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Entry 13: Student Learning Outcomes

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  The Student Learning Outcomes that are printed on the front page of the syllabus represent to me as the framework for this course. Each activity we have completed for this course can connect to one of those outcomes. The genre presentations helped to teach us about the variety of modes and genres. The genre pieces project helped us to understand the composition of writing and how audience and purpose play a vital role in an author's craft. I could keep going on and on about how each piece of writing and reflecting have massively connected to the learning outcomes of this course but, there was one activity in which I would argue that all outcomes were touched on and that would be blogging.  Blogging has allowed for me to spend time thinking critically about what we have read and done in and outside of class. This blog has allowed for me to connect my learning with what I have already done as a teacher and has given me ideas for what my future teaching might look like. The ref...
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Entry 12: Reflecting on the Genres

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  Reflecting on all the in-depth learning we did on the different genres, I realized that I haven't spent time just thinking about writing in a very long time. I have taken for granted the knowledge that I already had about the different genres and didn't think about how I could expand my own thinking. I would have to thank the class for giving me time to think critically about the different genres and the aspects that go into each one.  I felt confident about certain genres like the letter writing and the narrative genre. Those are two genres that you become familiar with at an early age. I felt comfortable exploring those genres. I will say that I learned unexpected and very welcomed information about both genres. Thinking in greater detail about the letter genre allowed for me to push myself to think about how to incorporate this genre in the later grades. The presentation group's activities and their online tool helped to spark an idea of morphing the letter writing inf...
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Entry 11: Helping Students With Disabilities

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I recently completed my Teaching Genre Presentation and part of that project was to research and find articles that connected with the genre. I have written about my article in an earlier blog post and how multimodal texts can be beneficial in the classroom. I want to spend time focusing on another article from that project that my teammate Ashley found. Ashley found an article that spoke about helping students with disabilities (in particular students with Autism Spectrum Disorder). I thought that this article shined a light on a really important topic. How do we scaffold our learning to teach all students?  The article was titled "Understanding Character Perspective: Strategies to Support Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder" by Elizabeth Finnegan and Amy Accardo. I enjoyed reading this article because it didn't just mention the challenges students with autism spectrum disorder(ASD) face but gave strategies to help. I didn't realize the challenges that those with ...
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Entry 10:"Bless, Address, or Press" Part 2

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  For the second part of "Bless, Address, or Press", I was looking through everyone's blog and one comment from McKenzie's blog really stuck out to me. It came from her latest blog post and it was about the biography group and their presentation. She said that they talked about how biographies are often not about "normal" people. I have never thought about biographies in those terms. We often read biographies about people that we can have a hard time personally relating too. What would happen if the students were able to pick up a book off the shelves and the story is about a real normal person?  I think this is why I think it's so important that we have students at some point in time create their own version. Students should be able to reach out and see the life stories of people that go through the same things that they do. I think that this could be a very empowering and creative lesson to have the students complete. It can be a really fun activity to...
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Entry 9: Multimodal Compositions

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  Recently, I had the opportunity to teach the class about the narrative genre. This genre was an exciting one to focus on because it not only connects to a multitude of other genres, but it represents the story structure we try and teach from an early age. We not only need to teach about creativity when it comes to writing but also introducing the structure and technical aspects. The narrative genre allows for us to combine both in fun and exciting ways. The chapter for the narrative genre was an exciting read and if you noticed, as you read the chapter, there were quite a few charts that listed a variety of mentor texts. Using mentor texts is such an important tool for young readers and writers because it gives them the ability to see how writing can come together. The more someone reads, the better they become at writing. Since stories are introduced from very early on, it leads young readers to copy that story structure. I know that as a child, I thought stories needed to ...
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Entry #8: "Bless, Address, or Press"

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  For this entry, I have decided to spend time looking at Ashley Olin's Blog  https://ashleyolin618.blogspot.com/ . I really enjoyed looking at the 7th entry post which Ashley did on the letter writing genre. Her experiences connected so well with many of my teaching experiences in Kingston, Jamaica. The way Ashley spoke about her experiences coupled with the picture she included just jumped out at me! The idea of introducing different groups of people using the idea of friendly letters is a great way to show them the true meaning of letters. According to Tompkins, "receiving mail is the real reward of letter writing" (2012, p.117). If we can establish this link at an early age such as what Ashley did, we can create a young generation that's excited about the letter writing process. It's one thing to teach about letter writing, it's another to teach what happens when we send one out. Ashley's experience with cross cultural letter sending is a next level te...
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Entry 7: The Power of Blogging

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 I believe that the future of the classroom relies in technology. I feel that many teachers are afraid to embrace technology when it comes to the classroom. What does a classroom fully integrated with technology look and feel like? I have seen many teachers use pieces of technology into their classroom such as using apps like Kahoot to inspire student learning but it's not always a smooth transition. The teachers I've been paired up with in the past have stated they only use certain online tools but won't go beyond that. From my experience talking with other teachers, they state that it takes up too much time and the transition between points of the lesson become disjointed. How can we make teachers feel excited by technology and not view it as a hinderance. I believe that one of the best strategies to accomplish this herculean task is blogging. Blogging is not only a process that can be done step by step but it also provides the classroom with tremendous support when it co...
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