Changes over the semester from my learning and experiences in Introduction to Language Arts!!

Wow!! The semester is basically over, and I am moving on to my senior year. That is very hard to believe, exciting and sad at the same time. It feels like just yesterday I pulled up to Meredith college and unloaded my stuff into the freshman dorm. I have learned a lot in these three years that I will take with me into my future. I can't wait to see what my senior year brings. This semester I have grown not only in my studies but also as a person. I have become a lot less anxious than I used to be and more independent. I have really learned a lot from my courses especially my introduction to language arts class!

One thing I realized was that there are six language arts which I never knew before. I never really thought talking and listening were a part of language arts learning. I never really considered them to be and I believe many of my previous teachers did not either because it didn't seem like many of my teachers allowed me to freely speak in class. I also learned about different types of reading which I was able to view in my classroom observation when Mrs. Smith read aloud to the children. I also learned about reading and writing workshops which I was able to observe as well. If my teachers had allowed me to participate in reading and writing workshops, I would've probably liked school more. It was wonderful to see how enthused students were when participating in these workshops and to see how enthused Mrs. Smith was about them when I asked her in the interview. I really believe Powell elementary is doing the right thing by having those children participate in reading and writing workshops because I could tell students were benefitting from them. I know in the future I will implement reading and writing workshops in the classroom because I have seen the benefit from them and I am intrigued by the independent learning that is going on in these workshops. I also learned about the different types of listening and all about phonemes, grapheme, and morphemes which I had never heard about in my life before this class! I also really enjoyed learning about the different stages of spelling, which I know will come in handy when looking at future papers written by students.

I really loved the fact that almost everything I learned about in class I was observing. I believe that really engrained the mateial into my head. I learned so much about writing workshops because almost every time I went to observe that is what I saw. I was so excited to get in the classroom and witness the writing workshop taking place because I knew what was going on within them. In the interview I felt really knowledgable talking to Mrs. Smith about the writing workshops because of what I learned in class. During a reading workshop I observed in Mrs. Smith's class, a little girl was reading and using sticky notes to mark the main idea of the book and other things. I remember learning that students did this in the reading workshop while they were reading. So many things I learned from class I was able to observe in the classroom which reinforced what I learned in class.

The final project in Introduction to language arts helped me learn more about the writing process. I learned about the different steps in the writing process but also practiced each step when I was writing my book. I really enjoyed writing the book, because it gave me a chance to share my story of my life in elementary, middle, high school and college. I was able to be creative in organizing my text and pictures the way I wanted to. I believe this would be a wonderful project for students to take part in because they are able to apply the steps in the writing process and be creative.

Overall, I believe I have learned a lot from my introduction to language arts class this semester. There are many things I am going to do in my classroom such as literature circles and reading and writing workshops. I can't believe this semester is coming to a close, but I can proudly say  have worked hard and learned a lot from my classes and my self. Now its time for summer and preparation for my senior year!!!

The impact of my field experiences on my course learning....

I have really enjoyed my observations/field experiences of the classroom. They have definitely impacted my learning for the course. The observations have helped improve my learning of language arts in the K-6

classroom. I was able to learn about reading and writing workshops in class and then go to the school and actually get to experience these strategies for language arts instruction in the actual classroom. I was able to see the benefits and happy faces of the students that were taking part in the reading and writing workshops.

I was pleased to see that this method of teaching language arts was very beneficial for the students. Mrs. Smith even told me that student testing had improved when they implemented reading and writing workshops into their curriculum. Most of the times when I went to observe, there were few discipline problems and I could tell students were interested in the reading and writing workshops. I think it is great that students can choose what they want to read and that they have a lot of free time during the day to write. I have truly fallen in love with the children in Mrs. Smith's classroom, and they made my experience even more enjoyable. I loved listening to their comments to Mrs. Smith's minilessons and how creative they were with their stories they wrote in their writing workshop.

My reflections show how much I learned from my observations. Usually my reflections were very long because of how much I experienced in the classroom that I had learned from my Education 300 course. This semester I learned and observed reading and writing workshops. From my observations I also learned about fractured fairy tales, biographies, story elements, fables, narratives, and inferencing and drawing conclusions. I thought Mrs. Smith was a very dedicated teacher who wanted the children to succeed. I thought Powell elementary was a good school that I might like to work at in the future. My overall observations allowed me to experience what I learned in Education 300 in a third grade classroom with actual third graders.

Revising and editing...

During class this week you conferred with peers to make revisions/edits to your narrative story. Discuss this experience in your posting this week. Likes? Dislikes? Would this work in a K-5 classroom? What if you are teaching in a middle/secondary content specific classroom? How can you make changes to implement this practice?
I enjoyed getting feedback about my narrative. Usually I feel like I am being criticized when I get feedback about papers, but the way this format of revising and editing was set up I did not feel criticized. I actually agreed with the comments the people made about my paper, and looked forward to correcting it. I believe the person who revised my paper did not give me as much feedback as the person who edited my paper. The conference with the person who I edited with also made it more clear what I needed to correct on my paper. I really liked getting valid and constructive feedback about my paper. I also enjoyed reading another person's paper to revise. The only thing I did not particularly like was the fact that I wasn't quite sure what to revise for. I think there should've been a little more direction as to what to revise. I found myself trying to edit the paper instead of revise it. Usually when I look over a paper I pay attention to the grammar part and don't really focus on revising.
I believe this method of revising and editing would work well in a k-5 classroom. I believe it would work well, because students would be working together in order to better one anothers work. Teachers would benefit from having students revise and edit one anothers papers so that not all of the work is on them. By editing and revising one another's papers, students would become better at revising and editing. This would help students with their grammar. Students would also learn how to take criticism and would learn how to work with their peers better. I believe having peer revisors and editors in the k-5 classroom is very beneficial. The only thing that would need to be implemented would be to give students more time in the revising and editing stage. Also, the teacher should give students specific things to look for when revising.
I believe this also could be used in a middle/secondary classroom in language arts or maybe even in other content areas where they might be writing a paper. The teacher should just make sure the students know what to look for when revising and editing. She should probably make these students go in a little more depth with their revising and editing then in elementary school, because they will know more grammar and have more revising skills.

Overall, I belive peer revising and editing is beneficial to students in k-5 and middle school. I believe it gives students a chance to work with their peers and it helps students become better at revising and editing. It also can free up some time of the teachers so she won't have such a huge job to fill. I really enjoyed revising and editing other peoples papers and received some useful feedback about my own narrative.