A Momment with Corina

I have a five year old neighbor named Corina. I have been her buddy since the day she was born. I went right to the hospital the moring she was born and I could see her smiling in her sleep as she lay in her bed. I have changed her, I've bathed her, and I've put her to bed more times than I can count. The other day she came over and we baked cookies. I have done this numerous times and that day we were making chocolate chip cookies. She knew how to scoop the flour and level it off by now. She knew how to crack the eggs and add the sugar. "This girl was going to make a great baker someday." I thought. When we were done, I took the beaters off the mixer and she got one and I got one. We stood there for a few minutes eayting the cookies dough off the beaters and it hit me. I had been taking care of Corina for so long that I hadn't realized how grown up she was. There was a huge difference between that sleeping newborn to the kindergartener that she was today. She could bake! She could carry on conversations with me. She was not just my buddy but a real person who was going to be an adult one day. This was a crazy realization that I didn't want to make because I loved her so much. I think that in the end I treat her more as a "big girl" (not an adult yet) and let her make more desicions than I have in the past.

My Great Grandmother

My great grandmother Johnson is the person who I looked up to most during my lifetime. She and my great grandfather were divorced. Now in their day divorce was something that kings did to get their wifes off the throne. Divorce was unheard of. She pushed for it and was granted her wishes. But there was a catch. In the 1940s divorce wasn't like it was today. The spouse with the most money got the kids. There was no child support or alimony. My grandmother and her sister were with their father most of the time because he owned a factor in Easton and had boat loads of money. Grandma Johnson took care of herself and was a wonderful mother despite the circumstances. Despite everything she was still a lady. She always had her nails painted bright red and her hair was impecable When she was in her fifties she met a many named Jerry Johnson. She fell in love with him and they moved from Connecticut to Florida and we only got to see her once a year in the summer to escape the heat. About seven years ago she moved back to Connecticut when Jerry died. It was great because we got to see her all the time. A few years later she died of a heart attack and my grandmother and mother were crushed (and me as well). She was a pillar of strength and wasn't afraid to be who she was. A year ago we had an aniversary party for my grandmother and grandfather. We told the caterer that we wanted three apetizers and they had brought four. My parents and aunts and uncles didn't want to pay for something extra that they didn't order. The caterer said it was on him. We opened the box and inside be pigs in a blanket. This was my great grandmother's favorite apetizer and we hadn't ordered it. We all knew that she was there is spirt that day.

Favorite Moment in History

This topic is sooooo hard because there are so many great moments in history and I am a huge history buff (it is my double major). I know that my past history professors would kill me for saying what I'm going to say because it is so girly and steriotypical to say. My media studies professors would also be on my case as well. My favorite moment in history is the picture of the sailor kissing a girl on VJ day in times square. I have a poster of it in my room and my sister does as well. I don't like it for it's content but rather what it represents. A man who has been fighting a war for who knows how long is finally back from overseas. He is in one of the most famous cities in the world and he is finally home. A girl who has been waiting for her boyfriend and has been working as "Rosie the Riviter" for the duration of his deployment in Europe. They see each other and in that one moment they see each other and he does the one thing he has been thinking about while battle war and kisses her. The kiss is a symbol. It is saying "We won! We kicked ass! We are American!" It was the end of a war and was topped of with a kiss.

Conflict Central in Adolecents

A conflict that was huge in my school was the presence of marijuana. Our school was known for its involvement in pot and our teachers knew about it too. It was not a drug problem per say but centered mainly on the sale and assumption of that one drug. Everyone knew about it and almost everyone accepted it. The conflict comes in when you got that 1% of students who thought that is was a wrong thing to do and all involved should be punished for their wrong doing. They had a crappy little club that teachers passed around for sponsoring because none of them wanted to deal with the club. So the conflict stood when you entered your sophomore year (my school only had three grade levels in it) would you be for it or against it? Although I've only smoked pot twice my group of friends never got interested in it. At lunch everyone knew who sold the pot and who the "potheads" were. The anti- drug people stood out as well. I had chosen to not take a side. I wasn't against it and I didn't care if someone was lighting up in the bathroom. One of my friends did date one of the dealers but other than seeing him out of school at her home he didn't push anything on me. The school had tried to stop it but they were futile attempts. The school would do drug raids of dealers and they would keep the pot in their backpacks. When the school checked the backpacks the pot would be on the students. There was always a way out. To do drugs or not? They can do whatever they want to their bodies. It's their fault if they can't process anything when they hit thirty.

Fictional Hero

This is going to sound crazy but my hero was Nancy Drew. She was the all round, do it yourself , good girl. She was smart and knew how to reason. I think she was a feminist in her time and I think that is a cool thing to be.
These days I doubt you can find a girl who has read any of the Nancy Drew books. When I was young that were hard to find and you had to buy them in packs of six. I read the first six and a week after getting the books as a Christmas gift. It was hard to hunt down the second pack as well. There are more than twelve books but it is hard to find them. I could probably hunt them down on eBay but I have to be honest: I would get bored reading them today.
As a child I loved reading about Nancy and how she would go camping in a barn and cook her own food on a propane stove top. She was a quest in mansions of her relatives friends as well. The girl had brains, brawn, and class. I went back to read the first book (I still have the first six and have no idea where the other six went) and almost laughed. The books are such an easy read that I could get though it in an hour. I used to stay up late into the night reading these things! It's funny how thin gs change. I could easily if all twelve books into the book I'm reading in my history class. My teacher told my parents that I was reading at the higher end of our grade level so these books had to be advanced to say that they were challenging.
Despite my growth in the reading area I wish that the book sets were still being sold. The whole concept of the book might be dated but Drew is still a good role model. She teaches deduction, survival, and problem solving skills. Hopefully we will be able to get the books on Kindle and I can read them with my daughters some day.

Personal Poetry

This poem is one of my favorites. It was published in an anthology and I got five dollars for it! I wrote it in seventh grade but put out there anyway. Enjoy.

Life

Life is like a birthday present,
No matter how hard you shake it,
It won't give you one single clue as to what it is.
Finally when it comes time to open it,
You slowly take off the bow
And peel back the wrapping paper and you start to see it.
Either your face turns into a smile or you start to frown.
If you are satisfied with your gift and marvel at its color,
And how awesome it looks and you sit and play with it for a while.
Then you put it gently into the box and put it in a safe place.
You are happy with it and that's what matters.
If you don't like it you look at it in disgust.
You think "Gross, what am I going to do with this thing?"
And then you put it in the place where someone will most likely sit in it.
But if you were really smart you would take that nasty present,
And make it into something just as wonderful as the gift that you wanted.

Life as a Writer (4of 4)

When I was in elementary school be did some writting but focused more on reading until fifth grade. Even then it was not a major part of our school day. Despite the lack of a writing stimlus in school I found it at home. From grade four through upper middle school I had a journal and wrote in it almost every night. I would write about what went on that day, what my hopes, and what my wants were. I think that his helped to develop my writing because I did so well in high school with writing. As a writer I used vocabulary that I got from reading books. I sometimes get a "What does that word mean?" I also found that my role as a writer improved with reading (another nightly activity). As I went through high school I did well on writing assignment but when I got to college things changed. Instead of getting As I was getting Bs. To me this was the end of the world. My school told me that they had prepared me for college very well. They were lying. Kids in my school went to Yale,  Harvard, and MIT. This was something my school proudly mentioned. The funny thing is they don't mention the drop outs. I'm sure they are few but it still happens.
Now that I am in college I have had to write numerous papers for a ton of classes. I get help from the writing center but I find that my peers are the best judges. Most of them aren't afraid to critique a fellow student and they are learning the same things that I am. Developing my writing over time has been a long journey but it keeps going, changing as time goes on.

Publishing (3 of 4)

In my mind publishing is the final stop on the road of writing. I start with brainstorming and free writes. Then a outline is made up and a rough draft is formed. The drft goes through three differnt people who are knowledgable about the topic I am writing. Then I do a final proof read and print out a final copy. Just because it is a final copy doesn't mean that it is publishable. So many books and stories are worked over with a fine tooth comb and made to be perfect. Final copy is not good enough.
It used to be that very few people could write let alone a published author. If you wrote a book you were gold. Today the autobiography genre has exploded. Anyone can write a book. Does this mean that these books have some quality? No. Some of the biggest idiots in the world have written books and I have no idea how they were published. "The Girls Next Door" is a great example of how publishing quality material has gone by the wayside. Two of Mr. Heffnef's former girlfriends have written books that have become fairly popular. My view: Who cares? Publishing material one hundred years ago is so much more intellctual than Kendra's Autobiography. True literature had gone bad and is laughable compared to the writers of our pasts. Lets just hope that newly published material exersices or brains a little more.

Peer Editing Process (2 of 4)

When I wrote my informational text for the class I knew that it wasn't my best written work. When I was looking for someone to read over my essay I got people who were in my genre to read my paper. I was extremely happy to see that they were highlighting and writing notations all over my essay. Some people might think that it was a bad thing but that was not the case with me. I knew that my paper was a piece of **** and I should have spent more time on it but the day I was working on it I was called by work and asked to work a shift. Being the poor college stundent that I am took the shift. I know that this sounds bad but after the mark-up copy of my essay came back I more than made up for what I had missed. My paper was changed, altered, and polished. When it came to the narrative I spent more time on the paper. As a result when it came to peer editing I had less red pen and highlighted portions. With their feedback I can see how I have progressed and what I need to focus on. I did this with the first paper and as a result my second was better.

Starting A Memoir (1 of 4)

When starting a memoir you have to think about what you will include and exclude in your story. A memoir is very differnt from a biography or autobiography. It is one event or a series of connecting events that make up a story. With memoirs a person focuses on a small area and it is hard to refine what is being written about. When I was writing my narative and defining things in my informational text I had to wonder: Where do we exactly start? In my informational text I said that students would read memoirs and be able to learn from them where they should start. Now that I have done that paper and have to start on the actual memoir I find it hard to start at one definiate spot. I chose to write about my first day of kindergarten but where would I start? When I woke up? When I got on the bus? Going to may classroom? My story could start at many points in my day. In the end I started my memoir with the time I woke up and ended the day with my mother picking me up for school. Now that I look back they were great times to start and stop my story.

What and why do I read?

This topic is very hard for me. I love to read. I will read almost anything and everything. When I first learned to read in kindergarten/ first grade I would make my mother read with me at night for hours passed my bedtime. When I was in second grade our class had a contest to see who could read the most "Amelia Bedelia" books in a two week period. My teacher only had about seven of the ten books that had been published. After the first week I had already gone through all seven books so I made my father go out and buy the remaining books. Needless to say, I won the contest. Through out my late elementary and middle school education I loved reading homework when others did not. It was my one part of the day where I could go "somewhere else". I hate to admit it but even textbooks that tend to be dry still hold a bit of interest to me.
These days I tend to read textbooks, historical fiction and non-fiction, and autobiographies/memoirs. I read most textbooks because I have to for classes but also for references if I have questions about something that the Internet misses. As for historical books I will read mostly anything. In my Early Republic class I recently finished a great book on George Washington. It gave a great blow-by-blow about his life and how he was not the "great, selfless" man that we usually see him to be, but a calculated player in politics and government. Even though it was assigned reading I still enjoyed it. Historical fiction is a vice of mine. I know that it is loosely related to real events so I have a reason to legitimately say it is productive. I prefer Phillipa Gregory. I have read most of her books (there are many) and have started watching historical fiction TV shows because of it. For some reason I read it because it interests me even thought it's not based on true events.
 Autobiographies and memoirs have been a favorite of mine since I read my first one in third grade by Ekaterina Gordeva. It was called "My Sergi" and was about how the two Russian figure skaters fell in love. Since then I have read many others including "Angela's Ashes", "The Diary of Anne Frank", and "The Unquiet Mind" just to name a few. The reason why I love these books so much is because they give me a window into another time and life. I am a fly on the wall and no longer Christine the college student. I think I feel that way with most books even the emotionless history books that I have to read as my double major. Reading is just another outlet that I take advantage of.

Free Write: Fears of Teaching

I got into the teaching program at Southern Connecticut State University in March of 2013. I started taking teaching classes in the fall of the same year. So far being taught how to teach has been interesting but I still feel like I have a shadow hanging over me. Professors are positive and sure that the skills that they are teaching us will work and we will be efficient, outstanding educators. This is what I doubt. What if literacy circles don't work with my class? Will reader's workshop help my students to be successful? From the reading that I have read by teachers that have been using these skills for years say that these techniques work. But at the same time I have read about classes that had to be adapted to fit a classroom that could not have learned anything from the traditional class set. There are so many variables with classrooms that can change the way we need to teach. A literacy centers class may work with a suburban class of seventeen. On the other hand it would not work with an urban class of twenty-five. One of the articles that we read talked about how the teacher need to adapt literature circles because her students could not stay on task. This is what I'm afraid of. It is hard to get jobs in small towns with small classrooms and supportive parents. Many teaching graduates get whatever job they can get even in urban areas. I know that Southern has one of the best teaching programs in the state but I'm still not sure of myself. Hopefully as I finish the program I will become more sure of myself. Despite all these thoughts and all of my doubts I will adapt for my students and become successful in the end.

Writing about writing

My first memory of writing starts with kindergarten. The teacher of my class was teaching us how to spell simple words such as the, like, also. I was having fun but I wanted to spell bigger words. I asked my teacher how to spell other words. A few other students had the same thing in mind. My teacher sat the three of us at a separate circular table and wrote out the word "house" on a small white board. We were given the small lined white boards that the other kids had but we had a slightly harder task. I was able to write out a big word not just letters and small words. I now knew had to spell house. I might not know how to pronounce each letter but I knew what it looked like.
Through out elementary school the more I read the better I got at writing. Reading taught me more vocabulary than any of my teacher's spelling tests. To this day people tells me that I use big words or stop and ask me: "What does that word mean?" This might deter some people from using their vocabulary but I have pride for mine. Reading was the key thing that propelled my writing from kindergarten and first grade into the upper elementary levels.
In third grade we had a contest. Who ever read the most "Amelia Bedilia" books and wrote the best essay about the books and how the series went along won a prize. I read all the books in the classroom and also bought the books that my teacher didn't have. I wrote a long paper describing the ins and outs of Amelia's life. All of my work paid off. To this day I don't remember what the prize was but I do remember how the reading and writing felt. By wining I felt like a better student.
The older I got the more I wrote. I kept a journal through out my educations in to my high school years. It was very theriputic and I enjoyed getting all of my emotions out.
Now that I'm in the "real world" I barely have time to write because I'm working, going to school, and studying. I would love to have the time to write is a journal again buy right now it's not in the works. Maybe in my writing future will be a possible book. I've tossed the thought around in the past so I guess I'll have to wait and see what will happen.

Review of My Experience with "The Maze Runner"

The book that I read for reading workshops and mini lessons was The Maze Runner. This book is about a boy who is suffering from amnesia. He has totally forgotten his previous life and is thrown into a "camp" with other teenage boys. Every boy has a job and he wants to do something called maze running (or also known as runners). I do not know how the book ends about there are many things about this book that stuck in my mind that I will present now.
My Book Review: This book is just plain weird. I'm sure if I read the whole book I would understand half of what is going on but in the beginning of the book there are many strange plot lines going on. There are so many questions and nothing is explained. I read half the book and NONE of the questions that I had were fully answers or in the very least understood. The more I read the stranger it got. I will probably find everything I need to understand and answer my question but if I were a student I could see how frustrating the book would be and how they might want to give up.
I choose to do predictions in the book for my mini lesson. Finding a children's book that this skill could be found in was easy, but then I realized that I needed to apply this skill in The Maze Runner. My experience with this book was 50/50. In my lesson I had my "students" read the first chapter and we made predictions together because it would have been so hard for the student if I had just let them come to their conclusions by themselves. So many new things are being introduced to the reader that they don't understand. They are presented with a main character that doesn't even know himself. They are also put into a setting that is foreign. As I said before students might not get into the book like a teacher would want. There are so many variables that it is hard to get into.
One good thing about this book is that you can predict away as much as your heart desires. So many things are going on that you can pretty much guess anything and it might be correct. At the same time it might be a great book if you are looking for something with less structure. For upper-aged elementary students it would be useful in teaching students about predicting and visualization. Because there are so many open ends in the book students have a lot of leeway in making their predictions. Visualization is good as well because this whole new world, for the main character, is described in full.
This book might go either way as far as teaching is concerned but overall I would not recommend it to any grade below sixth. It is just too strange and in a weird way it reminds me of Louis Lawry's The Giver. It was a good book in the end but the reader has to wait a while before they can understand why and how things are going on.

Colaborative Learning Supporting Literacy

This topic seems like a catch 22. There are so many aspects outside the classroom that influence it.  Students comprehend in so many ways that one technique may work in one area and not in another. The first article says that students comprehend better when summarizing, clarifying, questioning, and predicting are involved. The next says that when they try literacy circles the are unsuccessful. It all depends on the situation. Maybe using the first technique in the more urban school system would work better than the circles that the students were supposed to be working in. who knows maybe the children in the first school would learn better with literacy circles. The reason why the circles are not working is not because the technique doesn't work but because there are factors outside of their control. The children are not learning because of their economic status and the culture they were brought up in. I had literacy circles in my elementary school and my other students and I learned a lot. We talked about books, themes, and other related topics. Of course I grew up in a small suburban town with only seventeen kids in each class. They might have gone in a different direction if it was in an urban school with thirty kids to the class of mixed races. Teachers have to be taught how to handle every situation. The way a student in the inner city learns is different from how a child in a rich suburb learns. Yes it does support literacy but it needs to be applied in a way that is tentative and careful.

Reader's Workshop

I can see many types of reading workshops depending on what grade level is being taught. This can also change with the grade level as well. Mini lessons are a must in reader's workshops. They have been proven that they work and do it well. I would start with a mini lesson that would focus on one goal in reading such as recognizing context clues that show foreshadowing. This can be shown in most children's books. Even though the book might not be at the students reading level but most simple "big" books are great examples of things in a book that you might want your students to focus on. Once that students can see what they need to look out for in the big book they can go to books on their reading level and looks for the clues. While students read their books the teacher can work one on one with their students while the other are reading. Students that aren't doing that well can be paired up with more advanced children so if one has trouble with words or has a question the teacher doesn't need to take away from him or her while they are teaching another student.
Mini lessons are a great way to teach skills to children. When these skills are simplified into things like big books children can easily identify them. Now that they understand the basic skills or concepts they can apply their information to their own level. Mini lessons are the first steps on the students road to literacy.

How can you support all learners in a literacy classroom?

We have been talking a lot about centers lately and how they can help you teach effectively. In today's education settings many schools are working on budgets for classrooms that aren't cuttting it. Teachers often buy their own supplies and teachers are lucky if they have an aide for an hour each day. Teachers are also spread thin. In some towns teachers are teaching two shifts of kindergarten and have classes with twenty-five to thirty students. How does this have anything to do with how you can support children in literecy classrooms? Centers can be a good way to have children learn and help the teacher teach without the pressure of not having help in the classroom and spreading themselves out in an over crowded class. Having students work in social centers that promote both areas of literacy and communication all students learn from each other. Making up the groups that go from center to center with each other is very important. It should involve children of all levels. No group should be composed of students all from one level. The higher reading/writing level students will learn more as they help their less advanced counterparts. When the lower level students struggle they can learn from their peers. They see their friends doing it and they will want to do it too. The more advanced children will be re-enforced with their subject as they go over what they have learned with the teacher in the class previous to the center time.
If a school can afford computers or I-Pads they can also be used in the classroom. I know that I had mentioned earlier about classes being cash poor but when a class does have money it does help. It was my neighbor's fifth birthday last week and I brought in cupcakes for her class. When I came into the class the kids were using I-Pads. The neat thing about the program that they were using was made to keep up with the pace of the student alone and not the whole class. Slower students got more time in the areas that they needed help in and the other students could progress further. If schools can afford it technology can help a lot in the reading, writing, and phonics areas.

The Ideal Classroom

 There are many things that create an ideal classroom. This "idea" is different for every teacher because everyone has a different teaching method and has a variety of students. This classroom would be made for teaching all subjects but with a strong focus on reading, writing, and math. If I could choose a grade it would be kindergarten. I have done some of my observations in that level and the kids are ready and willing to learn.  It is also the place that lays the ground work for reading, writing, and math for the rest of their lives. My class would have a group area that would serve as an area where kids could learn things about their day such as the weather, date, season, time, and other basic facts that people need to know in life. There would also be a large bookcase in the class filled with books on every subject available. Even though the kindergarteners are just beginning to learn letters and small words they can under stand with pictures and adult help. I believe that if a student can find a topic that they are interested in then they will enjoy reading about it. A variety of books that one student might like another would hate and not read just because the subject does not appeal to them.
 As for the lay out of the classroom my desk would be in the back of the classroom and would only be used for correcting papers and lesson planning. In kindergarten students are rarely having any down time. Maybe in the upper grades teachers have time when students are doing work or testing but from what I have seen in kindergarten this is not the case. The students would be at round tables four to a table and be facing a black or white board with lines made for teaching students letters and numbers. Student  artwork is also all over the place showing creativity and creating pride in their work. Not only does it make student feel good about themselves and make the room look cheerful. Music would also be a part so there would be boxes of percussion instruments. Music in the class is fun and is proven to help students remember facts. There are probably many more things I could use or do without in a class but for now this is an ideal class.

Language Arts

My first experience in language arts began in sixth grade. Of course I had experiences with it before that point but the first time my teacher started using that term was in that grade. Prior to sixth grade “language arts” were referred to as reading and writing. Before sixth grade we had time spaces for only reading and only writing. It was also integrated into other subjects but every day we had specially allotted time for both reading and writing.

                Language arts in the sixth grade included many aspects. My school had three teachers and each of them was responsible for one subject. One taught history, one math, and one language arts. This situation was set up to prepare us for junior high school where we would be having one teacher for each subject. The teacher who taught language arts taught us many aspects of the English language. One was spelling. I was horrible at spelling and hated it. If it weren’t for spell check this entire entry would have many spelling errors. Even the simplest words were wrong. The other two aspects were reading and writing. We were given workbooks that had many chapters. Every week we would complete a chapter. These included reading a story (about three pages long) and write out answers to questions that were given. I was good at this aspect of language arts because I loved reading and I was fairly good at analyzing what I had read. I was also above my reading level having read chapter books in second grade.

                This indicial experience with language arts have stayed with me throughout my education until this very day. It never goes away and constantly comes up in everything including this class. I’m not taking spelling tests anymore but what I have learned will stick with me for the rest of my education and into my teaching career.