My Class vs Our Class

This blog is slightly out of order... this is in regards to last weeks reading:

Routman discusses just about everything in her books Reading Essentials and Writing Essentials, yet in the first few chapters of the first mentioned book one idea stood out in my mind-- how to set up your classroom.

As a new-teacher-to-be I am full of excitement about MY new classroom. It's not my master teacher's classroom that I am using as a stage to practice my teaching skills. No, this is MY classroom. It represents who I am as a teacher and I want parents to walk in on the first day and think to themselves, "This is going to be a fantastic year!"

And then I read Routman's ideas in chapter 2. Oh my gosh! Talk about taking what I thought I knew and turning it completely upside down, and well... me being okay with it. In fact, more than okay. In love with her ideas is more appropriate. Its not MY classroom. It is our classroom, where the teacher and students come every day to learn from eachother. After reading her ideas about allowing the students to help set up the classroom during the first few days of the school year, I realized how important it was for my students to feel at home in our classroom just as I would like to feel. Looking back at my preschool classroom, there were plenty of Routman's ideas that I had done. I always tried to cover as many blank spaces with student art. I took to heart my boss's theory of "If I walk into your classroom any day of the week, I should instantly know what you are learning in the classroom." I love this idea and I made sure that students' work was hung as soon as it was dry. If we studied dinosours for two weeks, by Tuesday of week one I would have two bulletin boards full of dino-art. The giant volcanoe overflowing with lava? Group art project! The boarders? Dino-footprint stamp project! I thought that meant it was their classroom. I thought I had it down to a tee.

And then Routman through my world in a tizzy! The kids deciding where the recyceling bin goes? Where homework sheets should be turned in? Where the art table should stand and how often we switch jobs... or which jobs we have for that matter? No... they couldn't be in charge of that! That would be chaos. Or would it? Routman makes very solid arguements for why students should be an active participant in the layout and dynamics of the classroom. The more stake they have in the building of their enviornment, the more respect they will have for their classroom day in and day out.

I am happy to say that Routman has influenced my ideas about classroom set-up. I went from having a very materialistic view of "sharing" the classroom with my students to having a wonderfully democradic outlook on the design and day to day runnings of our classroom.

Phonemic Awareness is /f/u/n/

We had a wonderful introducation to phonemic awareness in Tony's class last quarter and it is to me one of the most fascinating aspects of elementry education. My previous experience as a toddler teacher introduced me to just how early students begin to pick up on phonemic awareness. It really is amazing to think that as young as two years old, we are making the phonological awareness connections. Young children love rhymes and can easily pick them up. By the later toddler age, you can witness kids exploring phonological awareness by immitating rhymes with "made up" words, such as the "Tina-Tina-Tina, Fe-Fi-Fo Bina!" rhymes. Other rhyming songs are thick with phonological awareness teachings, such as the "Apples and Bananas/ Epples and Beneners" song. It wasn't until this course and its sister course last quarter that I was able to make the connection between classic rhyming songs and reading. I find it absolutely fascinating!

After reading "Put Reading First" I have a much greater understanding of how to approach the teaching of reading. In my toddler classroom, I was often using a non-systematic approach to teaching the letter sounds without even realizing it. I would often go through the alphabet and model the letter sounds, "A... ahh ahh, B... bah bah, etc". I had no idea that this was in fact, not entirely useful to my students. Using a systematic and explicit approach, including letter blends in association to words (verses the written letter) makes much more sense, especially at the youngest years of education when written language resembles doodles more than words.

I understand that phonetic education is useful and necessary for students to be able to read and write. Yet, I believe that in these early years (toddler - kindergarten) that phonemic awareness is a much stronger approach. For students who do not have an understanding of written language, phonological and phonemic awareness is better achieved in a systematic and explicit teaching method. With a good base education, students can jump into phonics with a greater understanding of why a sound represents a particular letter/ letter combination (verses a sound representing a particular part of a spoken word).

Invntiv Speling II: The Happy Medium

Inventive spelling is a topic that runs through my head again and again as I continue my journey in the world of education. I am constantly pondering, "How much 'inventive-ness' is too much?" In previous blogs I have already admitted my love for inventive spelling and how I wish I could convince the world that it's okay to miss spell words as long as meaning and comprehension is not lost. Yet, as an educator I am torn between allowing my kids to be creative and run freely with their writing, and the daunting fear of letting them continue yet another year with incorrect information on the proper spelling of words.

Finally-- some answers! Regie Routman's Writing Essentials touches on this topic in a refreshing way. In the last section of chapter 7, Routman state, "While inventive spelling is great for freeing kids to use words they might not typically write, sometimes we accept inventive spelling for words kids are capable of writing conventionally" (Routman 163). He states that it is reasonable to expect students to be able to spell a bank of words. For kindergarteners, the bank includes "I", "my" and "can." Since students at this stage are using words such as "I", "my" and "can" quite often in their writing, Routman believes that they might as well practice them correctly. Inventive spelling is still okay for words that students would not normally be expected to know (or be able to sound out phonetically), but if they are common words in their writing the expectations for conventional writing should be raised.

This is a refreshing outlook because it is the happy medium I have been searching for. Inventive spelling is okay, BUT it is also okay to ask a student to check his spelling on "was" written as "wz". And just as I was thinking, "Great, but how do I do this effectively?", the next few pages are full of practical applications for any classroom.

Routman suggests constructing Word Walls (Routman 165) with commonly used words that you should expect your students to spell correctly. Other Word Walls can specialized to include content from the unit in study, seasonal words, family words, students names, etc. Additionally, using Word Walls to highlight smaller words within long words will help students foster their ability to spell complex words by breaking them down.

I think Routman is very thoughtful in his approach to inventive spelling, finding a balance that makes me feel confident in given students freedom without sending them off to the 1st grade with "wrong" spelling skills.

Wordle: using cool gadgets for education

Bush's Speech on Afghanistan
Obama's Afghanistan Speech

I got this idea from another blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity. The idea was to take Obama's latest speech on Afganistan and imput into the fancy Wordle program to visual annalyize the speech. Wordle takes text and transforms it into a word graphic, with the text size increasing with the amount of times each word is shown (Jane showed us this tool last year).

I never really put too much thought into how to use the tool, aside from making a fun logo for my myspace account or whatnot. But after reading that blog, I realized that it can be a wonderful annalyitical tool for large amounts of text. I took it a step further and entered in Bush's speech about Afganistan from 2001. Comparing the two speeches using the Worldle designs makes a large visual impact.

In Bush's 2001 speech, 'military' is the big stand alone. In Obama's 2009 speech, 'Afganistan' dwarfs the other words. 'America' is far more present in Bush's speech than Obama's. Obama's visual speech has 'people' in large print, whereas Bush's visual depiction shows many synonyms for 'terrorist' and 'outlaw' verses 'friends' and 'children'. Does this mean Bush is a more creative speech writer? Does it mean Obama sees all people more equally? You cannot tell from the visual graphics a lone. But, using these tools in conjuncture to reading the full text will allow students to gather a better understanding and perhaps an insight into 'reading between the lines'.

And just out of pure curiosity, here is a Wordle of my blog :)

Picking the "just right" book

At this point we have had many chances to pick out books to read to our children. We know what to look for-- repetative/perdictible text (rhyming is always fun too!), big, beautiful illustrations and characters that your children can connect to. It has to be a story that delves into enough depth, but short enough to keep their interest. And if this wonderful, perfect picture book happens to incorporate a theme that the class is learning about, then you might just have found a book that is acceptable for the day.

But now, oh boy. Now we have to pick a book for the STUDENTS to read! Yikes! This, to me, seems so much more difficult. It's not like a read aloud that you can adapt on the spot to meet the needs of your students. You can't replace big vocabulary words with simple kindergarten words, you can't shorten big chunks of text when students begin to loose interest. When you pick a book for THEM to read it has to be just right. If it's too hard, the student will get fustrated and may begin to shut down. If it's too easy, the assessment is useful and the student will likely become bored with the text. It's a lot of pressure.

I hope that this pressure eases with time and experience. I am sure it's just like any other aspect of teaching. With practice it becomes natural. I just hope that I don't miss judge too many students' capabilities along the way.

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is almost like a collection of quotable lines and interesting conversation starters. She has a way of portraying so much of her personality (voice) in her writing in an utmost honest way. Just as her story starts off, good writing begins with telling the truth. Lamott illustrates this within her own writing page after page. She also has a wonderful knack for creating colorful ways of describing her concepts of good writing.

This is particularly true on page 110-111, where Lamott recalls an old Mel Brooks routine where a psychiatrist tells his patients, "Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it." She continues to explain how she would retell this to her students to help them reclaim the innosence and freedom of the childhood mind. She asks them to listen real closely to hear the faint voice of their character and listen to what they want to do next, what they want their next adventure to be.



I think this is a very important concept for young writers to be aware of. As students attempt to write a fictional story they often ask you as a teacher, "What should come next?" It is important to encourage them to push their minds further-- to continuely think of more detail and creativity. The idea of "listening to your broccoli" is a cute way for students to visualize this concept. By taking the time to stop and really just think about what the character would want to do or how they would do it, our writing takes on a life of its own. It is at this point that writing turns from well writen to wonderfully illustrated prose.


Lamott's ability to take extremely vague concepts and approach them with very concrete images is the ultimate key to being a good teacher. In this way she is able to effectively show her students how good writing is achieved.

Is Writer's Workshop Appropriate for All-Ages?

I am one of the biggest fanatics when it comes to writing. I believe that students should be allowed to write about whatever they are excited to write about. Does it matter if their story is about last week's awesome soccer game or that one time that they got a high score on their favorite video game? In my opinion, if the writing is well done then the student should have the freedom to choose a topic that interests them. So many young boys dread writing-- or should I say, they dread writing 3 pages about Thanksgiving Dinner, using descriptive writing about smells and textures to put the reader right at the dinning room table. But allow them to write about that amazing hiking trip they went on with their dad over the summer and watch the descriptive text form naturally as their excitement leads them to describe just how awesome the hike was.

Writer's Workshop facilitates this freedom. And for that reason, I am a fan of the general concepts involved in Writer's Workshop. However, I feel that maybe too much freedom is being delt out in the wrong places. The program requests an hour of writing, generally speaking 'free-writing' every day. Then each day, the student is introduce to one new concept to incorporate into their story. One day it is "how to make a list" another day it is a new prewrite style. And this is all good... almost.

My biggest problem with Writer's Workshop is it's massive attempt to unify how writing is taught across the board-- across schools, districts and grades. And here inlies my issue. How should a fifth grader and a kindergartener be learning the same thing? Some writing skills are transferable, like pre-writing styles. Others are simply not. Teaching a kindergarten how to edit their story when they cannot even form complete words just is not helpful. I understand the idea is that they will be intoduced to these concepts early on in their education and become more comfortable using them as their skill progesses, but it seems overdone at times. Kindergarteners who have a very pre-emergent writing level (as in "I went to the park" reads "Wt to t pk") usually cannot recall what their story says a week later (as opposed to when you ask them about it when they are in the middle of writing it). Having them return to a piece they wrote a month ago and asking them to edit it, is really in a sense having them make a carbon copy of a carbon copy. They basically retell a story with less memory and detail as the original, and we as teachers are supposed to tell them that that makes them a better writer?

I like Writer's Workshop, I just wish that it was used as a guideline (like in some schools) rather than a god-sent cirriculum like the schools I have been in. It has very good concepts that can be (and should be) easily adapted the proper age group. All in all, I wish districts would trust their teachers enough to offer them the tools and allow them to use them to their discretion.