Semester Reflection

My final semester of classes flew by! I can not believe I am writing a semester reflection. It feels like just yesterday was the first day of Teaching Language. As I look back over the semester I feel like Teaching Language has been an immensely helpful class. One aspect in particular that I liked were the books chosen. I think that every single book had something valuable to teach about writing. For instance, Nancie Atwell's book In the Middle taught me all about workshops. I had never even considered using a workshop in a writing class, but Atwell's book has given me something to consider. She went in-depth and discussed how they work and the benefits of having them. This book also gave me numerous handouts that I could incorporate into my teaching of writing. Even a book like Making Comics proved to be helpful in the teaching of writing. Scott McCloud's book gave great information about how to make a comic book meaningful. This book gave me so many ideas for assignments I would like to use next semester with my students. The book list this semester was helpful. I plan to add all of these books to my bookshelf. I know they will come in handy!

I also enjoyed the writing workshops and demonstrations that we did this semester. With the demonstrations, I now have a variety of activities that I can incorporate into my classroom for any given writing assignment. I am glad that this was one of our assignments because it did provide all of us in the class with new strategies that we can use with our students. I also liked the writing workshops because I think it helped me to become a better more polished writer. It also made me realize that it is important to write with your students. I know that I am leaving out a TON of assignments that I enjoyed, but these two were the ones that impacted me the most.

Finally, this semester has taught me about my beliefs on the teaching of writing. I had always assumed that teaching writing was going to be boring and dry. I recall numerous middle school and high school English classes that included very uninspired writing lessons. Luckily, I learned that teaching writing is fun. As a teacher I plan to make writing exciting. I want to include writing lessons and assignments that allow students to be creative and interact with one another. I am also very interested in setting up a writing workshop. I think that Atwell's ideas are very interesting. Her book gave me plenty of help in making a writing workshop a reality. Overall, this class taught me that writing is not boring. Writing can be fun, interactive, and creative. I plan on using a lot of the strategies and books from this class to make my teaching of writing memorable to my students.

On another note, I wanted to provide you all with the link to a ning that I have been recently reading. It is called English Companion and it is run by Jim Burke, who wrote Writing Reminders. There are thousands of English teachers on here. There are also numerous groups on the ning ranging from "Teaching Texts" to a group devoted to "New Teachers". I have found so many lesson ideas and helpful tips on here. I highly suggest that you all check this ning out!