Today was an educational visit to the classroom. It was interesting to see how interested the students were to listen to an exciting and scary story.   The level of voice telling the story did not corralate with the children's attention.  The children's interest peaked as the animation peaked. 

 

Working one on one with the students was a little more difficult.  I read a book that dealt with names of children.  Each person in the book told what their name is and why they were named that. In some instances, people are named after other relatives.  In other instances, they told what their name means.  I think it is interesting because I was name after two specific people in my life.  Most people can identify with this.  It can provide an opening opportunity for students to learn about their family and their ancestors. 

 

One note: the students asked me what ancestors were. ;-)

 

9/20/2007

 

six traits

During class today, we went over the six traits writing. We will be using this style of writing while working with our students.  I'm not sure how, but I ended up with two pages of notes.  The warmth of the classroom, the sound of the instructor's voice rocked me to sleepiness.  I could feel myself needing to sleep.  I wasn't particularly sleepy coming into the classroom. I think I can apply this to my classroom by remembering that this style of note taking is better done before lunch! 

9/27/07

Getting to know the children:

Today we went off with our assigned children.  I admit I was scared at first.  Will these kids talk and if they don't can I get them to? We started out in the entryway of the school building sitting on the floor talking.  The girl assigned to me was a well of information.  She will have plenty of information to share.  The boy, on the other hand, was the opposite.  It was like pulling teeth to get him to talk.  I kept asking him leading questions and he kept his lips firmly sealed.  After a few minutes of talking, it was clear why the teacher felt these particular students and I would work well together.  None of us could sit still for very long! It was such a nice day, we decided we might be more creative if we went outside.  After i bit, i had them take turns closing their eyes and wander around the cool grass telling us a story.  The boy started talking but it was obvious he was not telling the whole truth.  He was making up some pretty funny stories.  The longer we talked, the more mixed up he would be in what he told us. Like on one story his mom and dad are divorced and his mom ran away from California.  In another story, he was one of 20 kids at home.  The girl started playing along and her stories started to grow too.  During the recap with the whole class, the girl told the class we talked about "fantasy".  It blew my mind that she would correlate what we were doing as being fantasy.  I really enjoyed the time with the children. 

 

10/4/07

Brainstorming Bubble!

Half of my team was absent today.  It gave me some one-on-one time with the boy.  I learned a great deal about him by doing this exercise.  I finally figured out his real "home" life story.  He has both parents, two brothers, and one sister.  We spent the majority of time working on his story.  I shared my story with him to break the ice and get into working.  One think I noticed specifically is how methodical he is.  He started with his center circle.  He added several outer circles.  He would not add more circles to the second layer.  He said after he finished all the second layer of circles, he would go back and add circles to them.  He finished the second layer and started working on the third layer.  He would only do one at a time.  All the lines and circles had to be just right.  When he began to run out of room, he said he was out of room so he was done.  I tried to convince him to start brainstorming other stories.  He was adamant about being all "storied" out.  I let him draw me a picture illustrating one part of his brainstorming.  After that, I started asking him questions about when his baby sister was born.  Again, I tried to get him to do an brainstorm bubble of the event.  Again, he drew a picture.  Trying to be flexible and work with what he was giving me, I started the brain storm bubble with the details he was putting on the picture.  We had a pretty good brainstorm going by the time class was done.  With as many details and as organized as he was in his first story, he shouldn't have much problems turning the words into sentences or the sentences into a story.   

10/11/07

Today my two students and I went to another room to work.  I showed both children brainstorm page and then read them my story to model how i used my bubble to make sentences. My boy began writing his story from his brainstorm bubble.  My girl began to work on her brainstorming since she was gone during our last meeting.  Just a few minutes into our session and she got called away.  It was kind of frustrating because we are already behind and I had hoped to get her back on track.  I had no idea where she was going or for how long she would be away.  I let my boy work as I began to edit my story. Most of the time passed as we worked.  The boy was as methodical writing his story as he was creating his brainstorm bubble.  He started at one bubble and wrote one part at a time.  About 3/4 of the way through our session the girl came back.  I told her we had to get down to business and get some brainstorming done.  It was very difficult to keep her on task.  She didn't seem to understand the concept of branching off the bubble. Instead of linking several "arms" to her main idea, she want to branch one off the main idea then another off that branch and another off theother branch..kind of similar to a train.  We talked about how this would be a useful tool to use when plotting the sequenced of events and that she still needed to add details to the cars of her train. I am sad to say we didnt get enough done before it was time to return to the main room.  I am hoping we can get caught up during our next session.

10/18/07

Today was both frustrating and rewarding.  The girl I am working with was there for the full session today and we got a lot accomplished. She wrote for the first paragraph and said she was tired so I played secretary.  she wrote almost three pages.  When I removed the pressure of writing sentences, the words just spewed from her mouth.  It is like the student tries so hard to remember punctuation and syntax that they lose their creativity.  While I was working with the girl, the boy was working with another student and teacher.  They were doing peer conferences.  As soon as I sat down, the boy was bouncing off the way.  It was clear that he was not engaged in the activity.  I tried to draw him back in by asking for his imput on the story.  I question the readiness of the students ability to conference.  Perhaps I needed to model it better. Unfortunately, by working with the girl and missing half the conference, I came in at a disadvantage.

Tonight in my other class, we had a guest speaker on the writing process.  I feel as if I learned so much.  I definately learned a better way to help students through the writing process.  I want to take a few steps back and have the students look at their stories in a different light.  Next session, I am taking scissors and tape in and cutting their sentences in strips.  I am going to have them put the strips together with things that are related. I am hoping to get them to cluster their thoughts a little more.  Right now, their stories kind of jump back and forth. 

October 25, 2007 and November 1, 2007

Well, the best thought out plans fall to the wayside.  I was very ill on the 25th classroom time.  November 1 was an optional visit to the classroom because of Ricky Lee Allen's talk.  My husband had surgery that morning and I had to baby my baby.  Now I have to punt since we are supposed to bring the stories printed on this coming Thursday.  I plan to type out the stories as I had planned making the changes that we originally talked to.  I will cut out the sentence stripes and have the students put them in the order they need to go.  I may take in my laptop to make the changes to the saved data and print it right then if needed. We'll have to see how it goes.

11/8/07

I did my cutting idea for the stories.  It was pretty tramatic for my boy to cut his story up.  In his eyes, he clearly thought his story was perfect and didn't need any editing.  I think because he is so meticilous the actual cutting up of the paper didn't sit well with him.  I really had to keep my girl on task.  She wanted to do everything keep on task.  Finally they were able to sort through their sentences and put them in the four square model I gave them.  I had them read through their stories and see how their work choice and voice worked for them.  The girl added a few words here and there but didn't want to look in the thesarus for any different words.  My boy was adamant about not changing a thing on his story.  He kept saying, I like it just like it is.  We decided to do four illustrations for the story to coincide with the information in the four boxes.  The boy was creative and in his first and third picture he drew two pictures in one.  I told him about some books that have pictures within pictures.  My girl wanted to draw all four pictures on four different 8 x 11 sheets.  She drew simple pictures but they were big.  I showed them an example of how the pictures and text would go on the same page.  I think the stories are becoming real to them now. We went over the information for their biographies. Next week they will work on their reading and telling of their final drafts.