepts taught. I suggest that  the lecturer can allow us to continue writing and reviewing our poetry pieces so that we can become successful writers. Here's a video that explains one of my favorite type of poem, a cinquain!


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Closing Remarks

Closing Remarks  The LIT Bloggers would like to take this opportunity to thank our Course Lecturer and fellow colleagues for viewing a...

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