bye week

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I have to say, I prefer paper

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This is a short discussion of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel A Single Man . The video was made to gain experience with screen casting technology. If I am being honest, I really, really disliked the experience of making this video. It was extremely frustrating trying to figure out how everything worked together and hunt down tutorials only to realize I couldn’t actually get it to do what I wanted without either A) using completely different programs, or B) paying a lot of money for several different full versions. I also did not really feel like it added to my own learning experience, as most of my time was spent re-recording over and over again every time I made a mistake. I could see screen casting being a useful and relevant technology to use for online courses, as it allows for spoken presentations in a class style that otherwise would not. However, in a normal classroom setting I don’t see myself ever using this except as a way to accommodate individual students’...
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The Writer's Workshop

I want to start by saying that I really like the idea of a course based around the writer’s workshop. The last general English course that I took was in 9th grade, as my high school options were more focused on either literature or writing. However, even in the writing classes, none of them were as focused or writing intense as the writer’s workshop framework advocates. They also tended to be more teacher focused, with assigned topics, formats, and timetables. It is hard for me to imagine, as a teacher, how the writer’s workshop would function, as I never experienced it as a student. Yet, it intrigues me nonetheless. When it comes to the application of this model of teaching writing, and English language arts in general, I do wonder at the feasibility in the more generalized high school ELA classroom. Most of the examples discussed by Nancie Attwell and others focus on elementary and middle school levels, when writing is first being introduced. Continuing this model with high schoo...
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Mentor texts. . .

The whole addition of the Blog of the Week (said, of course, in Abby’s voice from now unto eternity), had made this experience feel much more high-stakes. Why not just intentionally underperform so that when mine is inevitably not selected I can say, “Oh, I wasn’t even trying anyway,” and bypass the shame of never being chosen as an exemplar. In reality the stakes are the same, as low as ever, and the blogs remain simply a place for reflection and perhaps brief conversation. However, these thoughts have led me to wonder what the impact this sort of selection of exemplary work for sharing with the class has on students. There is, of course, the excitement and pride of having your work selected, but what about those whose writing is never held up, even anonymously? No one else may notice, but those students will. Does this encourage them to strive harder, or simply leave them in the place I arrived of why even bother? It depends on the student of course, but the factors leading to that...
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