One Teacher's Journey

I so can identify with Ms. Paesano. I believed I was old school, and I thought my students could learn the same way I did--in a rigid classroom environment. Isn't that ridiculous!

However, I'm so happy that I have been given the opportunity of participating and collaborating with other writing teachers who have shared their experiences and strategies to the teaching of writing. Blessed are those who share!

Since my teaching audience are ELL students lacking many skills, our day in class begins with a grammatical warm up. The students work on a sentence, then we review and correct as a class. I believe doing these warm ups everyday have enabled some of my students to better understand grammar. I have seen the results on the TAKS.

In addition, I try to do as much as interdisciplinary lesson planning as possible. I believe that my students can associate and be able to write using "collaboration, discovery, and creativity" from their other subjects.

Also, in the beginning of the school term, I have a "word wall" where we place daily spelling/vocabulary words. However, “writer’s words" seems to be a better source for my students to use during their writing--Great idea!

On the other hand, this year I tried using literature circles in class. At first I thought, what a crazy idea, it will be a lot of planning, how will you control these students who love to socialize, and your giving them just that. Well, it did take planning, but I was in for a big surprise. I group them in threes, and each group had a novel to read. After each reading, students logged and discussed their chapters. Upon finishing their novel, each student in the group did an individual short book report on their particular book. Then the group had to collaboratively create a diorama which they would then present and explain to the class. I was only their facilitator, and it was a wonderful experience! As much as I complained that my students were slow and low learners, wow, their dioramas were GREAT! After listening and viewing every group's diorama, we voted on the two best ones, and those students received a treat ($5 Walmart gift card)--the rest of the class received a candy treat. They were all happy.