Chapters 10, 11, and 12

In these few chapters I'd like to point out one concept that I really feel passionate about. When it talked about conferencing with a writer one on one, I saw the point of letting the child know one thing they did well. A couple of the phrases that can be used are "One strength I notice about your writing is, or so one thing I notice that you do well as a writer is..." I feel so strong about beginning with a positive in a conference with a teacher, because as a child I can hardly recall moments where my teacher did this. Conferences began with the problem and how to fix that problem. After these types of meetings there really was no way you could come out of them feeling positive about yourself as a student in school. If you begin with the positive at least the child has something to remember, and maybe say...."well I need work on this, however the teacher did say that I was really excelled when it came to this." Next, when working on fixing a problem in writing, I also feel it's best to use the student's work as the example. If I were to use an example of something the student did wrong from an old paper I have in my records, I feel the instruction may be dismissed. But since the work and ideas flowed from this particular student, then they are more likely to understand and connect, and also see how to fix the area they are struggling with. I also agreed with the idea of group conferences which I believe I touched in a little in my previous blog. If the actual lesson was previously taught, and I as a teacher notice a few students who are still having trouble, say adding periods to the end of sentences. There is no need to teach the entire lesson again, but I see it would be more sufficient to conduct a group conference. So in a way I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone, I'm not taking valuable class time away from all students, and I'm still almost giving an individual lesson to a smaller group of students. Which allows for more one on one time.

Chapters 7, 8, & 9

Being a preservice teacher, I'm finding out more and more about teaching everyday. I've heard the term mini-lesson used lightly throughout my educational career, but I've not really had a 'lesson' on mini-lessons. After learning about them, I find them to be great! I remember the video we watched in class with the small group of students were not grasping the concept of using quotation marks in dialogue. While the class was working on individual work, the teacher took a small group of students aside with her, and presented a mini-lesson on using quotations in dialogue. This was a great example of using a mini lesson, because instead of either working one on one with students or reteaching an entire lesson on using quotation marks to the entire class which is time consuming, a short ten minute lesson can be useful to just tie up a few loose ends and adressing only the student's who are struggling. Also, I really liked the idea of using student writings as an example! What a great idea!!! When I have a conference with a student who is doing well in a specfic craft, I can create an overhead of his or her work and use it as an example to the class after I use the example I create. I believe this would be a great way to not only to boost the morale of that particular student, but maybe by using an example of another student it would be easier for the class to understand since it was created by a student of their level. Next, I feel that observations and conferences is one of the best ways to work and improve a student. I think a great example of using a conference would be when they complete an individual writing and there are a few words that are unclear to the teacher, then they can use the conference to maybe draw on what the student is doing to create these types of spellings or ideas etc..