Atewell: Conferences about Content and Craft

On pages 226-229, there are questions listed to help assist with a one-on-one writing conference. As I experienced these conferences during my junior year of high school, I feel that these conferences allow students to grow as writers and as proofreaders much better than peer editing. During peer editing exercises, students are forced to read a piece of work for which they may have no invested interest and decide what type of grade it would earn. However, as the person who designs the rubric, the educator can provide better insight into the editing process.

This section stuck out to me because the questions provided are great ways to help students take ownership of the writing process. By asking leading questions such as "What else do you know about this topic? How could you find out more?" By asking students what their paper needs to be a better piece of work, educators are enabling writers who are able to to answer any type of prompt by writing with critical thinking skills. By actively teaching students how to judge their own writing, they will be able to succeed at the most rigorous of writing assignments by thinking critically, Thus, by hosting one-on-one conferences, educators can enable students to think like and grow as writers.

Changing Our Minds: Negotiating English and Literacy

Something that stood out to me in this article was that students often use their signatures as a way of defining themselves. Additionally, the author describes a connection in the minds of students between handwriting and literacy. Unfortunately, I feel that this is not only a misconception of students. Many educators often define a student's intelligence by the legibility of his or her writing. An example of this lies within the packet of essays that we ranked in class a few weeks ago. Many of the lowest-scoring essays were also the least legible. Although in some cases this may seem like a coincidence, I fear that educators often attribute intelligence to legible handwriting.

I currently found myself making this same mistake. I was grading a multiple choice assignment the other day when I came across a very messy paper. The handwriting was very poor, and I struggled to decipher some letters. When I finished grading the assignment, I had expected there to several mistakes. However, the score on the sheet of paper was one of the best in that particular class. I found myself confused why I had expected the score to be low until I realized that I had simply expected the score to be low because the student had poor handwriting skills. Thus, I feel that we all need to overcome the idea that poor handwriting is the equivalent to poor intelligence.

New TV Series Premier: Law and Order: Los Angeles

Although I spend most of my time reading, planning for student teaching, tending to residents' questions and needs, and studying for the GRE, when I get some free time, I enjoy watching television. One of the most intriguing television series of all time is Law and Order. Just like the CSI series, Law and Order is now adding on its third show, Law and Order: Los Angeles. Although I feel that Law and Order SVU will be a difficult show to top, I am eager to see the series premier this Wednesday. Hopefully this new title can continue the Law and Order legacy properly.

Practicum Observation Regarding Relating to Students

The other day, I was observing at Firestone High School when students in the 3rd period class were trying to make connections between the themes in their text with current films. When they asked my cooperating teacher about the validity of the connections, she responded that she had not seen any of the films. Her excuse was that she doesn't watch current films and doesn't have time to do so. The students stopped connecting the concepts from the text to films they had seen.

In order to connect with students today, "reading" is more than reading a book on the couch or listening to a book tape. Literacy comes in many forms, just like communication. In order to be able to communicate visually, we must be able to identify themes in films. We need to be able to analyze something acted out in front of us just as much as the elements of a novel. More importantly, we need our students to be able to do so. In order to help develop students who can utilize today's media properly, as educators, we must utilize today's media properly. By viewing films, watching television, and using social networking, educators cannot just understand their students better, but they can also help them establish stronger connections to texts.

Another Example of Writing in Current Media

As most of my friends know, I'm a faithful fan of the television show "How I Met Your Mother." This past weekend, I was watching an episode from the 5th season in which Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) read a poem that he had written. In the scene that was showed to illustrate the story within the poem, Barney was sitting in an old-fashioned pub with old clothes and a colonial-style wig. This was contradictory to the time of the poem, the year 2008. When Barney was asked why everything was old fashioned if the time of the poem was modern day. In response, Barney said, "Duh, it's a poem!"

Although this is an absurd statement, it's not far from the mark in regard to the attitude of today's youth toward poetry. For many students, poetry seems old-fashioned and dry. The language is outdated, and it follows an overly-repetitive rhyme scheme. With this in mind, I will need to find ways to get students to enjoy poetry. The best way to do so would be to apply poetry to their everyday lives, specifically through pop culture. I will accomplish this by teaching supplementary readings of song lyrics and current poets. One poet/musician that many teens enjoy reading today is Tupac Shakur. As a reader of this artist, I could provide some of his work to students to help peak their interest in the value of poetry.