Puppy Update

We got a new puppy! His name is Gustav (after composers Mahler and Holst). He is a 13-week-old labradoodle and I think he's adorable. He cried/barked/howled most of last night in his crate. We felt validated in our name choice when we remembered that back in college the trombone players all bought rubber chickens to take on band trips and make them squawk loudly when everyone else was sleeping on the bus. One of the rubber chickens was named Gustav, and our dog sounded just like a rubber chicken at several points during the night. We are hoping he does better tonight or at least soon. We took these pictures today in our yard.

Final Reflection

The past four weeks have been a whirlwind of work, learning, and community. I feel like this experience has made me a better and more confident writer. This is important because I can share my writing with my students and they will see me as a writer, not just a music teacher. I have also learned many ways to incorporate writing into my classroom in ways that will enhance students' learning. I have gained an appreciation for the unique challenges faced by teachers at different grade levels and in different content areas. And I have benefited from their knowledge and insight into effective teaching practices and writing ideas. I feel like a more rounded and connected person because of the last four weeks. Thank you, facilitators, for guiding our learning. Thank you, other teachers, for being great listeners, writing advisors, and friends.

Rubric Response

I am now completely convinced that I need to use rubrics more in my teaching. Previously I viewed rubrics as simply a way to justify the grade I gave a student; now, I see them as a tool for teaching and guiding my students' learning. A well-designed rubric helps them know what they should be working toward. It provides a standard to measure up to. I would like to try designing rubrics with my students, as recommended by the article, but it sounds tedious and time-consuming.

I am happy to have learned about rubistar, as well, because it gives me a starting place for designing my own rubrics. I had never thought to have rubrics for performance attendance, but it is a great idea I plan to implement.

Workshop Learnings

Here are things I learned from everyone's fabulous workshops:

• Audrey - Lots of great prompts for getting kids started writing, using all of the senses.
• Cheryl K - How to make a cohesive unit that includes writing and social studies.
• Lupé - How to encourage students to write in their notebooks because their ideas can be used as seeds for more writing.
• Megan - What the six traits are and how to teach them even with simple picture books.
• Shannon - Using journals in class: how they can help to build relationships with students.
• Virginia - How ASD kids think and things to help them survive and learn in the classroom.

Where I'm From

Emily Duvall Workshop Response

Emily's workshop and article

Emily's workshop really opened my eyes to ways we can help prepare students for state writing tests. I appreciate that writing-test writing was considered as its own genre. This helps students separate it from their normal class writing.

I also liked how she helped us see that we can really write about almost anything. Doing these exercises frequently will help students pick a topic or stance quickly when they are taking a writing test. This activity also helped us keep humor in our writing process.

It was also interesting when she helped us to discover that almost any topic will work in almost any genre and mode. Again, this was liberating because it made me realize that a test prompt can be answered in many different ways, most of which are far more interesting than anything I would have written as a test-taker.

Personal Writing Book, part 2

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Three points from the second third

On building dialogue: "You listen to how people really talk, and then learn little by little to take someone's five-minute speech and make it one sentence, without losing anything." I think that in order to become skilled at writing dialogue, I need to actually write down what people say and go through this process, hanging on to their voice but compacting the ideas they said.

Lamott asks the question, "How do you know when you're done?" As I have tried to finish up my writing pieces over the past few days, this question has frustrated me. Like she says, it is similar to tucking an octopus into bed. It is impossible to have all of the loose ends tied up perfectly. There is no such thing as perfect writing; an author could revise over and over and never be completely satisfied with the result. Lamott's solution is that you are done when there is "no more steam in the pressure cooker." I've felt this, and I think she said it very well.

This section of the book also contained some helpful tips for thinking like a writer. First, we should always be looking at the world around us as potential material. To go along with this, it is beneficial to carry index cards at all times so that we can write down those perfect phrases or bits of dialogue or description we think up at random moments. I think this would be easy to put into practice, but it would be harder for me to always have a pen nearby. This is something I want to work on. When we were backpacking last time, I had some great writing ideas but no way to record them, and it was very frustrating to sit down and realize all of the ideas are gone.