The planning and drafting lesson about one's chosen pet went pretty well as I expected. Most students filled the bubbles with at least three adjectives and wrote sentences to describe their pets. A couple of students took the challenge and wrote more than six sentences. I used a chart to help expand their thinking while they planned their ideas. I let the students come up with details about what they wanted to know about somebody’s pet such as size, color, eyes, ears, etc. Most students did a good job planning and drafting.

I payed special attention to ELL and slow learning students by giving them extra support. The ELL student and another below grade level student tried very hard to put some words and sentences down with one-on-one teacher support. They were asked to verbally express their ideas and drew their pictures first before their writings. The teachers then helped them to find frequency words in the classroom or pointed to the correct letters for them to write them down.

There are two ADHD students in class as well. I managed to help one to stay on task. But the other one was going through an emotional moment and put his head down and didn’t participate during the lesson period. I wondered how I was going to get him engaged. Fortunately, when he was calm the next morning, we had a nice talk about his pet and he wrote about his pet dog.

I think the writing went well as planned because the students were well prepared for the session. For instance, prior to this lesson, they gathered pictures of their pets and shared their pets’ information in class. I also checked out a box of pet books for them to browse through during center times. Most of them also finished their cover pages by using the computer drawings.

If I teach the same lesson again, I probably will make the following changes. For the ADHD students or any students might have trouble writing in class, I will give them a lot of encouragement first. I could deliberately display their pets’ pictures for the whole class to see and talk about a little longer when they share their pets’ information with their groups. While doing that, I would also specifically orient them to think about writing about their pets as just another way to tell others about their special animals. Hopefully, they could get more engaged in their later writing activities.

I will also arrange them to use the computer program to finish their cover page first so that they could get their thoughts a little more organized. When they started to write, they could feel more special about their project. The more engaged they could be, the better they could stay on task and write. I could also check with their parents to find other ways to help them focus in class.

This writing experience left me with more confidence in teaching writing to first graders. I learned the art to scaffold them to plan and draft their writings. I also learned that these young students could all take the challenge and make great progress in their informational writing. I feel that they are really getting a great start toward their writing endeavor.

Bondarenko-3rd Literacy Reflection

My last literacy lesson was a continuation of narrative nonfiction. The lesson started out with a mini-lesson on the narrative nonfiction trait of using voice. I started by recapping yesterdays lesson by asking “What did we learn yesterday?” Based on my responses I knew that I had to reteach some of the lesson on sequence. The students seemed to still be confused about how the sequence goes and why you have to have a beginning, middle, and then end. I think some of the students were still confused because they did not all completely finish their worksheet on sequence. One thing that I would change if I re-taught this lesson would be I would collect their worksheets and check for completion. If students had not finished the worksheet I would have them work on it before the next lesson. (Either at snack time or at recess. Because I did give them enough time and the reason that they did not finish was because they were talking or not focused.) So students that were struggling were the students who were off task for the day before lesson.

To introduce voice we used the last two sentences of the story about Sam the dog. (This is the story we used about sequence.) The two sentences were “The rescue workers saved him. They are wonderful!” Then I asked the students if they understood how these sentences were examples of voice. They looked completely confused. I decided to think on the spot and have to come up with some different examples. I brought in our theme of rescue workers to think of examples. I asked them to remind me of different rescue workers that we came up with brainstorming. We started with firefighters. I said “If a firefighter saved a kitten in a tree. How would that make you feel?” I drew some popsicle sticks and asked for ideas of how you’d feel. We did this a couple of more times with the theme of rescue workers.

Before passing out the paragraphs that they had been working on we quickly recapped nouns. The kids are really good with proper nouns and nouns. It is something that just has came easy to them. They all can raise their hand and answer “What is a noun?” And answer correctly with person, place, animal, or thing. The students job was when they received their paragraphs was that they had to add at least one sentence of voice. Most of the students really did not struggle with voice it was just the depth or quality of their voice sentence. Some of the lower students just jammed in a sentence of “I felt good.” More advanced students put more than one sentence of voice and did not just add it to the end of the paragraph but though out their paragraph.

Something that I learned about my students literacy practices is that they learn a lot through visuals and personal examples and models. If I were to give an example sentence of voice on the board this might help them. But, if I were to add an example sentence that had someones name in it or something they enjoyed the kids would remember voice for life. Something I would do if I re-taught this lesson would be that I would have picked a book to read to them (which I already do in the morning) and have it be a model for voice and one for sequence. This would have been really beneficial to them.

Material that needs to be retaught I will do the following day. If it something little I will just talk to them during snack time. If it is something big (barely any work on paragraph) they will have to be retaught during recess. I will also quickly recap the main points of todays lesson during the next lesson.

I started my writing unit for the first graders last week. The unit focuses on making an informational booklet about one’s pet, or a known pet, or a pet one wishes to have. The children brought in their pet pictures or drawings of their pets and shared their pet information within two groups for lesson one. For lesson two, I decided to take the challenge to use the computer lab for the project. The children created their own cover pages with picture outlines and typed texts of the titles and their names as the authors by using a paint program called Tux Paint. They colored the picture outlines later and the finished cover pages were glued onto their choice color background papers. When I looked at their beautifully made cover pages, I felt so proud of all the children and I shared their works with their parents during the parent-teacher conference last week.

I have to admit that it was a very challenging lesson because of the limited number of the lab computers that could be used for printing and the one-on-one scaffolding for every child. I had to test each lab computer and set it up for printing. I originally thought that the children could just use the Tux Paint to draw and print their pictures. I had to change it to be just the outline drawings of their pets since the lab doesn’t have color printing. I actually like the adapted way better because it gives the students the opportunity to color their pictures with crayons and they also learned how to make their own picture coloring sheets. Since I also had to help every student to arrange their typed titles and names (Tux Paint doesn’t allow easy text typing), it would be almost impossible for me to finish this lesson within the time frame without extra adults’ assistance. Fortunately, I got a great deal of help from one technology knowledgeable volunteer W from the community and my mentor teacher. The three of us worked together to get many children to finish their cover pages. For instance, the children who didn’t go to the lab wrote their content pages with my MT and sang a pet dog song with a dog booklet made earlier). I guided the rest of them completing theirs at other times by using the classroom computer and the lab.

One great thing about this lesson was that all the children enjoyed the experience and they were so happy to see their cover pages printed out. Even though a couple of them had to redo the cover pages due to the printing problems, they still had fun doing it. Their enthusiasm also extended to the next lesson of writing about what their pets looked like which all turned out wonderfully.

From this cover page making lesson, I learned that all children love to be engaged in activities that they could use their hands and artistic creativity. With the proper assistance, I saw young children could learn some technology skills such as spacing, capital lock, and save and print files. I could tell that drawing is an integral part of beginning writers’ writing because they used the drawings to organize their thoughts about what their pets looked like. Certain students had an easier time to use the mouse drawing their pictures with more details while a couple of others had a harder time to manipulate the mouse. With some more practices, they could all do a good job. Since they could all color and add more details later, nobody worried about how their pictures turned out.

If I ought to re-teach this lesson again, I will make certain changes. The first one is that I need to be more specific about the drawing directions because some students touched other useless buttons and had to redo their pictures. The other thing is that I could have let some students use the classroom computer for their cover pages. That could have saved some time and the whole class could have completed their cover pages earlier.

Bondarenko- 2nd Literacy Reflection

In today’s lesson we continued on the topic of narrative nonfiction. (We are going to be on the topic for one week.) The goal for the end of the week is to have the students have at least one narrative nonfiction paragraph. Todays main objective was to have the students pick a topic that they would want to write about. To go about this objective, I started out with having a anchor chart on the board. I drew a T-chart with and on one side was “rescue workers” and the other side was “the jobs they do.” I modeled the first example to the students which was “firefighters” and “rescue cats from trees.” This was a pretty slow moving discussion of ideas from the students. It seemed like if they knew a “rescue worker” they did not know “what jobs they do” and vice-versa. When completing this T-chart I was also pretty particular with what answers they came up with because they were going to be picking from this chart for their topic. Students who are more shy did struggle with this part of the lesson because they did not want to participate. Students who learned or excelled were the students who have prior knowledge with rescue workers (family members) or are outspoken enough to share their ideas.

The later part of my lesson was when the students learned about the beginning, middle, and end (or sequence) of a paragraph. I started with an example that was in the reading street program. I put the worksheet (which had boxes for beginning, middle, and end to be filled in) on the ELMO. I started modeling to the students how I would fill in my boxes according to my short story. I was asking the students if they understood how the beginning had to go first because if not it would not make sense. I soon realized that my story would be understandable with the middle coming first and then the first followed by the end. If I were to do this lesson over I would not use Reading Street’s example. I would use an example that clearly shows a difference between beginning, middle, and end. To show the importance of sequence. I learned that students found this worksheet more difficult than I expected. I had students work by themselves on the worksheet and myself and my MT came around to help and answer questions. I looked at almost everyone’s worksheet while they were working on it. But if I were to re-teach this lesson I would have collected the worksheets. This way, I could see the students who were struggling and I could re-teach to them. I am going to re-cap on this topic in tomorrows lesson and students will have more time to complete this worksheet and add more detail tomorrow.

Literacy Lesson Reflection

We started out our lesson with a discussion of teamwork. I gave examples of times that I had been involved in teamwork. After giving them examples and wait time, the the students were able to give me some examples of their own from times when they participated in teamwork. Next we read a nonfiction book about teamwork. The students were able to empathize with the people/animals in the book and they were able to tell me, without any prompting that the teammates felt proud of each other.

When we were sounding and spelling out our spelling words, I continually had to remind students to look up at the Promethean Board so they knew what sounds to say and how to spell the word. Since this was only our first day with the words, the students did not yet know how to spell them. They were having a hard time looking at the Board. I had to remind them and remind them and then I had to tell students that they all needed to be participating. So, going over our spelling words took a long time this first day.

I learned that my students need a lot of practice when something new is introduced. In my lesson, I introduced final blends. In the beginning, the students had a hard time separating the sounds in the final blends. Instead of saying /n/ /t/ they would say /nt/. But we practiced and practiced. I started out by modeling for them, then I did it with them and eventually they were able to say the sounds separately. I also learned that the students learned our sight words for the week easily. Once we went over them and we said them each a couple times, I was able to randomly point the the words and the students were able to say the words out loud.

For those students who need more practice, I will bring them to the big table during center time and work in a small group setting with them. We are always taking groups to that table during centers for reading groups, so it won't be out of the ordinary and it won't be a distraction. This will just give those students more practice and I will be able to help them individually with what they are struggling with.

One thing that was a bit of a problem throughout my lesson, was that the same students kept raising their hands to answer. When I realized that this kept happening, I gave the students more wait time and then I used the popsicle sticks to call on students. Because I had to follow the Basal, my lesson was mostly teacher dictated. If I could do this lesson or any of the literacy lessons over again, I would like to try to get the students involved more. I did when I could, such as having them say sounds with me and having them come up to write on the Promethean Board, but it would be nice to be able to get the students up and moving throughout the bulk of the lesson. I think this would improve the lesson and the students' learning because they would be able to get some energy out and they would probably be able to pay attention better. I think the lesson would have gone quicker too, because we might not have had to spend as much time on each thing.

Overall, my students were able to grasp the information given to them and they were able to produce the sounds and letters so that I knew they understood the final blends. They were also able to read their sight words. And finally, in centers, the students were able to write me a story about teamwork. The students really grasped the information, even though I had to remind them to pay attention and keep their attention. The lesson went well overall!

Bondarenko-Day One Reflection

Today was my first day of my language arts unit plan. For this week the topic is narrative nonfiction. Today was mainly an introductory day where we just did an overview on what the unit is going to look like. The lesson started out with me standing in front of the class with an anchor chart with the question of the week. This week's question "How can we help people in dangerous situations?" We started by having the students brainstorm and raise their hand with ideas for me to put on the chart. I had the usual problem of only having the same students raising their hands. I handled this by having the students put down their hands that had shared and give more wait time for students who had not shared yet. Worked well, most of the students gave their idea. I was surprised that most students were able to answer the questions and stay on topic.
Next, we read a model paragraph that displayed the qualities of a narrative nonfiction. After I read this out loud I had the students circle the main characters, underline the events in the story, and then underline the author showing voice. This went OK, with it being Halloween students were a bit chatty.
After this, we went back to our question of the week and we made a new anchor chart with the topic "people helping in weather" and students had to poise questions that they wanted to investigate further. This was the most diffucit of the lesson. It was a weird question to ask it did not ask "What questions do you have about rescue workers" but "What questions do you have about rescue workers in dangerous weather." Clearly, the questions became limited and students were not really asking questions that related to the topic. If I were to re-do this lesson I would have made my own question and not went with "Reading Street's" question.
Tomorrow, we are going to continue with narrative nonficiton by students starting to write their own paragraphs. Students will also continue to investigate questions that they have about rescue workers. Since, today was an introductory day students did not turn in anything. But to help reinforce today's lesson I will recap the main points of a narrative nonfiction. Students that need extra support I will be able to conference with them during writers workshop or snack time. Students that struggled were the ones who were not able to sit in their desks during the whole lesson and could not focus.

Strategies that work Chapters 10 and 12

For the two chapters you selected to read for this week, what is the ‘big idea’ or ‘take away message’ from each, and how do they help you think about literacy across the curriculum in your classroom?

The first chapter I read was Chapter 10 "Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection". I chose to read this chapter because I personally feel that we are not really taught how to teach nonfiction and it's difficult to just jump in and teach a nonfiction text. As the chapter stated on page 156, most classrooms have mainly fiction books for the students to read and that the teachers read to the students. There is a big disconnect with nonfiction. So, this chapter gave strategy lesson examples for teaching nonfiction text. Page 159 states that "...the first purpose or real-world nonfiction is to convey factual information, important ideas and key concepts." Then it goes on to talk about how the chapter's aim is to show how teachers can help students read and take away important information and ideas from nonfiction texts. The chapter gave 10 different strategies for teaching nonfiction. One strategy I really liked was "Becoming familiar with the characteristics of nonfiction trade books" (page 161) I liked this strategy because I think it's important first and foremost for students to understand what is in nonfiction books. This strategy also allows students to write information the already know, questions they have and then information that they found out through the text. Then the students were able to make a poster including much of this information. The poster is a good idea, because it gives the students a purpose for their research.

The second chapter I read was Chapter 12 "Content Literacy" Reading for Understanding in Social Studies and Science." I decided to read this chapter, because the first page (page 205) caught my eye. It stated that science and social students get very few minutes per week in the classroom. This is very real to me, because we rarely "have time" for these subjects and I thought maybe I would learn some new tips from the chapter. The chapter was all about integrating science and social studies into literacy. We have learned a little bit about this in our previous TE classes, but I think it's a great idea. Literacy gets so much emphasis in the classroom already, why not add some science and social students into it. The chapter went through and gave some concrete ideas for integrating science and social studies into literacy. Interactive Read Alouds (page 209) with picture books was one of the ideas it gave. This is something that I don't think is too hard and can be easily integrated into the classroom. I also thought "Note-taking strategies for merging thinking with new information" (page 215) because it's a different way to get kids writing than just in a journal and they are learning new information during that time as well.

I am glad to hear that you all like the “Beyond-the-Line” strategy for the stated reasons. I agree that with the proper scaffolding, even second graders could achieve the desired outcome.

My MT uses a lot of authentic questions in the classroom and I have observed many questions “That Leads to Inferential Thinking.” (Strategies that Work p.119). She often treats the first graders as conversational partners. When she reads stories to the children, the way she talks to them reminds me of having a nice family or friends gathering. She often poses a lot of questions prior to, during, and after the reading of the stories. These authentic questions guides the children to activate their own background knowledge, reflect and express their own feelings to similar or relating situations as in those stories.

The children all enjoy answering these questions because they could relate to the questions and their answers matter. They also think deeper as they search for the answers that often require their own interpretations. The students also learn the different perspectives from their peers to the same question. They also get used to the idea that not all questions have answers.

As an intern teacher, I have enjoyed giving the children many inferential thinking questions. I really value the importance of authentic conversations in classrooms. It is really a pleasure to guide and observe how questions prompt the children’s inferences and “open their minds.” (p. 120). I would like to learn more and do more  of these open-ended questions in my classroom.

Bondarenko-authentic questions

In Strategies that Work, Harvey & Goudvis list several characteristics of ‘authentic questions’ (p. 124) that are typically open-ended and encourage divergent thinking.  Pose one or more of your own authentic questions about ideas in today’s readings (sample units, or reading strategies) and share your initial thinking about how you would respond to them.

The list of authentic questions that were listed in the text book are:
What makes you think that?
Why do you say that?
Can you elaborate on that?
Can you tell me more about your thinking?
How did you come up with that?

Statement: My favorite reading strategy from the reading is “Beyond-the-line” questions.

Authentic question: What makes you think that?

Response:
I enjoyed the reading strategies that were in todays readings. My favorite strategy is “Beyond-the-line” questions in literature. This is my favorite because students are able to “dig” deeper into the reading instead of just surface level knowledge. Students are able to respond to inferential questions, that are genuine questions, and respond with a answer. Now the answer cannot be just a quick one or two words this has to be a response that causes you to deepen your knowledge. All of the authentic questions that are listed above students would be able to answer with their response to “BTLQ.” With being in a second grade classroom I do not think the students would be able to respond with such a lengthy response as in the textbook. But I do think they would be able to write a paragraph. We could also guide the students with “guiding questions” or the beginning of sentences and they respond with how they feel. If we modeled these different reading strategies to the students, in time, they would be able to respond to these authentic questions in the proper format.

Questions to consider: Does you MT use authentic questions when responding to students? What reading strategy could you see working in your classroom? How would you respond to these authentic questions?

Assessments are vital evidence of showing where my students stand and how well an instruction plan works. My classroom uses both formative and summative assessments. Formative assessments are conducted on a daily basis to improve instructional plans. For example, my MT uses class presentation to praise students’ good writing effort during the station (center) time. She collects their drawings and writings and puts them under the Elmo for the whole class to see which also models for and encourages the whole class to do the same. My MT and I get to see how well they are doing in their writing which guides our daily lesson plan. I have seen the first graders write enthusiastically knowing that their works will be on the show.

No wonder Regie Routman says that she always does whole-class sharing for kindergarteners and first graders (Writing Essentials, p. 207). I agree with Regie whole-heartedly because I really value the same assessment approach which is also to promote better teaching and learning. The whole-class presentation does a fine job to motivate the children to write more. The one disadvantage of this assessment site is the time issue to include every child.

My class also does formative assessments through anecdotal note-taking of students’ during learning periods or checking their homework assignments. From the students’ answers, my MT and I could estimate how much and how far the class has owned the materials taught. It also shows how well one teaching techniques works. All this information guides the following teaching plan immediately. It also helps me and my MT to plan the small group reading intervention for the noted students. These in-class formative assessments are very immediate, useful and real to me; they force me to reflect on my teaching, to reevaluate the teaching techniques used, and classroom management in a timely fashion. They provide on-going and more accurate information about the students’ learning as a whole (not just by tested areas on papers).

My class, as well as all the first graders in the building also completed formal standardized baseline tests at the end of first week of school. The results were then analyzed through both the Reading Street standards and Aimsweb benchmarks. Based on the resulting data, kids were grouped at their learning level for leveled instructions. For example, the tire 3 students receive critical intervention support from literacy interventionists in the school. These diagnostic tests not only give the district, the school, and the teachers’ a starting point of where their students stand, but also approximate the students’ strength and weakness in literacy learning and acquisition. They help to inform the districts and schools to zero in their goals and efforts for literacy learning. They help to group the critical students for further literacy intervention. But no baseline tests could fully tell where a student really stands in literacy learning. For example, one autistic child in the class had significant difficulties learning the materials in the class but she couldn’t get the special intervention due to her test scores which scored just a little higher than the rest.

There are many other assessment sites in my classroom such as the weekly tests or unit tests. The Reading Street website also has games for students to play with which also gives information of how well they learned the intended materials. Finally, the summative MEAP is going to start on October 11th.in my school which is going to test the students' competency in certain areas after the last instructional phase with the old curriculum. The students' strength and weakness shown through this state-wide test will also shed insights for future literacy instruction.

As an intern, I could already feel the pressure of raising the standardized testing scores echoing from the nation, district, and schools. I could also sense the pain some teachers experience struggling to meet the national and state standards and to teach the students with integrity. How am I going to achieve “letting my students own the standards” (Book Club Plus, p 81)? This will seem to be one of my life goals for teaching.

Questions to Explore Together:
In Writing Essentials, Regie Routman insightfully stated “While assessment for learning is legitimate, it must be balanced with assessment for learning, …” (p. 239). Then in Book Club Plus!, the authors talk about “possible assessment sites” (p. 92) where teachers can gather formative and summative information about their students’ learning. Describe at least three assessment sites available in your classroom for learning about your students as literacy learners. What are the advantages and limitations of each site for providing information that is useful for deciding what the students need to learn next?

The one comforting thing that Regie Routman would find in my MT’s classroom is her 1988 edition Writing Essentials book. My MT is actually very interested in her writing suggestions for teachers. She told me that Routman was the one who inspired her new vision of how to teach writing. She changed her traditional way of mainly focusing on the writing procedures and processes (parts of writing). I feel very grateful that she has shown me how to teach the first graders to write. More important, I have been the one leading this very fun writing activity. It starts from one daily interview with the classroom helper of the day. While the first grader gets interviewed by the class, the teacher serves mainly as a recorder of his/her story. After the whole class’ reading of the finished story, each student draws a picture of the interviewer and writes something about him/her. I am pretty confident that my current writing activity would put a big smile on Routman’s face since she‘s the one who advocates for students’ fun, authentic, and daily writing practice. For her, the first important step is to have engaging writing topics for students. My MT’s writing topic is very interesting for the whole class. Imagine that Jimmy is one of the first graders just starting a new school year, what an exciting day it would be for him to be at the center of attention! It is also fun for the other students because they get opportunities to ask questions and get to know one classmate more. The rest of them also look forward to their “big day.” I’ve been enjoying reading their stories hanging on the wall and getting to know one more student better. I also draw and write the same time with the class to give further writing modeling. As Routman also thinks that it is very important that teachers need to give adequate modeling. When I show off my picture story to the class, I always get many big smiles from them. Each student works hard at their places knowing that there are real readers waiting for their picture stories. This gives another reason for Routman to be happy with this writing activity since she stresses the importance of having real audiences for students’ writings. There is also another writing activity during one of the centers. The first graders use their newly acquired words completing sentences. It has a sentence template like this “I see a green _______ .” The kids really liked doing that since they could put their choice nouns there. They not only learn the nouns, but also get used to writing with words they know. There is also another brief writing activity during the Reading Street instruction. The students could draw a thing and finish the sentence frame “I sit in a ______ .” The above two activities all seem to be fun and engaging. Routman will definitely smile in my classroom, but she will probably get puzzled about the writing problem in my classroom. She calls for at least 45 minutes of writing daily. My class does daily writing but only meets less than half of Routman’s time expectations. How can my MT and I arrange more writing time for the students? Neither of us could figure out a way to do that. I could at most think about the possibility of adding a diary to the class drawing and writing about something that interest to them. It would be good that the class could do a group share with what they write down. The other thing lacking in my class is the revision part of students’ writings. All these writing instruction problems stem from the same one problem - there is simply not enough time during the day. Due to the time conflict, I thought that it might be a good idea to integrate writing with other subjects such as math, science, and social studies. Maybe, the students could try to write down math problems in letter/word clusters, or sentences. They could also record science observations such as weather types. They could draw and write about rules of the classroom. But how do I do that? I just have to wait and see.

Writing Instruction

Most teachers work across their careers to improve their writing instruction. If Regie Routman visited your classroom during a typical week, what advice would she have for you about what you can (agency) do (action) to improve writing instruction? Be specific about whether she might suggest targeting how to integrate basic skills more efficiently, or organize for daily writing, or ways to talk with students about their writing, etc. Why would she suggest focusing on that target area?

The very first thing I think Regie Routman would say is that we don't have enough writing instruction going on in our classroom. We have not had a writing workshop every day of school. Sometimes we just don't get to it, so in her words, she would say that we don't value writing instruction enough (page 176). Every time we do have a writing session, though, we do model it on the Smart Board while the students sit on the rug, so they are paying attention. We model how we sound out the words and write them down. A rule for when the students are writing is that if they make a mistake or want to erase something, they are not allowed to. The have to just cross it out and go down to the next line. So, while we are modeling our writing, we make sure to do that as well, to remind them. Part of me thinks that Regie would think that is good, but part of me thinks that she might think that we are focusing too much on their revising of the piece while they are writing.

We definitely stress to the students to just do their best and not to worry about whether they are spelling things correct or not. And we will not tell students how to spell words. I have noticed myself and my MT saying, "add more detail", "tell me more" etc. But, after reading these chapter I now know that we should be saying things more like, "tell me what happened next". Also, before giving suggestions we need to give the students a compliment and make sure they understand that they are doing well so that they don't get discouraged.

Another thing that I think Regie Routman would discuss with us would be topic. I feel that we are sort of in the middle of the road with regards to choosing topics. We give the students a very broad topic and they can write about anything within that topic that they would like. Examples of topics we have chosen are, "My favorite thing is...", "I like to...", "I can...". Now that I am looking at these three topics, I realize that they are very similar. The students might consider writing about the same thing each time (which one child did want to do). But we have another rule...students are not allowed to write about something they have already written about. I understand why my teacher does this, but from the readings, I now believe that we are severely hindering our students ability to just write. The one child who wanted to write about her cat multiple times got very frustrated and said she didn't want to write about anything if she couldn't write about her cat. In this way, I do feel that we are not producing good, independent writers. What do you think?

Overall, I do feel that my MT does more in regards to writing instruction that many other teachers I have seen, but there is definitely room for improvement and I would be interested to see if the students would be able to conference among themselves or as a whole class instead of having continual informal conferences after every writing with us.

Would Regie think that there is enough writing instruction going on in your classrooms? Why or why not? After reading the chapters and my blogs, do you have any suggestions about adapting our writing instruction at least a little bit? How might you adapt yours?