Invitations, Invitations, Invitations

Yesterday in my X-460 class we were given the details to a new assignment that we have coming up for our last class. Guess what is part of this assignment? To design an invitation. I feel as if I have learned about invitations maybe 12 times now all together this semester. Luckily, because we are doing the invitation assignment for our field experience I am able to use that lay out for my X-460 class, so I guess it pays off having our classes intertwine like that...sometimes.

Writing Samples

After obtaining a writing sample for my student at University, I was able to actually take a closer look at the child I have been observing. This certain child has creative and slightly random thoughts, but when I received the writing sample I was surprised to find that although his thoughts may seem to be all over the place when talking to him in person, his writing was pretty organized. He grouped was he was thankful for (which is what the writing piece was about) by first talking about family and friends, and then transitioning into more superficial things such as every fast food restaurant in Bloomington. Although his points may not have been the deepest, they were clearly organized and thought out. It was also interesting to see that his spelling ability is pretty good, although his handwriting is kind of all over the place. This just goes to show you can't judge off of neatness.

MGRP Fair

I thought that being able to walk around and learn a little about each person's topic during our MGRP "fair" was a good experience in both seeing ways other people incorporated the genres into their projects as well as getting to know what other people's interests were. Topics ranged from Hugh Hefner to the Galapagos Islands, and all of them had very interesting facts. I noticed that even if I thought that I was already knowledgeable on a certain topic, I was able to still learn something new about each topic. The only thing I would have changed about the way the presentations were set up would be allowing everyone to view video clips that people brought in. Because of the noise level in the classroom and the constant moving from one person to the next, it was hard to stop and view full clips that people brought in.

Voices in the Park

This past class, we used the book "Voices in the Park" to do an activity based around exploring the different perspectives that were discussed in the book. I liked the idea of using this book because we had previously gotten to read it in X-460, but the approach taken on it in that class was completely different. We basically just read the book aloud, and we didn't really grasp the full understanding of it. We concentrated more on the illustrations and why the author chose the characters he did. In E-339 we were able to pick apart the feelings of the characters and predict what they might say next, which I found very helpful in getting a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the text.

Poetry Invitations

During our last class we were able to explore several different types of poetry genres that we could use for our Multigenre Paper. One of the poetry tables I visited was the table for the "I am From" poem. I completed the poem for myself instead of my MGRP topic because I was unsure how to structure the poem if I were to use my topic of Asperger's. I think that this type of poem could be used for someone with a more specific topic such as a certain event or famous person. For example, Brent was at my table and used Lindsey Lohan with this type of poem, and it turned out great. I think with something like the topic of Asperger's I would be better off possibly doing an art oriented project incorporating feelings or emotions into it like the example that was shown to the class.

Multigenre Research Paper Round 2

After seeing the many examples of other genres we can use to go along with our research paper, I finally have a complete understanding of what this project will entail. I really enjoyed seeing what everyone came up with, even if it was only for a couple of minutes per person. I chose to do an example of an interview, which I actually think I will end up using for one of my genres because it seemed to fit well with the fact that I was already planning to incorporate an author of a book dealing with my topic. Brent's Fall Fashion Faux Pas really appealed to me in the fact that it was entertaining and humorous but also could be informative when paired with his topic of Lindsey Lohan. I also really enjoyed Rachel's Dear Abby column because it used her creativity mixed with actual real-life situations that could be addressed. Today's class definitely gave me a few more ideas to work with..

Writer's Workshop

Tomorrow is our Writer's Workshop demonstration at University, and I'm looking forward to finally getting to see this technique we have learned so much about in action. My placement teacher, Mrs. Mori is in charge of this Writer's Workshop so I think it will give us a good opportunity to see what other types of things she does in her classroom since us students in the 4th grade level normally only have 45 minutes of regular classroom time. I also think it will be interesting to see if the Writer's Workshop methods she uses are similar or different from what we have read about or discussed in class. So far, we have only gotten to see the student's journals from a distance so this will really give us a chance to dig deeper into the content.