Blog #2

I really enjoyed reading through my classmates blogs, I know everyone in class but reading their blogs gives me a much more personal sense of who everyone is. The first person I chose to write about what Blair. I have loved having class with her, she is such a wonderful person both inside and out and I hope to get the chance to get to know her more. I loved that she talked about her cat Prissy, although I am not a big animal person, my mother has a cat named Prissy and this reminded me of her. I too want to have a family one day and I know that by being a teacher I will get the best of both worlds! Just by reading her blog, I can tell we have a lot of things in common, I look forward to getting to know Blair much more! The second person I wrote about was Logan. I have had several classes with Logan but I haven't really gotten the oppurtunity to get to know her. I knew that she was from Alabama but that was really all I knew. It seems that everyone I want to learn more about has a cat! I like Logan have an english endorsement and would feel most comfortable teaching that subject. Although, I never coached a swim team, I have been around children my whole life and this is when I knew I wanted to be a teacher. She helped her students win the races and I have helped children in dance and gymnastics. Helping students accomplish a goal is a very rewarding experience and I knew this was when I wanted to become a teacher.

I found the article"Writing to learn across the curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content area classes" to be very helpful and interesting. I think this articule is something all future teachers should read! One thing that I found interesting was how this article discussed the issue of writing to learn. Witing to learn gives the students an opportunity to recollect, clarify, and question what the already know and what they would like to know about a subject. I couldn't agree more about what this article says about writing to learn! Throughout the articule it gives different strageties on how students can actively write to learn in their classroom. When students are writing to learn, they are discovering for themselves what they have been learning about. All teachers should strive towards this type of learning because it enhances the students higher order thinking skills. I think it is very important for teachers to prepare their students everyday for the learning that is going to occur. One strategy that the used in the article that I thought was great was the think-stop-and write strategy. This allows the students time in between what the teacher is saying to gather their thoughts and write what they have just learned. This would have been very beneficial to me as a student if I could have used it. Doing any of these strategies would be a great way to get your students involved in what you are doing each day. Opening up your class with a quick write was something my teachers did in Elementary School. I think this is great because its allows the students to get their minds ready for what they are about to read. I loved the bio-poem activity that we did the other day in class. I think that is a great way for students to actively listen while the teacher is reading or pay close attention to whatevery book they are reading. Reading about this in the article was very helpful as well, it gave me much more insight to what we did in class the other day. This article was very helpful and useful! I would love to read future articles if they are anything like this. I will definitely try and implement many of these strategies and ideas that were discussed in this article.