Learning From Research

It has been so long since we had to write a blog!
I read set 4 for our Inquiry into writing project, and found the articles pretty interesting. There was a lot of useful information that I will hopefully remember to implement in my own classroom someday. I especially liked the idea that the classroom is a community and all of the members of the class are real players (Co-Authoring...Larson and Maier). I feel that the idea of community was a constant theme in the four articles and that all of the teachers who were involved in the studies found it important for the students to communicate with the class in a formal tone and environment as well as an informal tone and environment. The teachers felt that by allowing the students to know a lot about their peers there was more room for creativity and a more open classroom. In the same article I mentioned above, the teacher; Maryrita Maier taught first grade and she and her class had lunch family style in their classroom everyday. This definitely changed the classroom from a formal learning environment to a much more informal one.
The articles also mentioned how important fluency is in both reading and writing. A point that I found particularly interesting was; In order to become a writer you have to read!. This was from the last article in the set but it really summed up a lot of the ideas from the previous articles because all of the teachers put a tremendous amount of influence on both subject and tried to devote about two hours a day to the study of Reading and writing, even incorporating writing in other subjects. As long as students are writing they are learning to appreciate writing and their own work which will eventually help them figure out exactly what they want to write about!