Sorry everyone if you checked my blog for last class, I forgot that I had to blog that week. I emailed Jill and I am going to make up for it after the next class.

There is not much for me to write because we didn’t have a class last week. I hope you all had a great long weekend! I just wanted to say that I was very impressed with the fan fictions that were presented last week; everyone did such a great job. It’s great how the same assignment can produce such different results form each person according to their own interests and viewpoints. Kudos to those who have posted theirs, I’m still trying to decide if I’m brave enough :).

During the break I had the opportunity to help out in my Mom’s grade 1 class, while I was there a student very proudly took me aside to show me the story he had written about his favourite Hockey team. It was great how he took his own time to write so much about something that he was so passionate about, and this was in grade 1!
I also saw first hand how sight words and phonological sounds can help students as they are writing in that they could be creative and their writing could have flow as they worked to put their ideas down.
I was talking to a student teacher who is taking some after-degree courses at a University in Ontario. She was telling me how she wasn’t sure how to properly teach things like reading and writing because she didn’t have the opportunity to learn much about it in her courses. While I was in my Mom’s classroom (and during my IPT) I was able to see how much time LA took up and the amount reading and writing in the day. Even in university their importance is obvious as we need to be proficient readers and writers to be successful students (although sometimes I wish I was even more proficient at writing papers and reading boring texts :) ahem- psychology). The world would not be the same if I were unable to read or write, think about how as a teacher you can help open up the world to children.
I know we mentioned it in class, but it’s important to think of the many different kinds of reading and writing we do and expose children to them. Different writing forms such as lists, how to lists, recipes, diaries, letters, and even signs, resumes or essays. A good way to introduce these writing forms is through good literature.
Another aspect that we talked about before is celebrating and promoting children’s interest in writing. Personally I can look at my writing of the fan fiction. As I was interested in the topic and could be more creative I was more willing to work on it and found myself writing more than I ever thought I would.

I hope I didn’t repeat anything that was said before, these were just my thoughts on writing this week, and I guess I was reminded of things we have talked about before.
See you all on Tuesday!