Week 3: Megan Kole

1. For me, it is essential that children are actively involved in the writing process. I believe that children should understand that writing is a process that not only includes writing itself, but sharing your beliefs and revising and perfecting your own writing. I also believe that writing should be fun for students. They should be able to write about topics that interest them and share what they have wrote with not only the class and the teacher, but the school and other publications as well. Students should be proud of the work that they have accomplished and what to show others what they are capable of. I l also believe that it is more important for my students to portray meaning in their writing before worrying about spelling and grammar. Writing is a process, but it should be a fun outlet for students to write about what they think and feel.

2. So far in my 3rd grade class we have been practicing writing everyday, multiple times a day. Each day we give our students "P.O.P" (pen on paper) where the students are given 5 minutes to write about a particular topic. Each day we pick a topic at random and allow the students to write whatever they would like about that topic. They then count how many words that they have written and we hope to see progress with the amount of writing each of our students do each day. According to Routman, it is important to include writing every day and your students will view writing as important if it is reoccurring. If the students see that we as teachers value writing, they too will value writing. Even though I think it is great how we have the students write like this for 5 minutes everyday, many of the students get extremely distracted during the time. I also feel like the topic is not always what the students are interested in, so it may not be as meaningful. To me, "P.O.P" seems to be more of a surface interaction. However, with the MEAP test so close we have also been conducting writer's workshops on how to write a constructive response. Everyday we do a practice constructive response where we go through how to write one and how to plan. This is a more engaging lesson where the students are more involved and work in groups to decide what to write. After doing the readings for this week, I want to start doing more students conferences. I think my mentor teacher and I should take advantage of two of us being in the room and individually take time to talk to each student to see how they are doing with constructive responses and what they need more help with.

3. There is one student in particular in my class who seems to be really struggling how to write. When we do "P.O.P" each day, Trent can barely get two words down on the paper. When I ask him what he would like to write about the topic for the day he does not know how to respond and just looks at me and says "I dunno." During writing Trent always seems to be looking around at his peers sitting next to him and not concentrating on what he is writing. He is always asking for extra help and even when I try to help him he struggles. I think that this student has a hard time with spelling words, so when he is writing he gets frustrated and does not know what to do when he can't spell a word. Even though my mentor teacher and I have let him know that spelling does not count during "P.O.P," he still stops trying as soon as he cannot figure out how to spell a word. I am not quite sure what strategies to use to help this student. I have tried making the topic more interesting to him, but he still only can write down two words. I guess my next strategy that I would use would be the conference strategy from the readings this past week. Maybe if I can conference with Trent and ask him why he is struggling we can move forward. I could also model for him what this writing should be like. If that still does not work I could scaffold writing with him. I would start off by him saying what he wants to write and I scribe it while he speaks so he does not get frustrated with spelling. Then maybe when his confidence builds and we can move to him doing more of the writing. Also, the readings described praising student work and making it public. I could also put some of Trent's completed work on a bulletin board to help him see that he can write and I am proud of him.