Chapter 7 Thoughts

As I was reading this chapter I kept thinking to my own teaching of writing. I am guilty as charged, I know that I have been isolating the skills. My knowledge of teaching writing has been next to nothing and so I ventured out on my own last summer to read some literature. Still, I have not shown the growth that I wanted to in teaching writing to my students and instilling the love of actual writing. I realized that what I was having my students write was not what they were interested in and they had no real auidence. I did however gain a little confidence when my second graders wrote their fairy tales. Although they were all based off the Three Little Pigs just with different characters and such, they were energetic in wanting to write them and stayed with them. We were able to take them all the way to publishing and they turned out really great. After that, I haven't had much success with motivation from the students or quality.
Reading I have realized the students need to write about something they care about adn for a reader who really matters. I liked teh sampling of minilessons that were provided on pg. 155. I am never really sure what I should teach and when, I realize that you have to do what your students are ready for.
I have a word wall in my room that has all of the words that K,1,2 students have been introduced to and should know but you would be amazed at how many 3rd graders still don't know them. I always tell them to refer to the word wall or they own personalized dictionary that they can add words to. This word wall was put up before they ever start school. I think that this year I am going to take down the whole thing and start fresh. I will keep some of the common words that are misspelled but not put up the easier ones like "a". I will not put up the words until I have reintroduced them and add more meaningful words that come up in our reading and writing.

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