Module 6: Characterization Lessons/Activities

I was looking on Pinterest and I found 3 lesson activities that dealt with characterization that I thought were so amazing and creative!

This first activity involves students making a paper bag with different sections. On the front of the bag, students draw a picture of their main character and list the title/author. One side of the bag lists the character’s likes/dislikes. The other side lists how other characters interact with the main character. And the back panel has the character's growth throughout the novel. 

This second activity deals with students describing themselves with 10 words. I think this is such a creative idea and absolutely love how their profiles are hung up on the board – it really makes a personal connection to each student!

The third activity is a simple and popular chart that we often see in classrooms. It is clear, organized, colorful, and very east for students to both contribute and follow along!

Module 4: Reciprocal Teaching Critique

The first reciprocal teaching video I watched was a 2^nd grade class making predictions. The video was broken down into sections: preview the text, make a prediction, clarify your work, ask questions, determine importance, and summarize the text. The students were reading both fiction and non-fiction books. I liked how the students said which type of book they were reading before they started talking about their predictions. I also liked how each student read their predictions and then stated “I confirmed/rejected my prediction because…”. In addition, I think it was great that students wrote down questions before reading and then shared their findings during the lesson. Overall, I think this was a great reciprocal teaching lesson.

The second reciprocal teaching lesson I watched was involving 5^th grade, where the teacher was the one videotaping. The students here were “teaching” the lesson, but the teacher definitely helped/guided them if they seemed to be struggling a bit (which I think was great to see). In my opinion, this might have been a group that seemed to be struggling a bit. The teacher would ask small, guiding questions to start conversation. Overall, the students definitely knew their material and how to explain everything.

The third reciprocal teaching lesson I watched seemed to be several years older than my previous 2 videos, but just as beneficial. This lesson was done with a group of 5 young students at a reading table. The reading teacher read the book in parts as the students followed along. After reading a page or 2, she asked a main idea question and the students all answered and started discussing from there. This question definitely helped guide students. One thing I liked about this video was that it looked somewhat professionally done. There was a narrative voice explaining the whole reciprocal teaching process and overall I believe this just made the video very clear and easy to follow. 

Module 5: Writing in General

To be completely honest I don’t really mind writing, it’s not one of my favorite things to do. I know writing is good for me and like to think that everything I write can only make me improve as a writer.

As a writer, I feel I am stronger with informative texts compared to creative writing. Sometimes free writing is difficult for me and I just like the idea of having that structure to follow when writing. Here at SCSU, I have taken several English classes, and I have found my favorite one was business writing.

I feel that my schooling before coming her to SCSU prepared me so well for college. I attended a college-preparatory high school, so writing was a consistent process throughout grades 9 – 12. From pre-writing, to drafting, to revising; I truly learned the writing process and developed an appreciation for it (even though I didn’t always like to write).

As a future teacher, I understand that writing is such a key element for students and they should be proficient with this skill. I would want my students to know that writing is a skill which definitely takes time to master and will always be encouraged in my classroom. The only thing students can do with their writing is grow from it, they just have to pick up that pen and paper…

Module 5: Revising

I feel that revising is such a key element when writing. Revising my paper allows me to correct any major mistakes before anybody else reads my paper and also further develop any other points/ideas I have.  I know there is always something to revise, but when I am drafting, I really try to keep my mistakes to a minimum so that I don’t have this crazy revision process. I usually just do one revision, but I know I should make it a habit to revise more than once and at different times because I may be overlooking something and my thoughts can change. As for peer reviewing my papers, I usually have my sister (who is a phenomenal writer) look over my final draft. I know revising is an important process and papers should be revised as many times as it takes for them to come out perfect.

Module 5: Drafting

For me, I find drafting much easier and less daunting than pre-writing. Although I might have my thoughts from pre-writing all over the paper, for me it is organized. From here, I build upon these thoughts, therefore creating paragraphs and paragraphs for my essay. In addition, I take any other notes I hay have (from articles, books, etc.) and use these as a guide when drafting. I really loved the outside articles I pulled into my informative text about poetry so this helped me move along and stay on track with my writing. In addition, I believe I am better at writing informative texts, so I found that for this assignment I was writing with ease.

Module 5: Pre-Writing Process

 

For some reason, I have always dreaded the pre-writing process. It didn’t take a long time, it was just finding that time to sit down and really concentrate on what I wanted to do for my original writing assignment. The first thing I did was just looked at the genres and thought about which seemed most interesting to me. I then decided I wanted to choose poetry. From there, I thought of some questions I wanted to answer in my informative essay such as how is poetry defined?, how can we find ways to incorporate it more into classrooms?, etc. Then the free-writing (or typing in my case) began. I just randomly typed anything I could think of that popped up in my mind. And lastly, I just started to skim some readings, taking random points from there. This didn’t really build a traditional “outline”, but it definitely helped me collect my thoughts and point me in the direction I wanted to go in.