Reaction to class on 4-7-09

I always love learning tips for writing. Last week, Aaron (Chuck? Charlie?) gave an interesting presentation on using various writing skills. I enjoyed it because I had given a presentation the week before on pre-writing skills, and I got to use that information again when Aaron gave his presentation. It was kind of nice to hear a different take on that same stuff.

After he presented, we got some questions answered about the research we're supposed to be conducting for our observations. What we decided we might want to find out (which is subject to change) is whether or not a student's country of origin affects his or her writing output. We noticed that many students write MUCH more than their classmates, so we want to find out why.

Reaction to class on 4-1-09

My presentation went well. I'm going to try a different tack this week, I'm going to post my verbatim comments from Esther on here for everyone.

Nice start about asking whom among your classmates have taught writing.
It might have been good to show your classmates your agenda before starting. It might be good to have a visual scaffold.
Nice activity to break your classmates into groups according to writing strategies. Nice to give your classmates a time limit to partner up and to finish the activity.
Good that you go around monitoring your classmates’ work. It would be good to have a time reminder, and you just did that. Interesting activity. Good job.

I was a little nervous before I started presenting. Last semester, Veronika and I worried greatly about each slide in our gigantic powerpoint presentation, and we labored to cram as much information into our 30 minutes as we could.

I promised myself I wouldn't bore the class with powerpoint lecturing, and I decided to let everybody talk and share with everybody else their ideas on how to incorporate the ideas presented in the book with a curriculum. For the most part, a lot of positive feedback was received, and except for Adib's skanky picture, most of them were ideas I would use in my own class.

Readings for 4-6-09

Jeez, is it already a week into April?

Like Jodi, I was struck by the idea of having students create photo illustrated essays. The students bring in some photos from home. Then, they organize them into an order that can be used to tell a story. They glue them down or mount them onto something, and then they share the story with the class. After sharing orally, they write the story they want to tell.

The reason I like this activity is because it's one of the requirements of the Photography merit badge and I have quite a bit of experience in using it. It also employs a very good pre-writing technique, and shows students a very good way to organize their thoughts .

Reaction to class on 3-30-09

Urban Dictionary defines an Asshat as "one who is oblivious to the world around them, lacking common sense". That's what I felt like when I showed up two weeks ago and didn't have a presentation ready. I wrote down the wrong date in my binder, never bothering to double check it against the syllabus.
I did, however, learn how an effective teacher can improvise a "plan b" when something doesn't go as planned. Esther didn't miss a beat and she gathered all the students together for a roundtable discussion on how to get students excited about reading, and what sorts of troubles and issues they can and will run into while learning to read. The discussion was lively and educational as well, and I'm glad I got to hear what everybody had to say about reading.

Readings for the last week of March

I love writing. I don't often think that I'm an amazing writer, but I do often feel as though I'm a proficient writer at the very least. Because of this, I was especially interested in this week's subject of writing.
In the P&B book, there are several different techniques which can be used with beginning to intermediate writers to teach the writing process and the organization of thoughts. Being the amazingly ADHD person that I am, I really enjoyed how the different techniques were presented. It was almost like a list, and very easy to follow.
I remember back in middle school and using the idea of clustering to come up with ideas. Maybe I could use this in my presentation tonight? Even though I had used clustering, I had never heard of mapping being used the way it is in this book. I REALLY like the idea of having a prompt in the middle, and then clustering the ideas around it. Even thought I'm a kinesthetic learner, it always helps to see the ideas on paper before me. It helps keep me focused, and the mapping and clustering techniques are chaotic enough to appeal to my nature, and they're organized enough to keep me focused on the task at hand and help me come up with better, more coherent writings.

Readings for March 23rd

I've never been able to read as fluently in my L2 as I can in English, and I've always been very envious of those who can. It was always a little bit of a sore-spot seeing my fellow students read and understand fluidly while I struggled to keep up.
Like Thea, I have trouble stopping and deciphering every word. I read in an ESL textbook that it's best to reread as many times as it takes to get the "gist" of the meaning instead of deciphering every word. It's IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with that much input and still figure out what you're reading about.

Last week

Class was interesting tonight. I really liked how Mariya led a half-hour discussion with two questions, something which I could not accomplish. I suppose if I had to, I could fudge it, but I need more than that to take a half hour. I don't have the focus. :-)

I don't know if I would want to correct students as they made errors, because I think the hardest thing would be staying consistent. I think I would give up after a while, but it would make students rely on me too much, and if I stopped correcting them, they would have a very hard time discerning whether or not they had stopped making mistakes, or if I had merely stopped correcting them.

Comment to Jodi

Jodi - I can't comment on your blog for some reason, so here's the comment I left:
Aaaahahahaha, I love the joke. What about having the students write their own jokes? That may be more useful (or usefuler) for advanced students, but still pretty great.

That one reading for that one week

I think one of the worst exercises for teaching an l2 is having the students read a pre-written script to each other. I've always known that stronger connections are made if students are made to think in the l2 "on the fly" rather than reading a prescribed piece. As long as it was written in English characters, I could READ anything handed to me. I would probably learn nothing, but I could form the letters together to make noise that sounded like words. I would much rather be placed on the spot to form a conversational phrase than anything else, and I feel that would be much more efective at cementing knowledge than prescribing a script.

Class from Febtober ninth

I love words. I've always loved words. When I was young, I would often speak in spoonerisms, much to the annoyance of my poor mother and teachers. I used to read books on secret codes and how to speak in Pig Latin and other pseudo-languages because I loved words. Naturally, last week's presentation by Rachel and Officer Stephanie really reached out to me. I was partnered with Lillian, and between the two of us we learned some new words and puzzled out the meanings of others. I was inspired to go home after class and google "Top Ten weirdest words" and see what I could find. I found a list with the words they used with the class, along with some choice other words. Click here to see that list.