Reading Responses

Writing Across the Curriculum by Shelly S. Peterson
This book is an excellent resrouce for every teacher. Not only are there several Black Line Masters (BLM) in the back that can be adapted to almost any subject across the curriculum, Peterson also gives a detailed description on how and why it is important to use the resources. For each type of writing at the back there are BLM. I will be incorporating many of the techniques that she introduced in her book into my teacher practice. Especially the ones on poetry.

I have found that poetry is a difficult subject to teach students, I remember my days as a student disliking poetry a lot. However, I believe that incorportating it into non-English classes will make it a much more accessible subject for students. Additionally, her secion on integrating narrative into other subject areas is something I think every teacher should be doing across the curriculum. Especially in math, math is a difficult subject for many students, and adding familiar narratives to math instruction and activites will make it a much mor accessible subject for stduents who may not be as strong in math. On top of that, It will make is more fun for students who are proficient in math.


The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
This is an excellent resource for any teacher. Although it is most easily used by English teachers due to the very evident creative writing aspects that can be incorporated into the book. I think it can be used in may different subjects. Especially with regards to writing narratives in other subjects. It is easier for some students to have a visual when they are imagining a story and this book give an excellent visual. Again, I think that math class would be an excellent subject to incorporate this book. There are a lot of different sories that can prompt students to do various types of calculations. Form simple 2-dimensional geometry to more complicated parabola graph plotting examples.

Nancie Atwell
"Teachers should accomodate the behaviours of early writers." This is one of the most important things I took from her article and though it was her quoting the resarch of someone else, her illustrations made it come alive to me. I am glad I had the opportunity to read it because without reading her story about the boy who drew in class and wrote at home, I would just assume that he was getting somone else ot help him. Her stories have helped form the way I approach helping struggling student writers improve (and help proficient student writers improve). I like how she modified her understanding of her student as she went along, accomodating his needs as she discovered them anew. This is something that I sincerely want to bring into my teaching practice: the ability to change my understanding of the way my students learn every time I discover something new about them. I think it is important not to but students into a box. Let them help you teach them, they understand better than anybody what works for them. However, she also pushed him to be better, she knew he could do better and she gave him the tools he needed to succed. Though Nancie does not spend the whole article discussing her interactions with this student, this was the illustration that stood out most to me.

Another part of her article that stood out to me was her insistance in letting her students choose what to write. Getting them to write about what they are interested in helps the improve their writing because they are using subject matter that they care about. In the same way it is important to get studetns to write to learn in other subjects. They may not like writing, but the very act of making bullet poitns or writing about the subject they are studying will help solidify the writing in their heads. What Nancie did in her class was Learning to write, and it solidified the necessity for that type of writing for me. Additionally, her experiment also made me believe that Writing to Learn is jsut as important. These are both practices that I intend to use in my teaching practice.