February 21st

Weaver chapter 4 begins with a comparison between a minilesson from a teacher who attempted to combine grammar and writing into one lesson to a classroom taught by Amanda and Carroll who successfully combine the two concepts.  I am relieved to see this because, as much as I am enjoying this idea of inter-grading grammar with writing, I draw a blank when I think about the how.  Grammar is not my strong point... at all.  I cannot pick out grammar in a sentence so when.  In Connie's classroom she points out the sentence, "I felt the wing going through the tress like ice cream melting in the summer."  To me this is a students attempt at a metaphor, not a type of grammatical error.  If my fear of teaching grammar is not highlighted in the previous sentences I do not know how to further express it.

In a way I guess this is why I am connecting with the idea of teaching grammar in the context of writing.  While reading Amanda's analogy with driving speaks the loudest.  "What helped us to improve, our car manuals, or hours of driving practice?"  Who actually read the car manual?  I read it once to figure out what this little green button does underneath my gear shifter.  Not by any means does this mean I am an expert on cars.  Same goes with grammar, I probably know more than I think.  I just do not know the proper name for the mechanics.  How have I learned?  I cannot say for sure.  But practice does make perfect... or close to it.

The last couple pages of this chapter deal with different methods to incorporate grammar into the writing process.  Thus calming my irrational fears.  Weaver goes on to make this following point, "More important, we teachers need to learn to keep our hands off students' writing, lest their piece become our piece."  I think this is a great perspective to take, and we touched on it the first day of class.  If we, as teachers, take that red pen to all of our students' writing and constantly correct what is wrong I would safely say the piece is not theirs anymore.  We have defiled the paper with red ink to make it what we, the teacher, believe it should be.  So when Weaver discusses student conferencing as a way to incorporate students learning grammar I kept that in mind along with the red pen.  You want to give students ideas not demean their writing.  With that concept I also liked the idea of demonstrating grammar with use of your own writing.  Gives the students a chance to reverse the roles on you without you actually giving them free reign.

Now I come to chapter 3 in the Anderson text.  I cannot express the amount of joy I felt in my heart when the idea of a writing journal was posed.  This is something that I was thinking about in my head and I wanted students to model when they got into class.  I can think of no better way to safely give students a zone to write without my thoughts being imposed on them; for their ideas to flow freely and unrestricted by nothing more than their imagination.  A smile composition book that their class would keep in the classroom even.  Kind of like in Freedom Writers.  What better practice and repetition can a writer have?  It is a good way to foster creativity and a renewed passion for writing.  The journal then also becomes a resource for kids to go back and improve their writing and can be a source of a grammatical lessons through examples.     

"Simply force yourself to write without stopping for ten minutes"  -- when I came across this sentence I had to laugh.  My mentor professor for my IA position does this without fail.  He says, "to just keep your pen moving even if you have to draw squiggly lines until your brain catches up."

Finally I am learning how to apply these theories and I am so glad to have that position because I get to see what we are talking about teaching, being taught to those I'd like to teach!