Dustin Anderson Reading

2. "After studying the matter, Ms. Davidson concluded, 'Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.'"

        Ms. Davidson came up with a pretty eye opening conclusion. She concluded that when one types for a blog that is for peers, one has less writing errors and no plagiarism.  This is saying that when students write for a blog they feel less obligated to say the right thing and are less pressured to write correctly. This leads to fewer errors in a paper and no plagiarism.  She also states that blog posts for peers are generally more elegant than a classroom paper.  She concludes that blogs allow students to generally be better writers than a classroom assignment or paper does. 

        I think that her findings are very interesting. I think it is true to say that when you are posting to your blog you are less likely to plagiarism because usually blogs are in your own words and are your own opinions. I also think that writing a blog creates fewer errors because it is a more laid back setting.  It is not as formal as an essay for writing class.  This allows students to come up with imaginative ideas and allows them to focus more on the ideas within the writing itself rather than the structure of the writing.   Ms. Davidson also stated the blogs are more elegant, this could be because they have a stylistic touch to them, such as, voice from the writer.  Using blogs that are shown to peers seems to have a positive impact on a student’s writing in the classroom and outside the classroom.  I think that blog writing is helpful to develop one's own thoughts and eventually help with writing essays for a class.

Literacy Timeline

Before preschool: I had a bookcase in my room, filled with books, and before bed, my mom would always read me a book. I used to always pick my two favorite books from the shelf.  From picking those two books, I started to recognize small words and letters from the books.

Preschool: I remember playing puppets with my friends and creating scenes and stories with each puppet we used at school just like a book would have a scene and story.

Kindergarten: even though we couldn't read that well, my teacher let each student bring in a book each week and "read" it to the class. Even though we couldn't read the words, it allowed my imagination to speak through the pictures and images in the book.

Second grade: once I could read, I remember on road trips that we would take my family would play a game with license plates.  We would look at the license plates of the cars in front of us and try to make words out of the letters at we saw on the license plates.  We would also play the alphabet game where we had to find a sign with a word for each letter of the alphabet we were on.

Third grade: I began to learn cursive and had to re-identify letters based on the cursive that was on the board and the cursive I was learning.

Sixth grade: once a week, I took a children's book to school and read it to a first grade class. As I was reading the book, I would point at the words to show them what I was reading.  

Eighth grade: I was placed in an accelerated English class because of my grades and my previous MEAP scores. We had to read more novels and write more papers.

Ninth grade: the teacher I had my freshman year is the teacher that taught me all about novels and literary devices.  He taught me grammar and how to write a good essay too, but most importantly taught me how to read and analyze what I was reading and how to take important words out of a piece of literary work.

Twelfth grade: during the IB tests, we had to read and analyze texts and then write essays about the texts we had to read.  This made me a critical reader and made me recognize key words within the passage that could be used as literary devices to analyze the piece.

Lynda Barry Article

Summary:

Her piece was all about the questions that students grow to ask about their essays.  Her writing showed that every kid when learning to write and express them self use their creativity and draw most of the time.  The main idea in her piece is that as kids grow up they are told not to be creative and not to draw on their works.  This leads students to only write an essay that asks two questions: Is this stupid? And Does this suck?  Throughout the process of learning to write creativity helped shape our minds into becoming good writers. Now, when we get into the university level, that creativeness is slowly fading away because we don't draw pictures anymore and we don't think outside of the box very often.  Lynda Barry's point is that no matter how old we are, we still need to be creative in writing and we need to stop asking the same two questions about our writing pieces.

Response:

I have to agree with this piece by Lynda Barry because I too have started asking those two dreaded questions.  First of all, this piece brought me in due to the pictures that were drawn around the words. It looked very cool and I thought it might be fun to read it. So after I read it, I realized that I need to look at my writing more frequently. It opened my eyes to what has happened within my writing experience from an early age to now.  I do realize that I used to be creative with my writing and that I used to draw to illustrate what I wanted to say.  Now I don't draw at all and I feel was though I write just because I have to. She brought up a very good point that creativity doesn't need to die once we get older within our writing, she says that it can still live on as long as you allow it and as long as you allow creativity within your pieces.  She also states the most important part to allowing creativity to flourish in your work is to not think about the two questions that relate to structure and content of an essay.

Why is writing important?

Attaining the proper skills for Writing and communication is very important to become a teacher. In the future I would like to be an elementary school teacher and these skills will help tremendously. In order to be successful as an elementary teacher, anything I teach has to be communicated to the students and to the parents.  It is important to have good communication skills so that every child is able to learn.  Learning different ways of communication could help so that every child's learning needs are met. Also, for the parents it is crucial to have communication skills to let them know what is happening within the classroom.  This communication can be done verbally or written.  For the students, most of the time the lessons will probably be verbal although minimal writing will be necessary to show examples. For the parents, the communication will most likely be written.  In the form of a weekly calendar or notes to inform them of classroom happenings.  Although it will most likely be in written form for parents, it could be verbally sometimes.  If a parent wants to know the progress of their student, or for conferences then I need to have the communication skills to effectively communicate to them about their child.  My writing skills are pretty good for communicating the ideas that I have, but I have always been known as a shy person, so I need to improve my verbal communication more than anything else.  In order to verbally communicate to parents, I need to be less shy so that I can communicate to them what is happening in the classroom and any other important information they need to know. My writing and communication skills will hopefully improve throughout my four years in college.  Writing and communication are a major part of a teacher's career and I want to be able to effectively communicate within my own classroom someday whether it is written or verbally communicated.