What is your plan of action in the fall? I am going to be outside of my comfort zone-- and that's good! I'll be student teaching at an area high school, so I can try all kinds of activities / strategies I've learned during the OWP Summer Institute on a new age group / skill level of learners. I may teach college, too. With the approval of my mentoring high school teacher, I want to have daily writing, small writing groups, reading groups, and I want to explore activities connecting print literacy to visual and technological literacy. I also intend to use general approaches such as I observed with writing territories, and also more specific lesson ideas such as with the "Monsters in the Closet" demonstration. If I teach college this fall, or the next time I do, I want to try new ways of approaching poetry composition, such as using ekphrasis as a prompt, responding to film, and using writing territories. I would also like to implement daily writing there.
What’s your plan for your own writing? I journal regularly already, but I don't review what I've written, or only rarely. I think I need to amp things up and have another tier of daily writing, where I'm polishing pieces, and I also want to develop a submission / publishing plan. I've built a nice rapport with my small writing group, and we're planning to correspond.
How will your classroom look differently daily? Weekly? Monthly? It will be new. It's reborn. At the college level, I have many new ideas to try alongside strategies I use already.
Discuss the process of creating your demo and what you discovered through that process. How will you incorporate your demo in the fall? What kinds of student writing samples can you collect? I discovered that technology has the good qualities of imparting transferrable work skills, and building social skills, as well as allowing for variety of response to text. Technology does have the drawback of not always being dependable, and not feasible financially for most districts. I will collect samples when I use technology in the classroom. I would adapt an ekphrastic poetry demonstration from the demonstration I did this summer, to be practical. If there are resources where I go, I would love to give students the stopmotion option this fall.
How has your writing project experience affected your plan? It has given me so much good information, and a human resource in my great fellows.
How will you use other demonstrations? My binder is dear to me-- I'll keep it closer than a brother. I will need page protectors before long. I'm a nerd, but that's not the sole reason; it's because I'll wear the pages out with flipping through them.
Please list several demos that you saw that you will integrate into your classroom. Memoir/writing territories, monsters in the closet, roadmaps, paper-blogging, film-response, film creation . . . I could go on. And on.
Based on our brief conversations and your new knowledge of OWP programs, what areas interest you? I am interested in technology in the classroom, poetry, the graphic-print connection, professional development, as well as helping my colleagues at the college-level.
Who would you nominate for certain areas? Tough one. I can see Chris, Michelle, Rachel, Katrina, Dana, Kim, and Faith in poetry . . . Joe and Melissa in creative nonfiction and fiction . . . Sarah, Genesis, and Josh in technology . . . Elise, Debbie, Stacey, Sharolette, and Kathy in Professional Development.
Showing posts with label Action Plan 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Action Plan 2008. Show all posts
Friday, July 11, 2008
KW's Action Plan
Because of I'm feeling very inspired and ambitious, right now I would predict that my classroom will look completely different in the fall. My students and I will be writing every day, and a lot of that writing will be low stakes, just like what we participated in the during the SI. I'm hoping that they find some intrinsic motivation from this writing. How much I respond to this writing is yet to be determined, but I don't think it will be much.
From the very beginning of the year, I plan to implement Writer's Workshop at least two days a week, and an integral part of that will be small writing groups. (Thanks to Keri and Joe's demos and my own SWG from the OWP.) Circular journaling (Genesis) will also come into play with my small writing groups. In our SWGs we will use some of the reformulation strategies introduced by Casey. Yes, scissors and glue will be involved. Students will create their own Writing Territories at the beginning of the school year, and that will provide an ongoing reference for them as they choose topics, genres, and audiences for their writing during WW. (As a side note, a conversation with Elise has inspired me to consider having my students write as a gift for an assignment. That would actually tie in well with Melissa's oral history project. If my students interview someone and write a personal narrative about their life, that would make a really special gift as well as an important lesson about writing for audience.)
I'll also use many ideas from demos during mini-lessons for my Writer's Workshop. Image and conscious grammar within the context of student writing will be taught in small increments and referenced back to throughout the year (Elise and Kathleen). Michelle's giant post-it poster to review figurative language would also tie in with a mini-lesson.
In addition, there are some specific writing assignments I would like to try with my composition students. Because I'm excited to try some of these things on my own, it will give a great chance for me to write with my students. Some of these assignments include parallel poetry (Chris), episodic fiction and creating characters from objects (Joshua), writing letters to "monsters," (Katrina), and responding to poetry through some form of artistic creation (Jenner). I was already planning to do a multi-genre identity project at the end of the school year with my seniors, and there were some projects that I think will tie in nicely with this, including Dana's footprint poem, Stacy's recipe, and Rachel's life map. These are all assignments or activities that I wouldn't have considered otherwise, and by seeing them implemented, I feel like I can try it with my students, too.
Some great ideas about the reading and writing connection will be helpful in my Novels course. I liked the TS, TW, TT connections that Sharolette reviewed for us, and the questions she provided for the reading will be helpful with that. Sarah's Story Impressions will also be a great way to introduce a new piece of literature. I'm sure there will be films to incorporate with my Novels course, and thanks to Debra, my students will be challenged to look beyond the surface meaning of media. Perhaps I'll even tape a third eye to my forehead! Faith's post-it activity would also provide a great way to review literature when we're finished reading during that class.
Okay, so maybe I'm sounding like my expectations for myself are pretty high. They are. I will promise myself now to do as much as I can, but I will not be disappointed if I do not accomplish everything in just one year. Change often takes time. I'm thankful to have this wonderful support network of other teachers who have inspiring ideas that I can utilize. And I will keep writing because, after all, I am a writer.
From the very beginning of the year, I plan to implement Writer's Workshop at least two days a week, and an integral part of that will be small writing groups. (Thanks to Keri and Joe's demos and my own SWG from the OWP.) Circular journaling (Genesis) will also come into play with my small writing groups. In our SWGs we will use some of the reformulation strategies introduced by Casey. Yes, scissors and glue will be involved. Students will create their own Writing Territories at the beginning of the school year, and that will provide an ongoing reference for them as they choose topics, genres, and audiences for their writing during WW. (As a side note, a conversation with Elise has inspired me to consider having my students write as a gift for an assignment. That would actually tie in well with Melissa's oral history project. If my students interview someone and write a personal narrative about their life, that would make a really special gift as well as an important lesson about writing for audience.)
I'll also use many ideas from demos during mini-lessons for my Writer's Workshop. Image and conscious grammar within the context of student writing will be taught in small increments and referenced back to throughout the year (Elise and Kathleen). Michelle's giant post-it poster to review figurative language would also tie in with a mini-lesson.
In addition, there are some specific writing assignments I would like to try with my composition students. Because I'm excited to try some of these things on my own, it will give a great chance for me to write with my students. Some of these assignments include parallel poetry (Chris), episodic fiction and creating characters from objects (Joshua), writing letters to "monsters," (Katrina), and responding to poetry through some form of artistic creation (Jenner). I was already planning to do a multi-genre identity project at the end of the school year with my seniors, and there were some projects that I think will tie in nicely with this, including Dana's footprint poem, Stacy's recipe, and Rachel's life map. These are all assignments or activities that I wouldn't have considered otherwise, and by seeing them implemented, I feel like I can try it with my students, too.
Some great ideas about the reading and writing connection will be helpful in my Novels course. I liked the TS, TW, TT connections that Sharolette reviewed for us, and the questions she provided for the reading will be helpful with that. Sarah's Story Impressions will also be a great way to introduce a new piece of literature. I'm sure there will be films to incorporate with my Novels course, and thanks to Debra, my students will be challenged to look beyond the surface meaning of media. Perhaps I'll even tape a third eye to my forehead! Faith's post-it activity would also provide a great way to review literature when we're finished reading during that class.
Okay, so maybe I'm sounding like my expectations for myself are pretty high. They are. I will promise myself now to do as much as I can, but I will not be disappointed if I do not accomplish everything in just one year. Change often takes time. I'm thankful to have this wonderful support network of other teachers who have inspiring ideas that I can utilize. And I will keep writing because, after all, I am a writer.
Action Plan
My plan of action in the fall is Master's work and lots of it. However, now that I've been through the demo and seen everyone else's, the little voice of responsibility in my head is telling me maybe NOW would be a good time to start putting lessons together. With all this experience to lean on now, I can put things together and bounce them off people, find the holes so I can fill them. It's very comforting to have that, a network that can tell me "Oh, yeah, I tried that and...".
As far as my own writing, I'm going to keep at it. The biggest difference now is the fact that I'm saving drafts for two reasons. First, I've discovered that I often fool myself into thinking new is definitely better, which is probably a bit of an overreaction to my previous falling in love with the first draft. The more important thing to me is having those drafts so that I can show students that I may be good at this, but it's work. I'm really allowing myself to be "wrong" in my writing now and I want students to understand that is part of the process.
The demo taught me to trust my instincts. I had experience that I wasn't sure was universal, but research supported me. I need to rely on this more but remain open to finding a new perspective.
As yet, I can't say I'm going to be collecting student samples, but I'm going to look for stuff that shows the students' development.
My experience here and the demos have really got me thinking about how important building a community is. I had a few moments in my demo where I leaned on the community here to keep things lighthearted and moving well. We support each other and I want my students to feel that in the classroom. To this end, I definitely see the community building techniques, like Dana, Rachel, and Casey's demos, making it into the classroom.
For obvious reasons, I'm going to be picking over the information on NWP's website that's related to the New Teacher Initiatives. I think Debbie would be great working on something like this. She shares her experience freely and she's always got a story from her classes to back up her reasoning.
I'm going to miss all of you.
Chris
As far as my own writing, I'm going to keep at it. The biggest difference now is the fact that I'm saving drafts for two reasons. First, I've discovered that I often fool myself into thinking new is definitely better, which is probably a bit of an overreaction to my previous falling in love with the first draft. The more important thing to me is having those drafts so that I can show students that I may be good at this, but it's work. I'm really allowing myself to be "wrong" in my writing now and I want students to understand that is part of the process.
The demo taught me to trust my instincts. I had experience that I wasn't sure was universal, but research supported me. I need to rely on this more but remain open to finding a new perspective.
As yet, I can't say I'm going to be collecting student samples, but I'm going to look for stuff that shows the students' development.
My experience here and the demos have really got me thinking about how important building a community is. I had a few moments in my demo where I leaned on the community here to keep things lighthearted and moving well. We support each other and I want my students to feel that in the classroom. To this end, I definitely see the community building techniques, like Dana, Rachel, and Casey's demos, making it into the classroom.
For obvious reasons, I'm going to be picking over the information on NWP's website that's related to the New Teacher Initiatives. I think Debbie would be great working on something like this. She shares her experience freely and she's always got a story from her classes to back up her reasoning.
I'm going to miss all of you.
Chris
Action Plan of Genesis
What is your plan of action in the fall?
My first goal is to consistently have students writing informally on a daily basis (well, at least on the days I have them in class). I know that has really helped me get things going in the writing realm. Another goal is facilitate more collaborative learning/community building in my classes. I would also like to try to add some of the innovative ideas for getting students more connected with academic writing. Additionally I plan on encouraging better portfolio keeping methods with the goals of encouraging revision and reflection.
What’s your plan for your own writing?
I plan to continue to write on a daily basis in some form or another. I would like to develop and submit at least one piece of writing for publication. I may be interested in presenting at a conference and/or
How will your classroom look differently daily? Weekly? Monthly?
On the daily basis, I anticipate having more variety in our activities (since I'll now have only 90 minutes classes it seems especially essential). I plan on having students do more things together (writing groups, collaborative assignments, etc.) at least once a week. Now and then I intend for students to do more self-and peer-evaluation/reflection. There are a lot of things I plan on shifting, but time is tight so...
Discuss the process of creating your demo and what you discovered through that process. How will you incorporate your demo in the fall?
During the preparation for my demo I spent time connecting low-tech methods to blog research, brainstorming other possible activities, and agonizing over what to use for writing prompts. I plan to continue to use circular journaling and paper wads and extending the idea of Post-It posters. Ideally I could get some grants to actually use the methods to transition to cyberspace.
What kinds of student writing samples can you collect?
Paper wads, more circular journal examples, and posters. I'm sure I'll have some other things developed from other people's demos as well.
How has your writing project experience affected your plan?
In general I am far more motivated to be innovative in the classroom. You all have inspired me in a time when I most needed it! I think that due to the OWP experience I have many new ideas and extensions to better work toward the goals for my classes.
How will you use other demonstrations? Please list several demos that you saw that you will integrate into your classroom.
I don't think there is a single demo that I don't want to steal something from. I am definitely going to integrate many of the fellows' ideas into the things I already do to make the projects better for my students. Some that come to mind first:
My first goal is to consistently have students writing informally on a daily basis (well, at least on the days I have them in class). I know that has really helped me get things going in the writing realm. Another goal is facilitate more collaborative learning/community building in my classes. I would also like to try to add some of the innovative ideas for getting students more connected with academic writing. Additionally I plan on encouraging better portfolio keeping methods with the goals of encouraging revision and reflection.
What’s your plan for your own writing?
I plan to continue to write on a daily basis in some form or another. I would like to develop and submit at least one piece of writing for publication. I may be interested in presenting at a conference and/or
How will your classroom look differently daily? Weekly? Monthly?
On the daily basis, I anticipate having more variety in our activities (since I'll now have only 90 minutes classes it seems especially essential). I plan on having students do more things together (writing groups, collaborative assignments, etc.) at least once a week. Now and then I intend for students to do more self-and peer-evaluation/reflection. There are a lot of things I plan on shifting, but time is tight so...
Discuss the process of creating your demo and what you discovered through that process. How will you incorporate your demo in the fall?
During the preparation for my demo I spent time connecting low-tech methods to blog research, brainstorming other possible activities, and agonizing over what to use for writing prompts. I plan to continue to use circular journaling and paper wads and extending the idea of Post-It posters. Ideally I could get some grants to actually use the methods to transition to cyberspace.
What kinds of student writing samples can you collect?
Paper wads, more circular journal examples, and posters. I'm sure I'll have some other things developed from other people's demos as well.
How has your writing project experience affected your plan?
In general I am far more motivated to be innovative in the classroom. You all have inspired me in a time when I most needed it! I think that due to the OWP experience I have many new ideas and extensions to better work toward the goals for my classes.
How will you use other demonstrations? Please list several demos that you saw that you will integrate into your classroom.
I don't think there is a single demo that I don't want to steal something from. I am definitely going to integrate many of the fellows' ideas into the things I already do to make the projects better for my students. Some that come to mind first:
- blending some of the ideas/activities from Casey's and Dana's demos as an opening unit
- using Stacy's focus on the American Dream as an overarching concept in my American Lit class
- Keri's small writing groups and Joe's response methods/forms
- Melissa's and Kim P.'s ideas on making research awesome
- Chris's Parallel Poetry
- Kim W.'s Writing Territories as a portfolio opener
- Sarah's and Sharolette's Reading/Writing Connection ideas/prompts
- Kathy's and Elise's innovative grammar (probably in mini-lessons)
- Episodic fiction seems like one Nelle of an idea (thanks, Joshua)
- Making films more useful with hints from Debbie
- Faith's index card categorizing
- Michelle's figurative language sorting poster
Based on our brief conversations and your new knowledge of OWP programs, what areas interest you? Who would you nominate for certain areas?
I am interested in participating with many of the events for the year (the writing retreat, Write to Learn). I like the idea of working on professional development and integrating technology (I mean, real technology - not pen and paper). Jenner seems to be a technology guru in progress. Elise seems interested in developing professional writing - perhaps the retreat is just the spot for her to be this October.
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