Reflection 5 (descriptive writing)

Within this week descriptive writing was the main focus. Enough information was given to clear any misconception or lack of comprehension toward this specific topic. We learnt that descriptive writing entails an in-depth description of people, animals, places, things and events, words are used to appeal to the senses of the reader and adverbs and adjectives must be present. Following this information we were told how we as student teachers should go about teaching descriptive writing. We were taught that it is better to teach students to identify specific bahaviours, name characters and list attributes and we were also told to teach the essence of good word choice and to help with that we were presented with a list of descriptive sensory words. It is evident that students may not grasp the concept at first so we were provided with commonly faced problems in descriptive writing and ways to solve them if the occur. The curriculum which we follow has recently been updated and in it are some new and improved outcomes. Most of us were unaware of this until our lecturer provided us with that information, with that information was provision of a few examples of the outcomes posed in the curriculum. Wholesomely this information was delivered in a simplified way and that aided comprehension. We are pleased with the fact that there was provision of possible problems and their solutions in the case of occurrence strategies to use and few words we can use to teach the use of sensory words. This information is very important especially for pre service teachers and we plan to utilize it well.

LIT REFLECTION 4 (connection)

During class this week, we first recapped on the connection between reading and writing and the importance it played on the development of a student throughout school. 

 As we did this, remnants of what we did in a previous course began to play over in our mind and to further solidify our understanding of the importance connecting reading and writing our lecturer reminded as what we as teachers needed to do to achieve it in our classrooms. During this week we learnt about another important skill that is also connected to reading and writing which is needed to help students progress through school. The stages of spelling was then introduced to us and we thoroughly went through the features of each stage.
 

The lecturer also explained what we can implement to help students develop accordingly at each stage. As teachers we are now aware of what is needed to be done to help our students develop by using strategies that help allows for the connection of reading, writing and spelling.

LIT REFLECTION 3

   This week was very interesting and educational. during this week on the 5th of October, we had group presentations where groups presented creatively on how the writing traits and writing process are connected. Our lecturer had always encourage us to be creative whenever we had to do presentation and this week was no different. Each group came up with some creative charts to relay their information, which kept the class very interesting.

The presentations were all great and well executed and we are proud of what our individual group did. This taught us that we can use different creative ways in enhancing our students writing skills so that when our students leave the classroom, they are capable of writing excellent pieces.

During this week, we also learnt about elements of genre which is basically to supply data. In this genre, expertise opinion is vital, objective and researched and cited material is relevant. We also learnt about the different forms of expository writing which includes sequence, comparison,contrast, cause and effect and classification. During this class we were also taught how to teach expository writing to our students by using the two writing strategies (POW and TREE).

This week made us aware that when we are teaching expository writing to students we must make them aware that they have to take into consideration the audience and their purpose so that their content and tone will be suitable and as novice teachers we should teach our students that plagiarism is not acceptable and that they should never be subjective because their opinion is not necessary for expository writing.

LIT REFLECTION 1

LIT 102 REFLECTION 1  

Writing is an essential part of our everyday lives and participating in writing activities develops a person’s writing and comprehension skills. We were taught about the importance of writing on the lives of our future students and we were also taught about some different strategies we can use to help boost our students’ writing. We  also covered the different steps that can be taken to guide a student in becoming a successful writer. On the 21st of september, we did presentations on the different areas of the writing process and on the different elements of the writing workshop. All presentations were good but  there was a interesting one that stood out the most. This group used an author’s chair in their presentation of a workshop where they played the role of students reading their pieces while wearing an author’s hat.

     Following the reading, the teacher used a corner of the class as the publishing area to bring out the publishing stage  of the writing process. We thought that this was a great way of portraying the final stage in the writing process and we are of the opinion that students who engage in these activities are more willing to write and share their ideas. We also  learnt from that presentation  that  it gives students the chance to listen and learn from each other, help  students share their ideas on writing and to assist in developing better writing skills. We also noticed that using the author’s chair would allow the students to be more engaged, motivated and eager to participate. We are now more  knowledgeable about the different elements of the writing workshop and the importance of using the writing process to effectively improve students writing.
 As novice teachers, these presentations served us well. We learnt that children learn to write by writing, the more students write about their emotions, the better the chance of becoming critical thinkers. Therefore, when we were taught that when we go into our classrooms we have to incorporate writing in all of the subject areas and we have to be able to incorporate  the workshop and elements that it consists of to make our lessons more creative and help students to  grasp the concept quickly. Although, it is a  Language Arts classroom, it will be fun filled and the students will be able to learn from each other.

LIT REFLECTION 2

        On Thursday 28th of September, we learnt about several best practices for teaching writing and how they are interrelated with the stages of the writing workshop. For instance, the more children practice writing, the more their writing skills will develop. As novice teachers we learnt that when we go into our classrooms we should be able to model what we teach and talk through what we are doing as we write so that our students will follow in our footsteps. Also, we should always provide our students with opportunities to write about things that are of interest to them so that they will write more and explore their expressive qualities.  

All teachers are teachers of writing no matter their specialization. During this week we learnt about the stages of writing development from the random letter to the proficient. This information was very important because as a teacher you must be able to identify the stage which students are at so you can take the necessary steps to help them.

Additionally we learnt about the six traits of writing (ideas, organization, word choice, voice, conventions, sentence fluency plus one presentation). After being taught the rationale behind the six traits, we were given information as to how we will assess the final pieces. We appreciated the way the information was presented and were very optimistic to finish the piece of work in the your turn section.When placed in a real life classroom, it is evident that there will be many mixed abilities and different learning styles of students within. Therefore this information will help us as teachers to better our chances of having successful lessons and effectively assist our future students.