Day 1: Capetown, South Africa

Well, I made it!! Whew! What a long, long day. Yesterday, we traveled for more than 28 hours to Amsterdam and finally Capetown. Let's just say that the last flight served 5 meals and snacks. Yes, it was that long. Good news, we are here!

Our apartment is fantastic. Its just outside of the city in Lagoon Beach secluded in a small town right by the ocean. The Atlantic is a hop, skip, and a jump away from our balcony! Gorgeous! I have three roommies: 1 from Auburn and 2 from Alabama. We walked into our apartment to a goody bag and pizza.

What a deal! There is a spa, pool, and several ethnic restaurants on the property as well. This place will definitely work!

Today, we dragged our jet-lagged bodies out of bed to have a yogurt and oats breakfast before having our first orientation meeting. Random fact: Traffic lights are called robots in South Africa. Then, we took a bus tour with our adventure guide Ish (He's a scream!) through all of Capetown. It was a bit foggy for most of the ride, but the clouds broke just as we arrived at the top of Signal Hill. Unbelievable view! I could see the top of the World Cup stadium as well as the rest of the colorful city. God did alot of work sculpting this place!

Random locations:
1. Capetown Harbour- It reminds me of the Navy Pier in Chicago. It has a huge ferris wheel modeled after the London Eye, shopping, concert stadium, etc. We will definitely need to come back here!

2. Smartie Street- Yes, it is named after the candy. It looks like Smarties exploded and colored all the buildings on the street. It makes for a goofy picture!

Wordle Summary

S-p-e-l-l-i-n-g I-s H-a-r-d

What elementary academic concept jumps to mind? For me, its Friday spelling tests. I can see myself sitting in the big red chair in our living room as my mom tests my knowledge of my weekly spelling list. So much of our writing critiques involve how well a student spells rather than the content of the student’s message. In a resume, if one word is spelled or used incorrectly, you are especially thrown in the corporate trashcan. It doesn’t matter that your resume more that qualifies you with the job. If you spelled “the” as “teh,” your job opportunities drastically decline. Why does that make sense? Sure, it shows that you did not spend as much time on your resume as you should have, but is spelling that important?

I feel the same applies to our students. We naturally tend to write off student’s work, because the spelling interferes with the flow of their writing. However, as they are developing as writers, spelling should not be a priority. Studies show that the more you come in contact with written language, the better your spelling will be. While this is not necessarily universally true, it has a great impact. Even though you may memorize spelling rules, the irregularities make understanding those rules very difficult. Essentially, it boils down to memorizing how words look. This ability occurs through consistent exposure. Eventually, I believe that students learn spelling through extensive reading and writing.

As a teacher of up and coming writers, conventional spelling will take a back seat to allow creativity to push through. I want my students to be able to formulate their ideas in their head and transcribe them in writing in an organized way that engages the reader. Plus, I would rather my students continually write creatively and read constantly rather than write spelling words over and over. However, I still understand the importance of correct spelling, but I would teach it in a different, contextual way. After my students write a piece, I will circle the words they misspelled. Then, they will add those words to their “spelling dictionary,” a document that they formulate throughout the year. It will include the correctly spelled word as well as a definition. They will be responsible for spelling these words conventionally in every piece of writing they do. Because they have their own dictionary, it automatically differentiates each child’s weaknesses. Instead of Friday spelling tests, my class will consist of Write-A-Thons and Pillows and Poems.That sounds much more meaningful and f-u-n.

Kids Can Blog Too!

• Joe in Mrs. Fowler's 2nd grade class...http://kidblog.org/MrsFowlers2ndGrade/joe172/snow-days-3/#comment-419
• Sixth Grade Science Class...http://seyfertssixthgraders.blogspot.com/
• Karina's Book Review... http://kidblog.org/MrsRippsClass/ksripp/my-review-of-because-of-winn-dixie/#comment-2239
• Children's Computer Artwork... http://www.flickr.com/photos/twitterart2011/with/5607235312/

Bucket List

Before I graduate in December 2011, I will accomplish the following in Athens:

• Attend at least one event per sport
• Spend a sunny afternoon at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia
• Cheer on the Dawgs at every home and away football game
• Take myself out to a fancy dinner at Five and Ten
• Learn about who walked the city before me during an Athens Heritage Tour
• Make something to bring home to mom at Good Dirt
• Marvel at the stars at the University of Georgia Observatory
• Enjoy the beauty of nature at Sandy Creek Park
• Get dizzy watching bicyclists during Athens during Twilight weekend
• Paint a masterpiece at Pints and Paints
• Cry at Relay for Life
• Figure out why so many people love Five Star Day
• See a picture of myself in the Red and Black
• Have a picnic at the Founder’s Memorial Garden
• Learn about talented artists during the Athens Walking Music Tour
• Listen to a speaker just because I want to learn something new

Response to Chapter 12

Over the past few days, I have spent much of my time glued to CNN trying to grasp the severity of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan. These events do not fall short of utter tragedy and will undoubtedly be a historical turning point for Japan. As a teacher, I feel that it is my duty to inform my students about current events in ways in which they can understand. The more I have watched the news, the more I have wondered how I would incorporate these current events in my own classroom. This week’s readings gave me a great idea! I could create a unit of study on Japan and the events after March 10^th, 2011. The following is a rough draft of how I would incorporate this idea into a writing workshop unit of study.

Japan After March 10^th, 2011

• A study of our own lives and histories as writers: Students would document their feelings about what they learn throughout this unit in their writing journals. They could use the information they gather through videos and articles to write an informational piece about the events so that they can play the part of historians as well.
• A student of the gathering-from-the-world habits of various kinds of writers: poets, memoirist, fiction writers, essayists, and so on: Students could research and gather different types of written responses to the tsunami through genres other than newspaper articles.
• A study of how to conduct research for writing: Students would learn the basic research principles while learning about the tsunami and its devastation. Their reports on the events would give them practice in following this protocol.
• A study of how writers work with other writers, editors, and publishers: As a class, we could study how journalists gather their information and the process that their writing goes through before the public reads their work.
• A study of a specific genre: Depending on how vast I plan this project, the class could just study editorials and journalism or expand their horizons to picture books, poetry, or memoirs of Japanese writers who have experienced the earthquake and tsunami.
• Plus, I can use any article or poem relating to the disaster as a mentor text to teach focus lessons on any grammar detail that is an area of weakness in student writing.

Teaching Writing: Take 2

After teaching my first writing lesson, it was obvious that I needed some more practice. For my five day unit plan, I decided to take advantage of my teaching time and attempt another writing lesson. Overall, my two day writing lesson went very well! My unit revolved around the diversity of my students. Interestingly, over half of my students were born in a country other than the United States and have been residents of this country anywhere from ten years to two months. I wanted to embrace this uniqueness by learning about five main countries through various subjects. I used two writing days as a chance for students to educate their peers about life in their home countries. The following describes my successes as well as points of improvement in my lesson.

• Time: In my first lesson, I really struggled with how to teach less to let my students write more. Thankfully, I showed great progress in this lesson! One the first day, I explained that I wanted the students to teach their classmates about themselves and their home countries through their writing. I read a first grade level book that dealt with a Chinese-American girl and how her family celebrates the Fourth of July. At first, I thought these fifth graders would not benefit from a simple book, but they all seemed interested regardless. Plus, their comprehension helped with understanding how to response in their writing. Then, I read my personal response to the book exemplifying what I intended for them to do. I gave them the rest of the period to write, a total of forty minutes. My focus lesson wasn’t twelve to fifteen minutes, but it still gave my students amble time to write.

• Sharing: Parts of sharing time went really well and other parts did not. Luckily, the students already had plenty of practice with sharing their writing so this aspect of my lesson did not cause too much anxiety. However, the way their peers commented did not go as planned. In the past, their sharing time consisted of structured critiques by the teacher and the student’s peers. Instead, I wanted the students to comment on the content of their peer’s works that they learned more about each country. They were to ask questions relating to the content of their writing. Plus, each student had an assigned partner. I instructed each student to write a fact about his or her partner to be placed in a large data chart compiled during the week. At first, the students really struggled with asking questions. Some would not ask any questions, some would make irrelevant comments, and some would resort back to their previous sharing procedures. After a lunch break, I reiterated my expectations and gave a more specific example of what I wanted the students to do. Thankfully, they became more engaged and more focused for the remainder of the sharing period.

• Individual Students: Some students really excelled and thoroughly enjoyed this lesson. I asked the class to bring in something from home to help teach their peers about their culture if they desired. A few of the Korean students took advantage of the opportunity to show their Korean schools’ website on the Smart Board as well as some of their written language. However, one particular student outshone the rest. This Indian student seemed empowered by this opportunity to share with his classmates. He wrote a three-page front and back informational piece on how India gained its independence and passed around pictures of Gandhi and several rupees. The class found his knowledge very interesting and really appeared to learn a great deal about India.

• Assessment: One of the greatest difficulties I encountered was my lack of assessment. I knew what I wanted my students to do, but I realized that I didn’t exactly know what I was specifically assessing. I knew I wanted them to “response to literature,” but I did not know what entailed a quality response. My Indian student worked very hard on his project, but did he really respond to the literature, or did he just write on his own prompt? Also, I was assessing whether or not students could ask relevant questions regarding a piece of writing. Unfortunately, I did not monitor who asked questions very appropriately. Some students only asked one question or none at all. How do I give my students a grade if I do not if they retained the information?