"J.... come on up to my table, it is your day to blog!" I call one of my students over. A smile appears on their face. They quickly shuffle over and sit right next to me. They get started typing right away. After some time, it differs for each student, they say, "Ms. Emrich, I'm done!".
I scoot close to them and move the iPad so that we can both see it. I ask them to read it aloud to me. As they are reading, they naturally start catching their mistakes. If they do not catch something like a capital letter, or misspelled word I will stop them and discuss the error with them. I love that I have one on one time to conference with the student about their writing. It is not forced. They genuinely want to hear my feedback and are motivated to make their post (writing) better. When we finish reading through it once to edit, I ask them if they introduced and concluded their blog post properly. They seem to naturally introduce their writing, but forget to end it. We discuss different ways they can conclude their post. I think this has been sticking with the student. They have been remembering to introduce and conclude their writing in class. I remind them they can add in some figurative language to help describe things in their post. I help them to finalize it. Before you know it, they click PUBLISH! I show them what it looks like on our website and remind them to show their parents at home and comment on others. I think everyone should be blogging with their students and/or blogging themselves. It is such a reflective experience, I see no negatives. Next year, I will definitely be starting a class blog earlier and hope you do too! *Below is our class sign up page for May. We signed up this week and every single one of my students is thrilled to be continuing the blog. They can't wait to post again!
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As our Narrative Biographies are coming to an end, I am starting to reflect on what I liked and what I want to do differently next year. I loved letting the students choose whether they wanted to create a narrative biography or an informational biography. It pushed them to work harder on their writing because they chose which to create. It also proves to them that there are many different ways to write a biography. By giving them the choice, they get to practice the style they are interested in and are motivated to write.
I think it was extremely helpful having my team on board, and rotating classes. Mrs. Will and Ms. Berkowitz took students who wanted to write an informational, while the students that wanted to write a narrative came to my room. We got to focus on mini lessons that pertained to their chosen writing format. I focused mostly on narrative lessons. I gave lessons on dialogue, adjectives, transition words, figurative language, etc. As my mind is jumping to next year, I wish I would have showed all of my students MORE examples of narrative biographies and informational biographies. I wish I showed them a video biography on Clips versus a chapter book biography in Pages. I think this would have helped them to get more creative and visualize the end goal. The biggest struggle I had, and I think my team had as well, is when to "cut them off". I would love to work on their writing for a long time, there are always things they can add to make it better, but with students working at different paces it gets difficult sticking to a deadline. Our students work at different paces, you cannot change that. To avoid having everyone at different places we tried to have them complete a writing task, such as the beginning, on one day. When they are done they can free write. The problem with this is what if a student is absent, gets pulled for additional services, or is having an off day? They are bound to get behind. Because of this we, as teachers, try to give these students extra time resulting in an endless cycle of catching up. We are to the point now where we are asking each other, when should we "cut the cord" and give them a deadline? I hate the feeling of depriving students of that work time. In a perfect world, I would have one on one time with each student helping them push their writing to the next level... Unfortunately our world is not perfect, and I just have to try to give them my all when they do have that half an hour of writing time. I would love to hear thoughts, feedback, and any recommendations of what works in your class when you come to this problem. If you don't have this problem in your classroom, why do you think that is? I will be sharing some of their final products by the end of the week, stay tuned!! I think that Tuesday is the perfect day to continue with my blog. I have Monday to settle in, but it is still early enough in the week where I am motivated enough to continue with my writing.
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I cannot wait to share how the rest of our year goes. I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday! |
AuthorI am a second grade teacher at Irving Elementary School in a co-taught classroom! Archives
May 2019
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