This past Friday I had the great opportunity to attend TheMichigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) conference in the
lovely city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was a great entry point into the
world of teacher education conferences yet to come in my career as a continuously
evolving educator. I was pretty daunted by the list of presenters for the final
day of the conference, particularly since so many of them seemed interesting to
a newbie teacher like myself; I didn’t want to miss out on something good to
take back to my placement setting and my future classroom wherever that ends up
being.
Upon reflection I felt as though two of my sessions were
ultimately related to one another: writing and making it authentic for the
students in my classes. The first session I took advantage of was Fostering Authentic
Writing through Digital Feedback. The presenter talked about how he uses
platforms like Google Docs, forums and blogs to ask students to be reflective
about their writing in addition to utilizing their functions to be a place of
conversation about students writing both with the teacher and their peers. He
walked us through his process of commenting on papers and how digital feedback
can offer a chance to expose students to hyperlinks and embedded rubrics that
allow them to continue growing in their paper writing throughout a course. I
really want to experiment more with Google Docs during the remainder of my
student teaching, particularly because of the ease of sharing and editing
papers. All in all, this session reminded me of feedback practices I should be engaging
in while commenting on student papers:
- Quote students work directly in my comments if it’s great/noteworthy (This also helps them see how quotes are embedded in text instead of just “floating”)
- Comment on the piece of writing as a reader not an evaluator (As a reader…)
- Personalize comments with two positives and one suggestion (I wonder if…)
These comments by their teacher and peers help students to
make changes and alterations to their writing in a way that makes it authentic
to them as a writer. I hope my students will come to see the benefits of
feedback offered digitally and how it can help them with their writing on a
multitude of levels.
The second session was entitled Friday Night Lights,
Classroom Style. The basic idea presented was creating opportunities for
authentic audiences in which students can share their writing both locally and
on a global scale. David Theune, a high school English teacher, created this
idea merely 500 days ago in which he asked parents to come into the classroom
to hear students read their writing, ultimately sharing it and having it
evaluated by someone other than their teacher. This expanded into other
projects such as having students research local non-profits and voting on the
best non-profit to receive a monetary donation from each class. Possibilities
for other audiences include peers, younger students in the district, and the
student’s personal choice. His enthusiasm was awesome and he really inspired
the group to think about what we need to accomplish in our curriculums and then
ask ourselves “who could be the audience?” This is something I want to continue
thinking about because I think my middle school students both now and in the
future are stuck in a rut of writing for the teacher because I’m the one who
delivers the final grade and determine if they did something “right” or not. I don’t
like the way this is and hope to change my student’s outlook to take charge of
their writing whether they are sharing it with a parent or across the nation
via an online platform.
At the end of the day I was pretty inspired about changing some
ways I present and organize my content for students. I have started to think
about my content area in a new light: utilizing digital feedback while
constructing assignments that can be conveyed to authentic audiences for my
students to consider. I don’t really want my students to think about and write their
papers just to please their teacher and to get a good grade but to have English
class become an experience for them that can relate to their lives both inside
and outside of the classroom. I hope to continue thinking and researching how
other teachers have been able to make these opportunities available in their
classrooms.
Also, can we take a second to note how I’m seriously lagging
in the Twitter professional networking game? If you’ve also been inspired to
tweet, network, and connect after MACUL find me @kelseystrait
