To
be honest it was challenging for me to write about the strengths and weaknesses
of the class as a whole because of the wide range of abilities. Some kids
have the "I just want to be the first to finish" attitude and some
students love writing and would write all class if they had the time.
It's so crazy how much you can learn about your students and their
writing just from looking more closely at their work. You can understand
their know about the content AND what they know about writing in general.
It was neat to see the ways they were experimenting with writing
structure and incorporating ideas about spelling patterns and such. I had
them write a letter to a fictional character, Michael Recycle. Who wouldn't
love this? However, I'm not sure if this actually lowered their motivation.
Maybe they would have been more motivated if they were writing to a real
person? By real person I am thinking a mayor, or principal, or someone who has
the power to make a real change. It might have been cool for them to
actually mail these letters then! It would be really neat if they actually got
a letter back from one of these un named important people! One of the main weaknesses I discussed was the need
for details in their writing. Many
of them had one-word answers or short responses that I know they could talk
more about, but didn’t put in the effort to write more about. I am anxious to see what they take away
from a mini lesson on details and using their senses to help them explore this
in their writing. They are a very
capable group of first graders and it will be interesting to see where we go
from here. As developing writers the students
exhibited many strengths in regards to their writing, demonstrating their
previous knowledge about how writing works. As I have been in their classroom
for a couple months now I have observed the immense differentiation that occurs
in this classroom of writers.
For some, they flourish writing lavish sentences with details original
intriguing ideas. For others, they
struggle to even put the pencil to their paper, searching for ideas and ways to
translate their thoughts into communication through the written word. Overall they understood their purpose
as authors of their letter was to write ideas about reducing, reusing and
recycling. All of their responses shared ideas about ways they improve their
environment. This shows me that
they understand their purpose as writers to communicate related ideas within
their letter. Many of the students
included several ways to reduce/reuse/recycle within the same sentence. This shows me that they understand you
can use lists as a type of sentence structure. Perhaps they observed this more complex type of sentence
structure in something they read, and they were exploring how they could as
writers use this type of sentence structure themselves.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right
word is the difference between lightning and a lightning
bug.”
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