No shortcuts!

This semester has been a whirlwind and there are still three weeks left! All of the big assignments are looming and I can't seem to wrap my head around completing them. Thank goodness I was thinking ahead and tried to start them earlier (tried being the key word.) SIT is done. I'm excited about the brief lull in lesson plan writing, but sad to leave my first placement. My fifth graders are awesome and the sweetest kids. My CF has become like a big sister to me.

Last week, my grandfather passed away. I took Tuesday off from class to be with my family and help make funeral arrangements. I returned to school on Wednesday - I had to stay busy. I entered the classroom, on my last day of SIT, to a big poster and a warm coffee from Starbucks (Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte - my CF knows me so well.) Tears welled up in my eyes. The students all made cards for me, both sympathetic and congratulatory. It was a great day, and not just because it started with Starbucks. It was great because I was surrounded by my sweet students and amazing CF. As excited as I am to continue my journey, I can't imagine that my next placement will be nearly as enjoyable. I hope to be proved wrong!

As an early parting gift, my CF gave me a necklace with a compass rose pendant. On the back it says, "There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going." These words will always remind me of my CF, fifth graders, successful SIT, and my grandfather. This necklace, although a small token, will keep me going as we continue our journey through grad school.

Oooh, wikis...

I will be honest. Wikis scare me. It makes me nervous that several people will be adding and editing information in one location. Not only does this allow for a plethora of information from many different opinions, it can also allow for the deletion of important information and chaos. When I first went to contribute to Masters Information on the class wiki, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information that was already in this section. Someone else (or multiple people?) had already contributed and set the pace and tone for the section. Had I started this section first, I would have included different information in a different format. I am glad that someone else had started it already, because it forced me to think a little bit deeper and go beyond what I would normally be happy with doing.

Blogging and Comics are One in the Same.

As I was reading "Blogging and New Literacies," the second chapter of Diane Penrod's Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy, my eyes were opened to the limitless options of incorporating blogs into the classroom. I have always been a proponent of incorporating technology into the classroom, but have never thought about exposing students and families to blogs. I have always thought of blogs as online diaries, some with different purposes than others. For example, a close friend of mine has a blog where she unloads her happy moments, gripes, shopping finds, experiences and more. Another friend uses a blog as a method of sharing his political opinions and news. I have even done a blog before in another class, but have never thought of incorporating blogs into the elementary classroom.

On page 20, Penrod says, "It is certainly true that literate bloggers have to have strong storytelling skills, excellent syntactic and organizational abilities in presenting information, and a vigorous writing style to convey the content. However, highly literate bloggers also develop an aesthetic sense of arranging the content in visually attractive, easily understood (or "chunked") units. Highly literate bloggers recognize that this new medium demands writing in terms of design, not just expression." I translated this to how I've been teaching writing in my fifth grade placement. I've been using Ralph Fletcher's book, A Writer's Notebook. I read a chapter, or portion of a chapter, as a read aloud each day. We then discuss how what Fletcher says can be incorporated into writing. My goal is to make writing fun and enjoyable for the students, and so far they love it! It is a proud moment as an intern to hear nineteen fifth graders moan because we are not having writing today.

One of Fletcher's main points in the book is that writing can take many forms. It is not just a five paragraph essay or narrative about a prompt that the teacher writes on the chalkboard. It can be a list, a poem, a sentence, or just a word. Many of my students have taken a liking to writing comics. Each week I challenge them to include more words and more descriptive language into their comics, but the comics give them the opportunity to present their ideas and creativity in an aesthetically pleasing way. Blogs are also a way to express ideas and blogging is an interesting way of writing. This article inspired me to introduce blogging to my students and allow this to be an option during writing time. It is an excellent example of how writing is more than the hamburger format paragraph with a clear introduction, three supporting details, and conclusion. Writing is FUN!