Are you a poet?

My experience with poetry has been somewhat ok. I have never really jumped for joy when reading it, nor have I ever hated it. Back in elementary, middle, and high school, I was made to write poetry by the majority of my language arts and english teachers. I never got any fancy mancy award for them...just an occasional "good job". I guess that's why I never got into it. I felt like none of my teachers were really into it. However, I'm willing to pick it up and try it all over again.
My guess if I were to have a favorite style of poetry, it would be free verse. I like telling stories through my writing and having no restrictions or silly rules to follow would definitely motivate me to write poetry more. I also love, love, love funny kid poems. One of my classmates posted a great link to a poetry website the other day www.poetry4kids.com and I really loved it. There is some great funny poems about silly kid stuff up there. My favorite one was "My Excellent Education".
Hands down, I will definitely incorporate poetry into my classroom and I will fix the mistakes that my language arts teachers made. I won't just teach poetry because it is a part of the curriculum, but actually have fun and engage the students in it. It's a big difference from just reading poetry aloud like a monotone mannequin...than making the poetry really come to life...

It's the number one thing on my Christmas List...

Thanks to Dr. Duncan, I have proudly added "Freedom Writers" to the top of my Christmas list. I'm not a movie or a television junkie...and my friends will be the first to tell you that they think I'm weird for not watching a lot of television, but I really want this movie now. I recently told my dad that I would like to thank him and mommy for not allowing me to watch a lot of television growing up. It has resulted in me finding other cool super activities to occupy my time..and also resulted in me being a great babysitter (kids love my crazy imagination). The clip that Dr. Duncan showed us in class from the movie "Freedom Writers" was simply uplifting and refreshing. I know it was a film totally based on acting...but it had my full attention. If only teachers could allow students to "vent" like that without any type of consequences later (teacher or student)...the world would definitely be a better place. There would be less criminal activity and even New Yorkers would flash you a big smile, and say "hey y'all" if they ever saw you in a pizza joint in Upper Manhattan.

I would like to share with you that immediately after I left my Language Arts class, that I called my daddy on speed dial (he's #4). I shared with him about how we watched this great clip in class. He immediately asked: "Was this from the movie Freedom Writers?". I was shocked. Daddy had already seen this great movie and did not even bother to share it with his favorite daughter. I was like "Yessss!" Then I told him how I wanted, needed, better yet, I would die if I did not receive this movie as a stocking stuffer this year. And he says, "Ummm...sweetheart. I have that movie on DVD here." Whattttttt? And I never even noticed. Shows you how much I really do pay attention to movies and television. To make a long story short, I plan to go home this weekend to watch Freedom Writers with my family :)

Well back to the educational part...I think that "talk" is a wonderful thing to have in our lives. Just a side note: My drawing on the board symbolized, that whatever language you speak (Spanish, English, American Sign Language), communication is the key to successful learning in the classroom. And it really and truly is. Without communication skills, teachers would never be able to assess students' work and provide feedback. Without communication...this world would be a lonely place.

Peer Conferencing

The peer conferencing that I experienced with my classmates was extremely helpful. It's always good to get a second and third opinion on a paper. I feel like I'm really tough on myself when it comes to submitting papers; so most of the things that were addresses were errors that already recognized. However, there were a few things that I had in my paper that I thought were awesome, and my peers thought it would be a good idea to leave them out. I really liked that they were very honest with me because it only will make my paper better. My eyes doesn't necessarily always catch every little grammar error, so I was very thankful for the extra help. Peer conferencing is often a practice I utilize every now and then. After the eye-opening experience with my colleagues, I will try my best to try to use it more often. I learned that it doesn't matter what I think of the paper because I am not the audience...the readers are! Therefore, I should be getting a potential reader to correct the errors.
The pros of practicing peer conferencing in the classroom is allowing the students to build trust with one another and talk effectively about writing. Students also like peer conferencing because it gives them time to feel like they are in control; and this is especially important to middle school students. The cons of this exercise is that the teacher has no control over what is said during the peer conferencing. Teachers should be careful to watch for constructive criticism and not just criticism. Another con is that peer conferencing may bring down a student's level of self-esteem is they are not top-notch writers. Teachers should be weary of this and should be knowledgeable about what to do if it does happen.