September Renewal

This fall I will be implementing many techniques I have learned over the last four weeks. To begin the year and develop community within my classroom, I will be using lessons from Casey's demonstration on developing community. I loved the true/false questionaire and feel that this is a great way for my students to get to know me and for me to get to know them. I will be using Genesis's paper wadding activity to "blog" in the classroom. This will be a great way to discuss literature. I loved Jenner's claymation activity, I think this would be great with a poetry unit. I plan on have students get into groups, choose a poem, and then great a clay display. I am thinking that they will take pictures of their clay, and put them on a display board. I feel that this is a great way to connect to poetry.

As for writing and my writing groups, I will be taking what Joe gave us on peer response groups. This will be a great way for students to respond to the writing of their peers, and for them to critically think about their writing. This will fit right in with Kim's demo on writing territories. I know that I will have my students writing everyday, and for them to have something to write about will be great, especially since it will be self generated.

I am going to work on being a facilitator this year. I want my students to use me as a resource in their learning. I want them to take responsibility for their learning and I don't want to have to hand feed them everything they will learn. I am going to do this by modeling strategies that I have learned at the writing project this summer and then putting them in charge of themselves within their writing communities. I will be collecting student samples from all of the strategies, techniques and lessons I implement.

This summer has really changed my attitude towards writing. I never noticed how I never write. I am excited to write with my students. To share my writing with my students and for my students to understand that writing is their way to connect to everything! I am excited to write more and to have my students writing everyday.

I am interested in learning more about using technology in the classroom. I would love to be able to connect to my student's technologically advanced lives. I want to make reading and writing a wonderful experience for them. I think connecting to them with technology will be one way to achieve that goal. I am also interested in learning more about teaching grammar and poetry. I feel that these are two of my weakest areas as a teacher, and I would love to feel better about my abilities when trying to teach grammar and poetry to my students.

The OWP has been the most wonderful experience I have had with professional development. I will be using everything that was presented to us this summer immediately. I am actually excited for school to start so I can take all of the wonderful ideas I have back to my students. This is going to be a great year, and I can thank the OWP for that. I hope that my excitement about the program rubs off on my co-workers and they join the program next summer.

Sarah Tate