Week 3 Jessica Thimm

1. For me, it is essential that students have the opportunity to write their own thoughts and feelings and not just respond to questions. While it is important for students to be able to write appropriate responses to readings and question it is also very important that students have the opportunity to write what ever they would like. Allowing students to write their own thoughts makes writing meaningful to the students. They feel comfortable writing in other subjects and writing down ideas in their own words. Writing is a way for students to express their thoughts to others so that they may develop into a better writer. Writing is a way for a student to look back at their own thoughts and see how they have grown as a writer. I want students to think writing is more then just something you have to do but something they want to do. I would like students to be inspired to write whether it be about their own life or a story that they have created.

2. In my classroom, I feel that we do a good amount of writing. Every day the students write responses to social studies and science questions. My teacher stresses that students have to write ideas in their own words. We also stress that students have to explain their thoughts more than saying “it did this,” or “it looked like this.” They are expected to explain their ideas in words instead using words like ‘it.’ I think it is important for students to have writing practice across all subject areas. Every day my students do reading responses. I think this is a great way for students to take what they are reading and relate it to themselves, other texts, and the world. My teacher takes these writing tasks one-step further and looks for students to use examples from the text in their own writing. By doing this she is having the students write a more complex piece then “I like this story because…” Like the chapters in Writing Essentials, we focus more on the content of the writing than the spelling of words. Students are expected to sound out the words to the best of the ability but they should be more focused on writing down their thoughts and ideas. When the students in my class write an actual story they start with an idea and they develop the idea using main points. They then put their story in a sequence from beginning, middle, to end using a chart. Students write they story down into a draft and they can refer back to the chart if they get lost or are having problems writing down their thoughts. Students are expected to do their own editing based on what they know about capitalization and punctuation. I believe that the students complete quality-writing responses throughout the school day.

3. My focus student struggles a lot with just paying attention. He struggles even to correctly copy words off the Elmo. He constantly is spelling words wrong that are up and available for him to see. This student is extremely interested in reading especially Diary of a Wimpy Kid however he does seem to be interested in any other school subject. We have to constantly pull his focus back into his work. He flies through work so that he can be done and work on something he is interested in. One thing I think may help with his writing responses is allowing him to write about Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He is only allowed to use the books for free read and not for reading responses because they are not considered independent chapter books. The only time I have seen him interested in writing is when he was allowed to write whatever he wanted to and he wrote about how he disliked school. I feel that he has a very negative attitude towards school and I would like to focus his attention more on the positive parts of school. I think he will work better and be more motivated when we encourage him and focus on the positive of what he is doing. He does not respond well to being told he has to re-do something or that he has to focus on the task we are working on. The more positive attitude and behavior we reinforce I think the better this student will respond.