Chapters 7, 8, and 9

When I was reading through chapter 7 a few different things stuck out to me. First, I think live writing is a great mini lesson and can be very beneficial to the students. This is because when a teacher makes public the thought process behind writing it demonstrates to the students how they can go about their individual writing skills. Second, I really liked all the different types of Try-Its. I think its great to get students involved with each other throughout the lessons along with different types of writing Try-Its. Again, the more practice and examples the students can experience the better they will get.

Chapter 8 explained how to have a conference with students in order to find their strengths and weaknesses with reading and writing. I feel as though its very important, as a teacher, to research their students to become more aware of their needs and characteristics. Being able to find a students strengths is a huge part of their growing process because then you can find what they need to work on as well. Building conversation and observing your students are also important because it helps the relationship between student and teacher. In a sense your getting two things done at once!

Chapter 9 discusses more researching skills and techniques in order to make the process even more beneficial. As a teacher, throughout your conference you should be able to find related topics or craft skills that would help the students understanding. Observing is also a huge part of the conference and should help the teacher find things like absence of punctuation, a need for general writing strategies, absence of a specific craft, and so on. These are important qualities to find in a student because without them they will struggle more with their writing. The more a teacher can find out about a student the more he/she can help them develop a better schema with reading or writing.

Chapter 4 and 5

Chapter 4 was very interesting to me because it explains how and why children write sentences and chose words when writing. Getting children to write the correct way or having them create a better vocabulary has always seemed somewhat challenging to me. This chapter explains specific crafts that make it so much easier for a child to catch onto his writing. The five senses really caught my attention because I feel as though it makes a huge difference in writing, especially with elementary children. The idea to add one more sentence to describe and event or feeling was shown to be very helpful to the students. I think that is a great idea because it not only adds more depth to the child's writing but gives them an opportunity to give a wider range in vocabulary.

Chapter 5 was over punctuation which I remember very well from elementary school. Adding periods to the end of every sentence seem to be an easy thing for children to remember but run-on sentences and commas were much more challenging. I thought it was a great idea to have them use commas first only in series. I remember doing that as well and it really made a difference in my sentence structure.