BLOGGING thoughts

My thoughts on blogging—IT’S FUN! I like writing down my ideas for others to see, read, and possibly comment on. However, I am question how well this would work with students. I think that it would be completely challenging when teaching blogging to students of grade K-5. It might get easier when teaching students at the middle school level. Still, I think that it would be kind of hard getting middle school aged kids to take blogging serious. However, in high school I think that students are more into things like blogging, and myspace, and even twitter. So I think that it would be easy to use this in a high school setting. By introducing blogging into high school students’ work, they will become prepared for the many computer and internet assignments that they will have in college.

I think that college and university students might not make blogging a top priority in their schooling. I say this because these students have a lot more to worry about, as far as other classes, jobs, and even family. I had no problem blogging, however I did find it difficult to respond to other peoples blogs. As a graduating senior, I found that after finishing other homework for not only this class, but for other classes, that responding to other’s blogs often slipped my mind. I think this is where I ran into trouble. Because of this I think that blogging would be better for an internet class or for students who might not be full time.

Writing Fiction vs. Writing About Fiction

I found that writing fiction came more naturally to me than writing about fiction. The writing fiction process is something that I am familiar with and so I enjoyed doing it. The hardest part about writing fiction was finding where to start. After writing the beginning of my story, I was able to quickly finish the rest. Writing about fiction, however, is something that is not as natural to me. I spent hours trying to come up with a topic. Once I came up with a topic I spent days finding sources. It was so hard to create a fully developed paper with the stories that we had to choose from. I also found it hard to express my thoughts on the story in words that were easily understandable. No matter how many times I have to write a paper about a work of fiction, I don’t think I will ever get used to it and I seriously doubt that I ever will enjoy it!
After reading the fiction assigned, I saw how authors occasionally threw in a hint of humor or charm in their stories. I took this on in writing my story. I thought it would be nice if my story began more serious, went on to charm my audience and finished off making my audience laugh. I think it would be great to use the unusual circumstance assignment in my future teachings. I think that it would be both fun and educational for my students. It will allow them to be creative while helping them improve their writing.

MYTHS, myths, [ & more] MYTHS!

Writing a myth and reading a myth—two totally different things in my eyes. I have now found that writing a myth is much harder than it looks. After reading some of the myths that we went over in class I thought, “Wow, this seems fun, seems easy, I can do this.” But now I’m having trouble with this assignment. I think that I have so many ideas about what I want to write my myth on, that when I actually sit down to write it, I become overwhelmed. I’ve decided to take things little by little, to help me with this not so easy process. I have broke down my myth topics into four broad ideas—love, communication, the sun and the moon, and animal/human relationships. From these topics I want to create four myths (so far I have only come up with one), and choose the one that I like the most for my myth website. It’s a bit time consuming but it’s the easiest way I’ve found.

With the myth presentations that were presented in class, I learned about the different kinds of myths and the lessons that are meant to be learned from these myths. This will be a good assignment to use when I’m trying to inform and entertain my students. I hope to use this in my classes in the future. I would also like for my students to come up with their own myths. This way the students and I can share and learn from each other.

Poetry

There is an extreme difference in writing poetry and writing about poetry. I personally prefer to write poetry. This is because there are no rules in writing poetry. When writing poetry, all that needs to be taken into consideration are the thoughts and feelings of one’s self. Writing about poetry, on the other hand, takes more time and involves analyzing another’s piece.
When working on my writing my poems I didn’t have much trouble. I knew that all things said in the poem didn’t have to be explained even if they were questioned. Writing poetry includes who and what but not necessarily the why. When writing about poetry you have to explain everything you state. Why has to be included in this type of writing. This was the hard part of this assignment for me.
Writing about poetry helped me include hidden meanings and mixed messages in my poetry. It also helped me to become more conscious about the way I said things in my poetry. After writing about poetry, I was able to write a poem using descriptive words instead of just telling. I’m glad that we had to write about poetry before we began writing poetry on our own.
I learned a lot from working on these poetry assignments that I can use in teaching. One thing I learned is types of poetry that my students can use both to entertain and to inform. For example, a found poem can teach others on topics that other’s may not know. Haiku poems would be fun for students to create and hear aloud.

Introducing LaNai

Hello Bloggers! As you can see, my name is LaNai and I am a senior at Cal State Northridge. I am taking my last four classes and I await excitedly, yet patiently, for graduation day. I, like many of you, wish to become a teacher. I want to be the nice, laid back teacher that everyone loves to learn from. However, I have a great deal of fears about becoming a teacher. One of my fears of teaching is failure. I am absolutely afraid of my students leaving my classroom the same way that they came in. I want my students to leave my classroom everyday with a new knowledge, not only about English, but also about themselves and life overall. A concern I have with going into the education field is the availability of jobs. Its all over the news-- cut back in teacher's salary; teacher layoffs! I am afraid of not having anywhere to begin.

Well since you now know a few of the things that I am afraid of about becoming a teacher, I guess I'll tell you my reasons for still wanting to pursue a career in the teaching field. I have had so many teachers that would have done a better job being a pet trainer or a drill Sargent, that I have took it upon myself to set out and break this curse. Teaching is not a job in which you have to babysit kids or train them to be obedient; it's a job in which you have to help, encourage, and guide. I want to share with others my thoughts and beliefs. I think that language is beautiful. Language is the center of life. I want to show students that English is not just about reading and writing, it's about looking deeper, comparing the old to the new, it's about recognizing change, and exploring ideas. I want to be the teacher that my students learn from, the teacher that my students have fun with, and the teacher that helps my students understand, consider, and debate ideas. I want to be everything that the teacher's I had were not!