Book Reading: How Writers Grow

Although I have used some ideas that Ms. Ward writes about, the reading has lifted my teaching spirit. Just going over the ideas in chapter one; creating a good classroom environment, the five components to writers, playing with word--great idea, sensory walk, getting to the skills required to write and last but not least, RESPECT. This latter one is very important. Once respect is established, your students will do whatever you ask of them. Every teacher does one, some or, maybe, all these activities, however, some of us get overwhelmed with other demands, and we tend to take a detour. Therefore, Ms. Ward's chapter on Getting Started did get me to start thinking of ideas for the start of school which I will, hopefully, keep on track.

In addition, chapter two filled my heart with joy because I liked the fact of writing/playing with poetry; this being one of my favorite genres, and how students really enjoy these poetry activities because it empowers them to be creative and expressive. I also liked the activity of reading a daily poem. Believe it or not, one of my professors use to do this with us. He would actually recite a poem at least twice a week, and his class loved it.

However, chapter three gets a little more serious about the forms of writing and the publishing of the product; this will not deter me from really working on writing this year. Getting to the result and finished product is where my students begin to shy away from writing due to their lack, unfortunately, of some skills. This we'll have to work on.