Response to Breakfast, Bumper Stickers and Beyond

How important is grammar really??  The first point made in this article tackles that question. Grammar is described as the 'rules' that make a sentence not a string of words, but a structure capable of communicating meaning" regardless of context.  This hits home for me. I am often one of those people who cares more about the content than the mechanics simply because I am going into special education. However I realize that if words are so poorly spelled and grammatical errors are so numerous it may be hard to understand the content. Thus I have resigned and decided to take up more stock in the importance and necessity of good grammar.

One thing I had not thought of before was the idea that piece of work had its own set of grammar and rules. Each one varied and each one is unique.Grammar in Facebook posts are going to be much different than the grammar used in a research paper. It is important to not only give students the eye to see this but to also teach them what type of grammar to use when. We don't teach this so that our students avoid error but to show them how rich and complex our language can be.

I loved the cereal box analogy in which each cereal box represented a different "goal" if you will. One was concerned about calories and fiber intake, while the other was more concerned with finding the toy inside and yet a third was the deliciousness of the overall cereal. This gave a great example for students to look at their writing in this way. Who s my audience? Whats my point? What am I trying to sell? These are all questions students should be asking themselves when they write. This is definitely an analogy I will use in my own classroom someday. It gives a real world  example of how this is actually used. It also gives students something to compare to and really think about how well they are doing with this.

Well I know this post was a little all over the place but I mainly wanted to highlight on what I enjoyed and learned from this article. I am also fighting a cold and my brain is also a little scrambled right now. 

Response to Romano CTW 9-11

I really enjoyed this reading simply because he gave so many great ideas and creative ways of teaching. He showed many examples of getting our students to think outside the box, dig deep into their own creativity and passions and write some really awesome works.

The beginning of this reading is very inspiring, it starts off with Romano teaching Sandburgs "Jazz Fantasia". His students aren't at all excited and the reasoning they give is that they don't like jazz, so Romano has his students make up their own "fantasia" poems but makes it center around their favorite type of music. I love this idea because it is creative and it allows students to relate to literature but also make it their own.

Also right after that activity he talks about having his students poems published in the local newspaper, how awesome is that?? It connects and builds up the community, it gives students an audience to write for and it allows them to be recognized for their hard work and creativity.

He also created this activity where students had mini "interviews if you will with other authors or had other authors have discussions together and narrate how that would go. I really liked how he really made it his goal to separate the gap between his students and the authors whose works they were studying. He really wanted them to understand and know the background of each other and put themselves in the authors shoes.

I also really appreciate the time he puts into making his students have confidence in themselves in terms of writing. He sees and appreciates the value in that, he knows the wonders it can do for students and their writing.

Response to the article Papers Papers Papers

I found this article extremely interesting and it made me look at my own papers and how they are being graded and have been graded in the past. It also made me start thinking about how I want to grade my students papers in the future.

In the first section entitled mechanical errors, I think she (it is a she isn't it?) made a great point about distinguishing what kind of corrections we are doing. Editing, correcting,and fixing every sentence is not doing our students any favors. As teachers that's giving our students an excuse to be lazy and continually make the same mistakes over and over. Personally, I think I am in the same boat as those students, I know there are things in my own writing that I continually do wrong even as a 22 year old because my teachers just corrected it for me. That's completely unacceptable. I also love how open  she? is when she talking about only using a red pen to correct errors. I think she is spot on, students should know the seriousness of their errors but still know that their ideas are still wonderful which I think can be displayed through positive comments as well as a student-teacher conversation about it.I also loved the idea of taking student written sentences (make them anonymous) and having the class correct them. This way everyone gets better at their writing skills. However I realize this is a lot of work.

I like in the second portion entitled rephrase for clarity and style how she talked about writing phrases underneath questionable sentences, not to correct student work but to let them know something needed work.

Side note the letters to students in the third section is BRILLIANT!