Establishing the reading writing connection with poetry.

As a young student, I had difficulties in understand poetry. I always used to guess what exactly it was that the writer meant in his poems. When poems for writers such as Shakespeare were used, I was at an even bigger loss because I had difficulties in just understanding what the language that was used actually meant. I found these articles on the reading writing connect and poetry to be very interesting and should really help me on teaching practice. Using techniques that I am already familiar with such as KWL or learning about that that I am not so sure about such as word work and chick and chunk really give me ideas on how I make can continue to develop the reading writing connection which is applying what they read to how they write even during lessons on poetry. The article even goes a bit further to provide me with a list of ways that I can introduce poetry to the students. I think this will be extremely useful in introducing my students to poetry. This is a far cry from how I was taught poetry at school when I just had to read a poem and answer the questions that the teachers asked about the poem or which followed beneath the poem. I can defiantly see myself using some of these methods to change the view of poetry as being boring and complicated in my classroom to being fun and interesting. These new ideas allow me to make what even I thought was a dull topic to be taught into one where I can foster the growth of the reading writing connection and at the same time allowing me to keep my students motivated. ultimately , I believe that these techniques will allow my students to become better readers of poetry and increase their ability to write poetry as well.

Ways that students can plan for writing

Creating effective writing is unfortunately not a skill that many of us are born with the natural ability to do. For most of us creating good literary works requires us to develop and use a few techniques to perfect our writing and the articles that were posted intended to shed some light on some of the techniques that could be used to begin, maintain and finally produce great essay’s. I shall begin with planning and prewriting.
Prewriting, wow, I never knew it could have been so interesting or important. My first thought of prewriting was that it was simply a technique that I could use to make sure I don’t forget or leave out points. I had no idea that prewriting could be so influential in determining how an individual develops as a writer. This is most likely due to the fact that prewriting was never really given much emphasis during my school life before attending the Division or Teacher Education and Educational Administration (DTEEA. At DTEEA however prewriting was made to appear to me at least as some difficult process which often left me frustrated by the time I was done. According to Michelle Gatz however, this is not what it is supposed to be. It is simply a way to allow the writer to organize his/her thoughts or ideas.
To achieve this, prewriting may present itself in a variety of ways, some of which may include
Making a list of ideas, points or topics that you will want to talk about in your story. U can then talk it over with your friends to help refine the list which is more commonly referred to as brain storming. ok I have to admit that when I saw the words brainstorming the first thought I had was of it as a prewriting strategy or something along those line but after reading the article by Marie Sloane I can now see brainstorming as something more that can be used during English class but don’t get me wrong, brainstorming goes hand in hand with prewriting techniques. Brainstorming can be used in any subject. It occurs when students list ideas on how to solve a problem or deal with an issue. To brainstorm, students must list the ideas that they have about a topic or how to solve a problem. The teacher must be very careful not to list the merits or the ideas while the students are brainstorming. The merits can be discussed afterwards. It also helps to get the students excited about the brainstorming process so that they can remain motivated. Teachers should also encourage students to think outside the box. The different and innovative ideas that the students can come up with can sometimes even teach us as teacher’s new ways of solving problems. I found Sloane’s point of keeping ideas around to be very useful. If some of the ideas that that student gave were not viable for the current situation it doesn’t mean that they won’t be viable for a situation in the future. Storing those ideas would allow the students to use them as references.
It is my personal opinion that brainstorming not only be taught in English as a prewriting tool, but as a useful method of accomplishing gathering ideas in every subject. Techniques such as these don’t only have to be the English teacher’s responsibility, but can be integrated into the rest of the curriculum in order to develop students thinking skills.
Free writing is also an interesting technique that can be used. This is writing without looking back. It allows the writer to express his/her true feeling and ideas without worrying about correction in spelling or any other conventions of writing. After the free writing has been completed, the writing can look over his work, disregard the errors and sort through it to pick out the ideas, details or points which he can use to develop his story.
Graphic organizers can also be used in writing. These allow students to develop their ideas into pictures with a logical structure. They are very flexible and can be used in a variety of applications. Graphic organizers can also be used by the teachers to understand the student’s order of thinking as well as its completeness.. Apart from being used as a prewriting tool, they can be used throughout the writing process to allow the students to keep track of their work or to revise their work to see if their ideas are in their correct sequence. Certain Graphic organizers also serve as a scaffolding tool which allows the students to build on their previous knowledge or ideas. An important strategy that makes graphic organizers important is re representation. According to Scaife and Rogers, 1996, this is when different representations of the same structure may make the problem seem easier or harder to solve. The learners can be influenced by the extent to which the representations coerce them into considering the relationships between the points on the organizer
Constraining is also a benefit which is derived from using graphic organizers. It limits the inferences that can be made from the graphic organizer without harming what it is meant to represent.
In order to derive all the benefits of graphic organizers however, students must be trained on how to correctly create and understand graphic organizers. It is not as simple as drawing or representing what u think on a sheet of paper. The representations must have meaning and be properly applied to the situation. It is also very import that teacher allow the students sufficient time to really practice using the graphic organizers so that they can perfect a technique that is suitable to their individual needs.
Prewriting and writing can be achieved in many other ways however I believe that it is important to stress that no one techniques in appropriate for all students. Teachers should only show the students some of the different ways that they can prewrite and remind them of its importance. Whichever way that the student chooses is entirely up to them. It should be a way that the student is most comfortable with, not a way dictated by a teacher.

Descriptive Essay Rubric

what I think was the writers purpose and how it was accomplished

In the story of Lou’s Place, the writer’s purpose is to show how a simple restaurant which may at first glance seem unimportant has become the social heart of the community of Sunbright Tennessee. The writer accomplishes this by providing well developed supporting details which allow the reader to imagine how people from the different walks of life, regardless of age or occupation all meet at Lous Place and is able to mix with each other in a friendly, warm environment. Lou’s place is seen as more than just an old fashioned restaurant, but as a place where all are welcomed and there is the feeling of being in an extended family. The writer also supports this idea by stating that although times were changing and the people who visited the restaurant were changing as well, the general atmosphere of the restaurant and the reasons why people continued to visit remains the same

The different reasons for writing

The strategies that the writers have used in the articles are all very effective. In the expository essay about the faceless teacher, Dennis Gardener, tries his best to persuade the audience that although the internet can benefit teachers, it is no replacement for teachers as some might think. He argues that the internet only produces result and does not teach the users about the creative processes that can be used to produce the result. He tries his best to make us seem like bins where information is just dumped from the internet. The audience of this story which was in this case, teachers would have most likely created a feeling of being made redundant and this also serves to help his argument.
The second article “Lou’s place” uses the descriptive strategy to create vivid pictures of what the setting is like. These descriptions evoke feelings peace from the audience by painting a picture of Lou’s place where everybody got along and there were no problems but just an overwhelming feeling a love and brotherhood. The writer targeted these feelings from his audience with excellent use of voice and made Lou’s Place seem like a place that all of us would like to be so that we could experience the love and togetherness that the characters in Lou’s place have. The third and final article Alina, the writer take the audience into the history of the events surrounding him meeting Alina so they may understand the event that occurred and they significance of them and also to provide support for the main characters perspective. He aims to get the audience to side with the main character and uses our position as Caribbean people to achieve this. He makes use of the act that many Caribbean people have relatives that have migrated to other countries and or not met with success but only more hardship. He also stirs up fears instilled within us of going to meet our relatives in those countries but only to get there and be treated like a slave to accomplish his purpose.

Rhetorical Modes

The Product vs the Process of writing

These two different approaches are radically different from one another but yet still they may both be used to achieve maximum benefit depending on the type of learner. Certain students like me for example can perform better using the product approach. I learn better from viewing an example. That way I can view exactly what I am supposed to do and then go about doing it using clearly stated procedures to get to that goal and at the end compare my product to the example given. For others however, the process works much better. The practice gained through writing and correcting drafts and using peer feedback to improve their writing skills
Both techniques have their own advantages and disadvantages. The product approach to writing may be more suitable for the typical St. Lucian classroom with the student teacher ratio of 35-40 students per teacher. The simple truth is that secondary teachers simple with several English classes simply do not have the energy to teach writing using the process approach to everyone. The product approach presents itself to be more efficient in this respect when dealing with large classes. The essays are also easier to grade because the teachers will grade based on the form of the demonstration essay. However the product approach has in my opinion one giant flaw: it does not teach how to write creatively and independently. The students might constantly find themselves in need of a demonstration model and will be unable to function on their own without the use of a demonstration model. The creativity of the students does not have sufficient room to really grow or improve so the students will be unable to cope if placed into a situation where independence and creativity is required.
The short comings of the product approach can be overcome by using the process approach. This allows the students to go through the different steps involved in creating a story or article of their own. The students go explore the different steps of writing from brainstorming to editing and drafting. With each step the students are required to recognize their faults and think of ways to improve upon themselves. This allows for an increase in creativity and independence on the writer’s part much like the saying: practice makes perfect. However as mentioned before the time and effort required by both the teacher and students makes this approach more suitable for smaller classrooms. There are also many different strategies that students can use for various element which cater for the various types of learners
Ideally the best solution would be to have a combination of both approaches to writing integrated in the classroom. That way the faults of both approaches can be overcome by the other. Making the effort of using the process approach in writing with the manageability of the product approach in a St. Lucian classroom will create fantastic writers while at the same time dealing with the large overcrowded classroom. It is up to the teacher who knows his/her students abilities to combine this two approaches to figure out a way to combine these two approaches to achieve the maximum result.