Entry #8 * My Dear Friend, Kerrigan - Thank you!

 

This week's blog entry is specific to "bless, address, and press" on a colleagues blog. As I was exploring and reading through all the excellent blog entries by my peers, I found myself quite engaged with my close friend Kerrigan's blog and specifically her entry #2 and entry #7. 

    In your entry #2, I appreciate your honestly in your struggles as a writer when you were in primary school. It is interesting to me that you had a specific writing time, however, independent writing was not valued as much in your classroom than strategies and skills were. Tompkins (2012) reiterates time and time again how "it's crucial to introduce students to the writing process and to help them learn the activities involved in each stage" (p. 21). I wonder, then, do you remember learning the stages of the writing process at this age? Do you think if you learned the specific writing stages, you would still have the struggles in writing that you did? As we have learned this semester, writing can be hard when you don't know where to start. I am quite surprised that your teacher didn't allow you as many opportunities to free write and apply those strategies and skills! 

I LOVE reading about what you are currently implementing in your classroom. This gives me confidence in my own individual learning that these strategies we are learning in grad school are a great resource for our own teaching. I appreciate that you take special time to ensure your fourth graders know the goal for the writing (the hardest part can be getting started!!) I smile because I know you and I know how important a supportive classroom community is and I am so grateful to listen to your reflections as a first year teacher and how it has aided in your own personal writing development. I think that rubrics for feedback is a great way to ensure that feedback is given! 

Your descriptive presentation with Kayli was fantastic! I really enjoyed learning about this genre and the different elements of it. When reading your entry #7, I was intrigued by your article even more than when you were describing it during your presentation because of the specific strategies students learn when reading. Just like you, I am pleased with the way the authors direct more attention to the aesthetic focus rather than a comprehensive one. When you said " aesthetic stance actually led to higher comprehension and interest in reading" (Kerrigan, entry #7), I knew that this would be a strategy I would incorporate into my teaching as well. When you said in your last paragraph of this entry "create lifelong readers" (Kerrigan, entry #7) I was moved by this. Yes, comprehension is the overall goal for reading as we know. However, the enjoyment and appreciation of the process of reading is something so much bigger and I think you are really letting this shine in your teaching.

In almost all your blog entries, you relate the content back to what you are doing in your classroom with your students and I find that incredible. I aspire to be as diligent as you are with taking what you learn from our courses and immediately applying it with your students to set them up for success. I really enjoyed reading your blog entries. 

If anyone is looking for different ways to incorporate what we have learned to the actual real world classroom, take a look at Kerrigan's Blog!