Blog # 10: Bless, Address, or Press

Each week I find myself reading and checking out my classmates’ blogs, I love the feedback and responses to my blog I have received and I hope that my fellow classmates also find my responses to be helpful. I have especially learned so much from my classmates’ free writes. I noticed that many of them have been writing about their genre presentations and discussing how they feel about their genre they are responsible to teach the class about. These posts have been especially helpful to me to see where my classmates’ views on certain aspects of teaching come into play. The other free writes that my classmate’s are writing about include all different aspects of teaching. 

Katie M’s blog post # 7: Choice with Reading and Writing, really stood out to me when I first read it. She writes about how important choice is in her classroom, she even uses an example of how choice in her classroom affects how she teaches. Katie M states:

       “...But by giving him a book he picked, I am sure Peter will get more out of it than he would have with The Hunger Games...This idea of choice with reading ties into choice with writing. After taking this class I am more aware of proving my students with choice when it comes to writing. Students will have a more meaningful interaction with their writing if they have ownership of it.”

This quote encompasses the main idea of Katie’s post. She believes that if a student is given a choice in reading and writing they will be able to find connections between the text or will be able to interact more meaningfully with their writing.I completely agree with this.

I know from my own experiences I write better when I have a personal connection with what I am writing about. The same goes for reading, when I am reading for enjoyment often times I am much more connected to the book than when I am reading for a class. I found the same thing happening when working with my second graders. Although some of my students did not like free writing, others really enjoyed being able to write about whatever they wanted to. My other students who struggled with choice were my struggling writers, I found that with them it was important to give them a prompt to help them organize their thoughts better than having them come up with their own prompts. 

When it came to reading, all of my students loved to pick out their own books that they could related to. So, for my class, choice when it came to reading was much more exciting! I do believe that once students get a little older they enjoy free writing more. Meaning, once they begin to develop as writers they will begin to write for enjoyment much like Katie’s students. 

I really enjoy reading my classmates blogs, especially when they are about older students and how they respond to reading and writing. It gives me hope that the joy of writing and reading can improve with age! 

Blog # 9: Raising Some Questions

Is there a type of genre writing a teacher should focus on? 

I have thought about this question for most of the semester now, and I cannot help but wonder if some genres should be seen as more important. Each presentation given about the genres has been very informative and has given me so many different ideas for how to teach the genres. That being said, the presentation have not been able to bring closure to my question. Thinking back to when I was in elementary school I cannot help but remember reading expository texts and narrative texts the most. Mainly because the expository texts were the ones we would be tested on and the narrative texts were fun to read and were most often found in our literature books. Maybe the answer to my question lays within the grade being taught. Perhaps a teacher should start with narrative texts and should talk about all the fiction types of texts and then work into the expository texts and the other non fiction types of texts there are. This might be able to create a balance between how to teach the genres and how to show each of their importance. I think it is all about working in stages with students, working from a starting point and waiting until that is understood before moving on. 

Is it necessary to master the genres? 

I believe that a student should not need to master all the genres of writing and reading, however they will need to have some familiarity with each of the genres discussed in school.  Having said that, how can a teacher ensure each student has some baseline knowledge on each of the genres. This idea could be fulfilled easily by exposure. If the teacher continues to expose students to all the different genres of writing and reading they will become more familiar with them. I feel it is important to have pieces from each genre represented in the classroom library. When the students are exposed to each of the genres they might be able to remember certain things about each of them and they might be more comfortable using each of the different genres. 

Should teachers be able to pick and choose what they teach?

Thinking about this question from the stance of teaching genres, I wonder if teacher pick and choose which genres they teach. I know that I am able to teach certain genres better than others and because of that I might be guilty of picking and choosing how I teach my students. I wonder if this is something I can change  in my future teaching experiences. How can I do this? Perhaps it all lays in education of each of the genres and familiarizing myself with fun and exciting ways to teach her of them. I am glad I have had the opportunity to learn how to teach each genre in this course!

Entry # 7: Expository Genre

When I was first assigned the Expository Genre for my genre presentation, I found myself feeling unreasonably worried. I remember thinking back to elementary school when I struggled with expository text. I couldn’t help but feel the same frustration when I was teaching expository text for the first time in one of my placements. I remember noticing most of the students also struggling with the idea of expository text and how there was a lack of excitement surrounding the idea of this genre of text. I couldn’t help but blame myself, for the lack of excitement in the classroom when it came to discussing expository text. I knew I let my own personal bias affect my teaching on the topic. I knew I had to work on this aspect of my teaching.

That being said, my job as a hopeful teacher is to take away the frustration that certain lessons bring to students and to bring excitement back into the lessons of even the most boring topics (as you can see my excitement for expository genre is still growing). I needed to kick my habit of showing my feelings about certain topics. I knew that by researching the expository text I was going to be forced to think about this genre and was going to be forced to think about how to properly teach the genre in a more exciting manner. 

I finally began to face the most dreaded genre to me. I had to really think about how to make it exciting. Gretchen and I worked hard on finding certain articles that helped support our cause of making expository texts fun. One of the most important aspects of teaching this genre is to start exposing students to expository text at a young age. By exposing them to an expository text it causes them to think about topics in a different manner. Young children are always asking questions, because of that, exposing them to expository texts will only allow children learn about more topics that they were once unfamiliar with. I feel that as a child I was not exposed to expository text as much as I could have been. I only remember reading and hearing fiction books. I cannot help but wonder if I was exposed to expository text throughout my childhood would my feelings on the genre be different. 

After completing our research on the genre, I realized that it was not as scary of a genre that I imagined it to be. I let my fear from childhood affect a large portion of my exposure to the genre. Now that I finally have a new and unbiased opinion on this genre, I feel that my ability to teach and enjoy this genre will improve. I hope to one day be able to change a student’s opinion on a genre of reading or writing and to help them appreciate each genre they will be working with. I hope to help eliminate the frustration that may come along with some of the genres and help open their minds to learning about what each genre has to offer.