Meagan's Blog

Yesterday I participated in the 3rd annual Big Event, hosted by our very own, Longwood University. The Big Event is a campus wide event that involves students giving back to the Farmville community by doing different service projects throughout the day. My group was assigned an old woman’s house in Cumberland, which we thought was a little strange since we were just targeting the Farmville community. It was definitely an experience. Since our group was one of the largest groups we got to take a bus to make the 20 minute journey to this woman’s house. That was also an experience. When we got there we looked around at the place and thought it wasn’t going to be as bad as we were expecting because we were hearing some pretty bad things about our location. We did some basic yard work at her house, like trimming bushes, raking leaves, picking up sticks and so on. Everything went well up until about 30 minutes before we had to leave. The woman came home. She was a very small thing, and she wore a surgical mask around her nose and mouth, I’m not sure why. She was extremely nitpicky and made many of us go back and “fix” what we didn’t do right the first time. This was a really shocking experience for me because I just couldn’t believe how rude she was being. I mean, we were doing COMMUNITY SERVICE, it’s not like she was paying us. I was taken aback at how ungrateful this woman was, and so was our entire group. We finally ended up able to leave and we contacted the directors of The Big Event on our way back. We were then informed that her home will no longer be a site for The Big Event. We were all very happy that another group would not have to experience her wrath. Other than that, I had a great time working with my group and meeting new people through this experience. I felt very accomplished after raking multiple mountains upon  mountains of leaves. I definitely think I will do this next year and am excited that Longwood offers such great community service opportunities as this one!

On Saturday, January 29, I volunteered at the LCVA’s annual Valentine’s Prep Workshop. I didn’t really know what to expect before I got there, but I was pleasantly surprised with what we had to do! First, we met with the Curator of Education, Emily Gresham to discuss what she had in store for us. After she educated us about the LCVA and what they do, she gave us a list of things that she wanted to get done that day. We went right into it, helping with whatever they needed and it was actually a lot of fun! I started off helping clear off some of the things on the ground in the basement area, and then got to empty the bins of Valentine’s Day decorations from past years, which was really cool. There was a huge bucket of pushpins for us to tack the decorations on to the walls. Within 15 minutes, all of the walls in the basement were entirely covered in glittery hearts, flowers, and feathers. It was the cutest! After decorating the walls, I helped at the “flower making” station by cutting out foam strips. This was a tedious job, but I still enjoyed it. Overall, I had a really great experience volunteering at the LCVA, and I am looking forward to the next volunteer opportunity there!

On January 17, I attended the MLK Challenge at Longwood University. It was a very positive and eye opening experience for me, because I’ve never done community service to that degree before.

For those unfamiliar, the MLK Challenge is held on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day and is a celebration of his memory and his belief that “anyone can be great because anyone can serve.” A group of Longwood students and a handful of staff come together on the 17th and are assigned groups and different service projects. After working at the sites for about five hours, everyone comes back together and discusses what their service project was and what they learned from doing it.

I was assigned a group whose service project was to clean up F.A.C.E.S. Our group consisted of 6 people who all worked together to clean out the deep freezers at the food bank, as well bag over 300 bags of food for families in need. I learned how much really goes in to food banks and the logistics of it all. I never knew how long it actually took to prepare that many bags of food. I also learned that all of the volunteers do not get paid and work about 40 hours a week at F.A.C.E.S. Seeing the food that I was putting into the bags for families to share made me very thankful for what I have. It’s easy to take things like having a warm meal every night for granted when it’s always there, so this experience really opened my eyes to what other people have to go through just to make sure they have food on their tables.

Overall, MLK Challenge was a very positive and grounding experience for me and everyone involved. I am looking forward to participating next year!

How can this program help Virginia’s students and teachers? How would you use it with your students? What problems did you have with evaluating papers? What did you learn about your own grading? What did you learn about the SOL from doing this? 

This program can definitely help students and teachers by showing them exactly how stduent writing is being graded. It gives teachers extra practice grading student work, and it also allows teachers to see what they should be focusing on with their students. If possible, I could potentially have my students read one of the papers and have them critique it using the same rubric used by the professionals. They could use this information to improve their writing.  One of the main problems I had with grading the papers was being slighly biased.  There was one paper that was difficult for me to read, and in turn I ended up giving it a lower score than what it actually received. Also, if I didn’t like the ending I felt like the overall score was brought down in at least one area. As far as what I learned about my own grading, I’ve realized that I’m not really a harsh grader, but I do need to watch out for being biased. Overall, I’ve been pretty close, if not dead on with a lot of the scoring, which gives me confidence that I am a fair grader. From completing these practice papers, I’ve realized that the SOLs play a huge role in student success. The three areas of critique are key concepts students must have down in order to be successful on these papers. As a future teacher, it is extremely helpful to know what these tests are focusing on so I can help my students be successful.

This was a very eye opening chapter. The beginning example of the principal implementing a “quick fix” shows just how much is riding on high stakes testing. The overall purpose of this chapter is to inform readers that there are many forms of assessment and the purposes of assessing student writing are varied. There are two main types of writing assessment methods and they are objective and direct. Objective writing assessments measure discrete aspects of writing such as verb tense, sentence structure, grammatical usage, and vocabulary in a multiple-choice format. Whereas direct methods of writing assessments deal with the actual production of student writing as the basis for a performance test. Many educators prefer the direct method of performance-based writing because it is more directly tied to instruction and it provides practical applications to student learning. Writing assessment tasks are also varied and are used in both classroom-based and standardized direct method testing programs today. The two main types of writing assessment tasks are divergent and convergent writing. Divergent writing is where students are allowed to select their own topic and form of writing, while convergent writing is a topic-centered response that measures student content knowledge. Although they differ, both are equally important tasks to practice with students. I, along with the authors of this chapter, believe the main problem with writing assessment is that our efforts have been shifted from writing as a process to writing for a product. Teachers everywhere must strike a balance between these two in order to engage students in writing as an activity for learning as well as for demonstrating proficiency. It becomes exceedingly difficult to do so however when you are feeling the pressure of high stakes testing. The key thing to remember here is that with practice and positive reinforcement, students will not only progress in their writing proficiency as test takers, but also as lifelong writers.

I learned a lot from this chapter. I never really thought about what I would say to my students when I respond to their journals, or any other writing that they’re doing. This chapter showed me that it’s critical to make sure that what i’m writing to students will motivate them and not turn them off to writing. I liked all of the different examples of student-teacher communication through writing. After reading this chapter, it brought back a lot of memories from when I was in elementary school. I remember the best teachers that I had actually read what I had to say in my journals and wrote back with genuine responses. I loved reading what they had to say and it made me want to improve my writing to impress them. Writing to communicate also provides a great way for teachers to assess  students and pin point where they are with their writing ability. One major problem of using this type of writing as an assessment however is that sometimes students do not produce their best writing in their journals. I know when I was younger I would always slack with my writing and abbreviate things in my journal. I don’t believe it would be right for teachers to grade for grammatical errors because this is a chance when students get to really express how they feel. Another issue teachers are faced with is high stakes testing. It’s hard to be so leniant and positive when you know your students have to accomplish a certain task for a test that is extremely important. Teachers become more focused on the little things in students writing than the overall big picture of what they’re trying to say.

Vocabulary Enricher

Your job is to be on the lookout for especially important words—new, interesting, strange, important, puzzling, unfamiliar words—words that members of the group need to notice and understand in order to understand the text.  Mark some of these key words while you are reading, and then later jot down definitions either from the text or a dictionary.  In the group, help members find these words, read the sentences in which they appear, explain what the words mean, and then have group members  write new sentences about the text using these words. Jot down the word and page and paragraph numbers.

Process writing (pg. 75 para. 1): Taking a piece of writing through all of the stages: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

Freewrites (pg. 76 para. 2): Strategy intended to encourage the development of ideas without concern for the conventional rules of writing.

Informal writing (pg. 77 para. 1): Writing that doesn’t necessarily follow proper grammar guidelines.

Audiences (pg. 77 para. 3): Group of people you are basing your writing on.

Synchronous (pg. 77 para. 6): Existing or occurring at the same time.

Asynchronous (pg. 77 para. 6): Not occurring at the same time.

Sympathy (pg. 78 para. 2): Harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.

Commonsensical (pg. 78 para. 3): Sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence.

Motive (pg. 79 para. 1): Reason for doing something.

Expressive writing (pg. 80 para. 2): Share personal experience and feelings through your writing.

Purpose (pg. 82 para. 4): Reason for writing.

Slapstick humor (pg. 83 para. 2): A type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense.

Omniscient (pg. 84 para. 3): Having the ability to know everything.

Genre (pg. 85 para. 2): Different kind or sort of writing.

Editing (pg. 90 para. 1): Fixing grammatical errors.

Narrative

Imaginative and Graphic

Creating, Sharing, Envisioning 

To each is own

Story

For chapter 2 of B & T, pose 3 important questions in your blog about concepts covered in the chapter; also answer them. 

1. Why is it important to incorporate informal writing in all school subjects?

Not only does incorporating informal writing into all subjects help develop literacy skills, but it also provides a “window” into a child’s understanding. Because of this, informal writing in multiple subjects can also serve as informal assessment. Including writing in subjects such as math, social studies, and science also help the child retain information.

2. What is the difference between informal and formal writing?

Informal writing, also known as “first draft writing” is more of an expressive writing that is used for learning new things. Grammar and editing isn’t the main focus of this type of writing. Instead, the focus is on student’s clarification and extension of thinking about a content area or topic. Formal writing, on the other hand, carries more expecatations. Students are still concerned with clarity and accuracy of information, however now they must revise and edit their work before sharing it. A common example of formal writing in the classroom is report writing.

3. What is Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI)?

CORI is a program that facilitates student earning of informational text through reading and writing. The program was four phases: Observe and personalize, Search and retrieve, Comprehend and integrate, and Communicate to others. The results of investigations in third and fifth grade classrooms is that the students made gains in their ability to search multiple texts, represent knowledge, transfer concepts, comprehend informational text, and interpret text. Teachers use CORI to organize content studies. It is similar to report writing, where all notes are synthesized ino one report to meet the demands of a certain audience.

I read the article, “Fair and Unbalanced” by Nancy Flanagan. I am ambivalent as to whether or not I fully agree with her actions. Accepting late work from students is one thing, but accepting without a penalty is another. I have always turned in assignments on time, too scared to ever find out the consequences, and for some students to deliberately not do their assigments yet still receive full credit just blows my mind. I believe there should atleast be some sort of deduction, because the critics are true in my opinion, it is unfair for students who did the assignment on time. If there will be no deduction or consequence for the people who are turning assignments in late, then there should atleast be a reward for students who turn their assignments in on time. It almost becomes a balancing act in making sure both parties are satisfied.
In my classroom, I will allow second chances on my homework. I believe that at the young age of 7 or 8, homework is simply assigned to students as continued practice and development of a certain skill or subject. However, if this second chance opportunity becomes regular for certain students, I may need to look further into what may be causing this issue. I definitely want to avoid being the teacher that makes homework extremely hard and almost impossible to do because I have had bad experiences with that. I used to hate homework in 5th grade because there was so much of it! So, ideally, I would like to assign fun, unique and varied homework assignments that my students will enjoy doing, which will hopefully decrease the option of even needing second chances!