Blog 2

After reading my classmate's blogs, I learned a lot of interesting facts about them. We have all been in classes together for the past five months, and know each other to some extent. However, I had a lot of fun reading what everyone wrote, and getting to know everybody a little bit better. I found out that Gabby Luciani taught swim lessons in her hometown. I taught swim lessons for a few years back home too. It was cool to find out we have this in common. Gabby is a very smart and confident person. She always has insight to contribute to each class. I know she is going to make a wonderful teacher someday. I also discovered that Katie Methe was originally a nursing major, and was interested in pediatric nursing. She changed her major to elementary education because she did not like sticking kids with needles. I don't blame her. Needles and blood freak me out! I do not know Katie that well, but I can tell she has a sweet, warm personality. I look forward to learning more about her through the course of the semester. 

I found the article"Writing to learn across the curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content area classes" to be very interesting and useful. The article discusses the importance of writing to learn. According to the article, writing to learn gives the students an opportunity to recollect, clarify, and question what the already know and what they would like to know about a subject. The article lists examples of various strategies to incorporate this concept of writing to learn into the classroom. The strategy that stood out the most to me was Listen-stop-and-write. The teacher divides her lecture into 3 minute segments, with 2 minute writing breaks in between each segment. The writing breaks gives the students a chance to absorb what was said by the teacher, and allows for time of through not taking. This strategy would have benefited me greatly in my past classes. I am the type that has to write everything down, and I often become so consumed with writing that I loose track of what the teacher is saying. I feel this will help the students take excellent notes as well as stay focused in the lecture. The article also explains using Bio-poems in the classroom. By participating in the Bio-poem activity in class, I was able to make a deeper connection to what the article was explaining. I was able to experience the concept of writing to learn first hand. The bio-poem was efficient because it combined social studies and language arts, as well as required the students to call upon higher order thinking. I don't really have any questions about what was discussed in the article. It all seems very direct and easy to follow. I will definitely try to include the information and strategies in the article into my future class room.