Reflection Paper

Besides the fact that the writing center is understaffed, there are some challenges faced every day by all writing centers, not just the writing center at NOVA Alexandria. Some of these challenges were mentioned in a paper by Rachel Cooke and Carol Blesdoe, “(1) guiding students through the sequence of the writing process; (2) assisting students who may be uncertain about assignment guidelines; (3) operating under time constraints; (4) empowering students to take charge of their learning; and (5)evaluation of sources for quality and preventing plagiarism.”

Science Instructional Analysis and Methods class has afforded me countless learning experiences which I have taken into my intern classroom. I have several take away for this fall’s science methods course. The first being, in Methods class I learned to work in distinct groups of with peers of various levels. My peers who are experiencing classroom teaching for the first time and the graduate interns. Surprisingly, I learned from working with both of these groups. From the graduate level students, I was able to actually make a connection with the content we read about in our text and experiences I had everyday in internship. I appreciate the opportunity, as I felt safe and free to ask questions about the experiences they had in teaching science. I commend you on the way you had broken up the class groups, and afforded us to work with different groups. During this process, I feel I have started to find my voice as a professional. This opportunity allowed me to be more confident to voice my ideas to the teachers I worked with in internship, as I contribute to my PLC group.

Throughout the first eight week’s courses, Amy demonstrated a high level of competencies in understanding and applying theory into practice. She was also able to utilize the supports provided to her through the college to vastly improve her professional writing skills, limiting her grammatical errors and increasing her well-deserved passing grades.

I've loved writing since I was a young child, especially creative writing. It allows me to express myself, and it seems almost magical to be able to create things simply by writing down a few symbols and twenty-six letters in various ways. I've written many fictional stories of various genres over the years. Unfortunately, while I have done a lot of creative writing, I haven't done as much academic writing. I would like this class to help me become the kind of student who earns A's on her papers by assisting me in becoming more efficient in the overall writing process.

Then, we would run up to her desk and have her check our paper for the corrections we made to the sentences. We all hoped that our corrections would be right because the first person to get everything correct got to pick out a prize from Mrs. Kandel’s basket which would include some small toys, small pieces of candy, or even stickers, which was the class favorite. This little activity started to train our young minds to start learning the editing part of the writing process works without us even knowing that Mrs. Kandel was doing so. This started to get our class used to proofreading without it being a separate step in the writing process which helps greatly in writing so that the writer does not have to spend so much time in the basics, but more time on the context of their writing. Since that day, I try to minimize any errors that may occur by carefully reading each sentence to make sure that not one error was made.

Message: Kids using the Writing Workshop approach learn and refine specific skills they apply during independent workshop time. When teaching to support and develop independent writers, we want kids to build enduring connections that they can apply when they write…beyond the workshop.  We want them to own understandings of conventions and the potential of written text and use their skills when writing to communicate and think. Self-selected and self-driven writing opportunities create the space for this sort of application. Research shows that skills taught, practiced, and tested in

She enjoys participating in class discussions and will occasionally ask questions that elicit further information. Brielle delivered a very short speech to the class about national parks. However, she must make efforts to research and prepare herself to deliver more engaging and informative presentations. Brielle reads with high accuracy but is still developing her fluency and expression. She successfully decodes unknown words and monitors her reading to maintain understanding. When writing, Brielle attempts to describe actions and objects. She is beginning to organise his writing using paragraphs. However, Brielle needs increase her efforts to produce longer texts and use punctuation consistently. She is continuing to develop her spelling and grammar

Even though, I made it my priority to address the personal interests of Angela in order to make learning more meaningful. I lacked some 21st century equip to better serve her. I did not have any technology made available to assist with learning. I was limited to paper and pencil. According to Adolescent Literacy, “Few students want to write in long hand, but without the use of word processors on a daily basis, we have to rethink where and when writing happens,” a recommendation for this

When I enrolled in English 330, Writing in Education, I was apprehensive. Over the years, proofreading has been one of my strengths which may be a great attribute, but the challenging part has already been accomplished, writing the paper. So, although I absolutely love to research and write about my findings, I have always found it to be a struggle writing essays. The words seem to come easy in my head, but when the time came to write or type those words into sentences was the most difficult. Even though I have endured difficulties and challenges this semester, I have given 100% into each assignment. The discussions, blogs, letters, emails and assorted categories of papers completed, they have all proven to me that, no matter how good you felt you did, there is definitely room for improvement. There is always room for improvement, whether the task is a school assignment or work done on daily basis for over twenty-five years. My writing skills, my thought process and analytical skills have all improved in the last eight weeks.

Although I have a lot more to figure out about myself, I have learned a lot about myself and the people of America while taking this course thus far. I have been able to, make a lot of connections between myself and the topics we have discussed in class and making sense of things that have happened to me throughout my life. I recall discussing issues such as colorism and white privilege, love, the treatment of blacks in America, the meaning of “African American” and black education plus a lot more during this course.

As I began to reflect back upon my life and the incidents that have turned me into the writer I am today, I smiled as I began to remember some of my earliest childhood memories. Shortly after, my entire class was erupting with laughter as we shared stories about each other from our youth. The reminiscing of what has turned us into the writers we are today opened up the opportunity for all of us to share our memories and laugh about our elementary days. Through the reflecting I shared a very notorious memory from kindergarten involving our teacher. As I spoke about the memory I realized that it was the memory that has influenced me the most as a writer.

When I was younger, I used to talk in Pushto; with my mother, father, sister and, basically my whole entire family. Because my family was my life, they were all I’ve ever known. I was five years old when I started going to school, and obviously, as a naive young child, I assumed that everyone talked - or was- exactly like me. Thus, I would talk to classmates in my language, and they’d stare or generally be confused. Correspondingly, Many of them, in their childhood innocence, would respond back in English and continue to play with me. It wasn’t until a few days where I realized that they weren’t the different ones, I was, and I slowly started to change. In reality, my transformation wasn’t drastic at first, since I only just learned the basics. Red was the first word I learned. Something so simple yet is so bold. Red can draw attention towards yourself, like a woman trying to impress her flame. Red is hungry, and so was I. By the time I learned basic English words, and can string together a sentence, all my kindergarten friends and teachers could finally understand me.

I was 12 years old when I started to play volleyball. I can remember going to the gym for the first time bounces echoing off the walls for the balls being played. Before this, I was a competitive cheerleader for 4 years and had made it to the highest level possible. Hearing the crowd roaring wit =h every hit trick was what I lived for. My friend from my neighborhood finally connived me to try out volleyball and go to a camp. When I got there I remember always doing cheer moves on the volleyball court. In one drill we had to throw the ball across the room “bang bang” went the ball as I hit the back wall every time. The coaches were so impressed and immediately started talking off my parent's ear after the camp.

Growing up in Rock Hill, South Carolina, attending Westminster Catawba Christian School as an adolescent, living in a suburban area with my older sister Reaghan and parents, a portrait of the best life any child could ask has been painted. My sister and I were spoiled rotten and got pretty much anything we ever asked for. My life consisted of going to school, participating in fun family nights, viewing movies, and attending church on Sunday. I’ll never forget the delicious soul food Sunday dinners that followed.

In the video we see an elementary teacher, teaching a reading strategy called summarizing in a whole group lesson. In the video I observed her use strategies such as direct instruction, modeling, cooperative learning, and independent practice. She begins the lesson by setting the objective of learning and using the summarizing strategy when reading. During this whole group learning, she is modeling the summarizing strategy in order for her students to mimic the strategy so they can internalize it, in hopes for the students to use the strategy when reading in order to become self-regulated learners. At one point of the video, the teacher uses a peer sharing strategy where the teacher ask the students to turn to their neighbor and come up