I started this almost 2 years ago, yet, I've never written anything. Does that say anything about my "Love" of reading blogs? I'm sure that I can change my opinion, especially since I will be learning to use this for educational purposes, and research purposes, which is quite different than reading about someone's family everyday, or about someone's opinion of the news.
I teach in a K-2 elementary school, as the music teacher. Although we do not write in my classroom as the references are talking about. Our students do journal everyday. Florida has a test given in the 4th grade and again in the 7th and 11th, I believe. The test, Florida Writes, is to teach students how to write clearly and susinctly. Several Wednesdays during the year, we have a prompt that is given, a subject, a first sentence, that is dictated to all students in the early grades. I do not really know anything about how it is handled past 2nd grade since my school doesn’t go past that grade.
Although we do NOT write in my classroom, we do write some , but in a different way. First, we write as a group, where I write what they say, and then we look at what has been written. Sometimes I deal with things by each class and other times I deal with every class within a subject and we continue to write and take up where another class left off.
We also write proverbs and other wise sayings. I will make a list of the first half of a wise saying and the children need to figure out how to end it. After we do that, we choose 3 of our favorite ones we wrote and
We re-write verses of songs, we add verses of songs to an existing ones we love and don’t want them to end. We had verses to rhyming songs, to add on songs, to circle songs. If it isn’t a circle song, we sometimes make it one.
We write raps to help us learn things. Our latest rap we wrote was last February, when we learned to sneeze in our sleeve. I found a cute movie on the internet, made for adults in a humorous way, to learn to sneeze in their sleeves, not in their hands and certainly not in the open air. We have been using it a lot this year, to teach all the new 17 classes of Kindergarteners how to sneeze in their sleeves.
All this is to say, Florida and I’m sure, many other states, have learned the importance of children writing, journaling, story telling on paper, retelling stories they’ve heard before and telling about what happened in their family yesterday.
That is a good indication of why we alos, should be writing. I signed up for this blogger site a year ago, but didn’t begin writing, as I still don’t really like to write where other people can see what I write. Instead, I write in word, for myself. The only problem with that is, we lost our home too a fire almost 5 years ago. We found 6 small things and our wedding album (badly burned, but some pictures had parts that were ok. Some parts were ok in the middle and some were ok around the edges. A girl, who asked our family to play for her beach wedding was really sweet. We told her we would do it for no pay, since we’ve known her for so long, and I used to teach her flute in band and she played in the school handbell choir and handbell quartet. She was fantastic!! Anyway, it turns out, she is a graphic something person, and when we wouldn’t take pay, she asked for the burned wedding pictures. She has been working on them. I’ve only seen 2 of them, in emails, but they were fantastic. She also took a really bad photo copy of a little street in a village I lived in one summer, in Malawi and has reproduced it on fabric with a lovely artsy look. It’s beautiful! I hated to lose such wonderful pictures among all our wonderful pictures. Wedding and baby pictures are the most important. That is digressing, but she is fixing our photos for us and what I meant to keep on tasks and say is, that if I would put more things on line, such as phots, journaling, etc. then a house fire isn’t going to take it all away like the fire did. The internet seems to be pretty permanent. That whole digression was to say that the internet can keep things permanently, where as the house can loose everthing in a matter of minutes, as happened with our home.
As for educational purposes for writing, the reason Florida has children writing is because they found children had horrible writing skills. They couldn’t say what they wanted. By using journaling every day, the children are learning to express themselves. They do this even before they learn to spell correctly. We have kindergartners writing even though they may be the only one who can read what they wrote. But note, they can READ what they WROTE! As they get older, they get more discerning, as teachers correct the journals, and they improve on their writing.
I love to tell stories, I hate to write them. I keep thinking every time someone tells me I should put all my stories in a book, that I should, because I’ve been told this many, many times. However, the hate of writing draws me away from it. I think that if kids are learning to journal in K and 1st grade, maybe they will find a love for writing and expressing themselves on paper.
Since we are in such a time of technology, it makes sense that people who love to write, love to put it where everyone can see it, even if we don’t care to. The joy of that is, everytime a friend sends me their blog address and I look at it, I can bookmark it and never look at it again, unless I get an email telling me there is something important there. They can write all they want, and fulfill the need to tell the world their opinion, their private lives, and how they think we all should be doing everything.
I now see there are other reasons for blogs, but where people find the time to sit and read all the blogs people tell them about is beyond me! When I get home from school (not this year, as this year seems to be spent doing this work), but I am normally writing music for various pieces I want to try with the classes. Sometimes I am writing songs for church orchestra, and other things. It keeps me busy, besides normal activites and keeping up with family. So, when there is something I really want to read, articles, etc. I go to those websites. They might be a blog, but they might be an article. As long as I have electricity and internet, I can read them. If those are out, thank goodness the old fashioned books and letters are still around,
Goals for First Grade: Early Reading and Writing
By: National Association for the Education of Young Children (1998)
http://www.teachersfirst.com/lessons/writers/writer-1.html
Excerpted from: Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children, part 4: Continuum of Children's Development in Early Reading and Writing. (May, 1998) A joint position of the International Reading Associatiofn (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
