Reflection

Thank you for restoring my love for writing.  I spent many years as a technical writer for a career because the graphic design industry (my first love) was too unstable during our economic recession.  I accepted the writing position mostly for stability but also for interest.  Writing technically for so long made me stop writing for pleasure.  Technical writing requires a different type of creativity; a rigid one.  It can feel claustrophobic at times and gets overwhelming when proper subject matter experts are not utilized.  So Much Research!

As a writer getting back into the art, I feel my organizational skills have grown.  After losing myself in organizational chaos, I felt I had completely forgotten how to organize facts, ideas, and thoughts.

The quick writes we did in class helped with fear, the individual demo activities helped with ideas, and the course reading helped with organizational processes.  I feel ready to write real blogs pertaining to real things now.  A long time ago, I enjoyed sharing a feeling or moment in time.  Now, I will focus on both writing to escape or venture to dreamland and writing to take action or support important issues.

Digital writing is fun.  I enjoy sharing ideas, thoughts, feelings, and information.  I will incorporate blogging in my classroom when I feel it is safe for everyone involved.  I will definitely be consulting seasoned teachers for advice on the do's and don'ts to include and avoid.

Overall, I feel more confident and eager to grow the skill within me and inspire others to do so as well.  I can't wait to read what my students share with me.  I feel that language arts teachers get the best insight to the real personalities of kids.  I am so excited!

Teaching Argument Writing

This book takes research papers from telling a story to conducting action.  It shares many examples of traditional research paper assignments where students would summarize various secondary sources but never apply any actual research of their own.  It focuses on writing about experiments conducted by the writer or observations viewed directly by the writer instead of writing about impersonal concerns irrelevant to the writer.  It describes how to get the writer more invested in the process of their own research to create a more personal opinion.  It explains processes to organize the writers thoughts for a fluid flow.

I enjoy the information from the book but wonder if writing based on secondary research is an easier way to teach argument writing at first.  I believe in proven experiments and observational research being very useful information shared for the purpose of redundancy.  However, I also definitely see value in the class experiment type writing suggested by the book where the activity gets students involved in a very real way about real concerns that affect their lives.  Anytime the project can be carried out in a fun relevant way I believe you will boost interest and a better products.

Overall, I like the book and clearly see the different process it encourages the teacher to teach writers.  I believe it makes the process more manageable and interesting.

What you see is not what you get

I finally found an asthma support group and I'm very excited about it.

Silent as a hidden foe
Asthma sneaks into control
Unknown not understood
What you see is not what you know

An incredibly lonely disease
With hidden symptoms you learn to cope
deflated cells fatigued muscles
bulged eyes adrenal strife

Calm gasps of air
lifetimes repeated song
flared nostrils strained
pulled coughs blare

Fish out of water
tossing clumsy reach
Figetting wobbly feet
But it's not what you think

Blinders cloud the eye
suffocation takes the wheel
but pain inside the vessel
has no strength to deal

Shaking muscles have no control
little air is left to flow
mental magnitude assures the breath
but it cannot steal the show

Health sees no cost
of oxygen over will
of lives confined within
and it never will

A Fathers Daughter

Relaxing in a tree, one early spring morning, she decided to write a childhood story of days spent playing with her father in the field of Oaks behind her family’s home.

She wanted to use connotations which are feelings that words invoke in addition to their literal meaning.  A connote (of a word) implies or suggests (an idea or feeling) in addition to the literal or primary meaning.

She added interest to her story by including figurative language; words or expressions with meanings different from their literal meaning.  Figure means to be a significant and noticeable part of something.

She remembered fun conversations they had about philosophy using analogies.  Analogies compare two things, typically on the basis of their structure, for the purpose of explanation.  She could still hear his voice saying the sweetest analogy she had ever heard, “eyes are the windows to the soul and you my dear have beautiful eyes.”

She wrote about her father being a tall lanky man with a child-like soul who always encouraged her charismatic zest for life and freedom from vanity.  He admired her fearless courage and described it with a simile of it being “as fearless as a lion’s.”  Similes, compare one thing with another thing of a different kind using “like” or “as”, to make the description more vivid.  It compares things that are similar.

His heart filled with joy and laughter when she began negotiating for one of her favorite things on the planet; a big sweet lollipop!  He admired her developing wit, so he began using a metaphor to describe how he loved her sweet nature as much as she loved a big sweet lollipop.  Metaphors omit the words “like” and “as” instead applying a word to an object or action that is not literally applicable.  Meta means “of a creative work” referring to the conventions of its genre.

Her father was a gentle man with a poetic heart and he will forever be remembered saying, “You’re my Lollipop, Lollipop.”

A Fathers Daughter

Spring Break at Sky Valley in Shenandoah Mountains, Georgia

Tech View

1. My tech life is best described as a habitual visitor.  I’ve spent a lot of time working within artistic digital software like the Adobe Suite but I lack the ability to figure out technological aspects of the internet and computers.  I can draw on the computer but I can’t keep the computer running.  I enjoy a shallow existence online.  I enjoy sharing myself through writing and digital art but I don’t really care about searching or peering through pages of others work.  I’d also rather read a printed book over a digital on.  I find all of the “in-your-face” advertising extremely rude and invading.

2. I like www.Socrative.com for formative assessments. It allows you to engage with students while collecting detailed summative assessment reports.  I like how you can ask a quick question and have students answer it in real time.  This is a useful tool to gage what your students know and where they can learn more.  Having a place for students to ask questions anonymously creates a safe place for them to do so.  It’s also enables you to save assessments you’ve created and share them between colleagues.  Live results allows you to see which questions you need to go over with the students.  

3. Virtual writing is important for students to do because it widens their audience.  When students know their audience includes more people, they will write their best.  Also, other people online will critique everything they see online.

http://www.shelfari.com/ Is a good site to find books of varying interests through a search engine.  It allows readers to rate and comment on books. 

http://piktochart.com/ Looks great for easy block charts and other graphic illustrations. 

http://storybird.com/ Looks like a fun way to engage students in writing games.  It allows you to create a book which is always exciting.

4. The online tools that educators are using makes illustrating visual aids very easy.  The online tools educators are using make access to material easier than ever before.  It creates a big team where educators can continue to grow, share their challenges, and keep creativity in teaching.

5. As teachers integrate technology they need to keep students safety in mind.  The virtual world makes access to information so available that crossing the line to an unsafe realm becomes extremely easy to do.  Students need to be made aware of the dangers of online communications, protocols, and “stranger danger” aspects of having the world at their fingertips.  Student’s need to be educated about every aspect of online safety.

6.  Based on my exploration, I will try out the following online tools:

http://www.shelfari.com/ 

http://piktochart.com/

http://storybird.com/

Socrative www.Socrative.com

Kahoot http://www.getkahoot.com

Cheese

I love cheese. I also enjoy going out to eat with my best friend.  There are many restaurants in our area to choose from, so we often decide where to go based on our agenda.  Sometimes our agenda is based on the atmosphere according to our mood, food quality for taste, bar menu for drinks, or simply a fire place on a chilly evening.  The last time my friend asked me what I wanted to eat, my answer was, "cheese."  I wanted melted cheese and rolls.  I have this craving often when so when asked where I'd like to eat, it sometimes come down to who has the best cheese option.  One time Olive Garden's Fontina cheese appetizer was the deciding factor regarding where we ate that evening.  We laughed, shared, and "filled our cups" over wine, cheese, and rolls.  It was a memorable evening for two best friends.
This past weekend, I was once again asked, "where would you like to eat?"  It was a community question asked by the driver of the car.  No one had a request so I said, "I want cheese" because I did.  We were heading home from an Orlando Magic basketball game and our options were only among fast food restaurants.  It came down to Wendy's...ew!  While making a U-turn, I saw a WaWa convenient store and brought up a conversation about it.  I had never been in one but remember reading recent news about one being built near my home.  The driver mentioned that he heard WaWa had good food.  So we decided to check it out.  They had cheese!  Of course they had more than just cheese but they had cheese! And rolls!  I was very excited about my order of macaroni and cheese with a roll. As we ordered our food, a man was leaving the store with three food orders stacked in his arms.  I heard a sliding noise behind me and turned around just in time to see him drop a large order of macaroni and cheese on the floor! I felt so awful for him.  He simply shook his head and left the store.  I hope it wasn't for someone as happy as I was to be getting cheese.