Final 724 Reflection

Lesson Sequence Reflection

I distinctly remember reading this specific excerpt from Kittle's book on page 8, which I feel has been the catalyst for how I planned for this project and for how I currently plan my lessons. Kittle states the following: "Important things will not change in your classroom until you do (Kittle 8)." This quote really resonated with me because in my first year I would often go to the teacher's lounge until I realized that everybody in there was extremely negative about the profession and their craft. I did not realize this right away, but I do feel that this negative energy kind of made me more pessimistic about my students and their actual abilities. Kittle was 100% right with this quote, I needed to change myself and my energy before my classroom could ever change. From the moment that I decided to make this change, I started to have success. 

Another quote that really stood out to me when planning these lessons was when Kittle stated the following: "I believe that you can't tell kids how to write you have to show them what writers do" (Kittle 8). I strongly agree with this, which is why I really tried to model and scaffold the first three lessons within this unit, being that the end goal was so ambitious (students were expected to create their own spoken word piece). Within this unit I chose to model songs and poems that would reflect what would be expected of their own piece. Students were also given consistent scaffolds with sentence starters throughout the unit to help them better understand the literary devices and elements within these works. In addition to that, I also made a consorted effort to give students consistent opportunities to produce written responses, via quotes and prompts so that I could assess what they have learned throughout the unit. 

I think that after you have spent so much time in carefully crafting a unit you must go to page three of Kittle's book and read the following: "Trust the process, if the process is sound, the product improves," (3). This really stood out to me because I believe that in order for any lesson to work you need a plan, but you must trust and follow this plan with some allowed flexibility. This will allow you to adapt to your students needs as you go through the process, but at the end of the day you must trust the process that you laid out and not question every single do now and/or mini lesson. Confidence, a solid plan and delivery plays a huge factor as to how your lessons are received, so don't be a nervous wreck, listen to Kittle and trust the process that you have carefully laid out!

Sum it up

As a writing teacher we must always know that we are teaching human beings. Our students have feelings so we should always aim to give them feedback not criticism. We also need to focus on progress and how to keep achieving progress while keeping kids invested. 

Personal Reflection

I think that the greatest challenge as a writing teacher is to understand that every student is different and thus, every student will need a personalized plan for how to improve their writing. I think that initially as a first or second year teacher this could be overwhelming because you may not have all the proper tools to best serve your students, but with time, hard work and experience I think you will become more well-versed on different scaffolds and techniques that will work for whatever population you need to serve.

Feedback to Tiffany

Thank you for an amazing semester! I really enjoyed coming into class every Tuesday and can't wait to take your summer class. Your energy and creativity really kept everyone engaged and on their toes, I am glad that professor Gulla signed me up for this class. 

Blog Post #9- Kittle: Chapter 12 and Chapter 13

I love and really connect with the way that Kittle starts off the chapter by saying: “writers need feedback not evaluation.”

I feel that the statement is 100% accurate because as soon as you give kids a final letter grade it almost seems like the work they put in becomes secondary. I also really like her recommendations for how to give constructive feedback throughout the writing process to counter this fixation on the final grade. Although some of these strategies may seem taxing for a first year teacher, I can vouch from first hand experience that using these strategies (feedback on drafts, feedback in conferences, ongoing revisions, etc.) are extremely helpful. The most effective one that I tend to use during the writing process is giving students feedback on their drafts. The way in which I go about this feedback is through conferencing with students as they continue to master their final product. During this conference I would be extremely specific as to what the student is doing well (you did a great job citing evidence) and what the student need to improve on (you need to explain the evidence that chose with a little more detail, reasoning).

One thing that I loved about this chapter was the example on the Feedback on Drafts example that Kittle talks about on page 121. That night particular they were doing a peer editing activity and one of Kittle’s classmates gave her some "constructive feedback." The feedback, as you might imagine was truly not helpful in anyway, which unfortunately can be the case for some classrooms. The person who evaluated Kittle’s work had crossed out a ton of words and had splattered her paper with black ink. That black could have easily been a knife, which assaulted Kittle’s confidence and any enjoyment that she might have had for writing that day. Unfortunately, I have seen this type of "help" given to students from some of my peers. When teachers give students feedback they have to be conscious of the writer's feelings, as we have even seen in college-level classes that most adults are insecure about their own writing, so imagine how a teenager would feel about sharing something that he or she is already insecure about and then being bombarded by a red pen.

Overall, the most important concept that I can take away from these chapters is that we as teachers should always view our students as human beings. Students put effort into their writing, so we should take that into consideration when we give them feedback and when we ask them to write because writing should always aim to help not hurt us as a society and it all starts in the classroom.