Refleciton Day 7

Lil's grammar demo was very informative because I struggle with grammar so I don't feel credible enough to teach it. Last year when I taught grammar it was very disconnected, cut and dry. I'm thinking now how Lil interweaved it into the learning. Even though I was the "gong" example, she made my error an opportunity to learn because she asked me a question, "How could you change that word to be in the moment?" She didn't even use the word present tense. This just makes revision more important. Also I'm thinking about content vs. grammar.  I had the idea of writing from the car's perspective. This was genius! Yet my tense was wrong. So does that make my writing not good? No. So there's a connection there between not squashing good ideas because they don't fit perfectly into what it should be. I love Lil's presentation style also because she's so funny. Grammar is based on Latin rules that don't always apply to us. I've never been in that school of thought of letting it drive writing but needed a balance. I'm thinking of using this in my classroom and fitting it in with mentor texts. I'm going to use shared reading time to pick a children's book with high interest: Mo Willems like.  Then explore a skill for the week and how the author uses it in his/her writing. I also want to bring in the part about kids trying this out on their own. I can see them using the grammar rules to make a funny lines like Mo when exploring dialogue. The main idea I get from daybooks is: they are for thinking not grammar rules.

A lot of our demos have had this theme of identity. Who are we as writers, teachers, people? Carrie's demo is making us think about technology with facebook and how we create those identities.  When we put that identity out into cyber space we adjust it based on our audience.  Who is our audience in cyber space? It can be anyone we want it to be. I want to explore fakebook from character's perspectives or historical figures. That would be very fun!