April’s Teaching Blog

Pretty much have read my sunny Sunday afternoon away, but I can say that I’ve taken some valuable information away with me in the process.

I drew a heart on top of the article Revisiting the Language Experience Approach.  Loved it. It’s easy to sometimes to get bogged down in the planned curriculum and pacing guides that the county you teach in gives you, but the LEA is the way to go.  The LEA “draws upon the real life experiences of students.”  What 5-year-old doesn’t LOVE talking about themselves and the things that they do?  And to think how beneficial this approach is to our English-language learners.  I loved the idea of creating a whole class story on chart paper where each students gives a sentence, Ive never done that before.  Then I had the idea to create a class “big book” where each child creates a page on chart paper.  Also, to have copies of the students writings and the class stories for the kids to read.  Guarantee that would be some of their favorite reading material.  This article also gave me the brilliant idea to have kids write about their art work.  Once they have finished a painting in art center, have them write at the bottom about their art!  I’m all for the LEA.  The article that used LEA with process writing was also a good read.  It kind of incorporated what administrators like to see in your classroom with the developmentally appropriate LEA.  I really like the fact that students “publish” their work because I think it gives them so much ownership in their writing.

Then, I read everyone’s favorite 36 page article…Social Contract for Writing.  At first, at the risk of sounding dramatic, the task of reading seemed a little more than I could handle.  Once I started reading, though, I was rolling.  I don’t have much experience with 2 year olds.  They are probably the age group (from birth to kindergarten) that I know the least about their development.  This article did a really good job of informing me what a white, middle class, suburban, Mommy’s Day Out 2 year old could do.  I’m not going to knock her though, throughout the article she admitted the articles shortcomings, and agreed that there should be further research on children of diverse backgrounds.  When I read the title, I thought, “Social contracts?  Shes getting these kids writing contracts to not hit and bite one another…how odd.” But I was pretty off.  I like her idea of describing the way that children interact with writing is a form of social interaction.  Writing is so social, its social in kindergarten when you share your one sentence writing with the person beside you, its social in 5th grade when you write a letter to your friend about the boy you are totally in love with, and its social right now, as I write this blog at 24-years-old.  I love her idea that kids get the “point” of writing right from the start, rather than learning the specifics of letter formation first.  I really liked the way that she analyzed their responses to the centers, but did anyone else notice that most of her interactions occurred on January 11?  Almost all of her transcripts of interviews with children were on this day.  Maybe a coincidence.  Anywho, I liked her approach to it all, I’d just like to see studies of children who were not all the same, maybe who had limited access to materials at home (deficit thinking?!?!), who didn’t speak english as a first language (would definitely be hard for these kids to talk about their pictures and writing), or who had delays and disabilities.