Apache Practicum:

I have had a great time workingwith Collin and Tristin! The entire process of helping students with their writing has been educational as well as eye opening. It was a great experience because I am knew to the UNM program and I have only had a few other practicum experiences. I feel that aiding students in their writing process is way more challenging than I thought it was! Writing has involves so many steps, processes, and revisments! I kind of feel as if I have learned more about writing just from teaching it!

The first day that I met Tristin and Collin, they were really interested in what I was doing there. Naturally, they asked so many questions before they could begin to get focused on the task we were trying to work on. Though I really had to stear them away from questions, it was fun getting to know them a little bit. I feel that getting to know your students is crucial and is truly a requirement as a teacher.

Both Tristin and Collin had the coolest  web that they were making for their I Am From poems. They had so many ideas and neat interests. I enjoyed asking them tons and tons of questions about their lives such as: what they like to do on recess, their favorite colors, food, time of year, etc. They both seemed excited about sharing their intersts for their poem. We worked on and finished their webs so that they could begin writing their I Am From poems the next week.

Today Tristin and Collin finsihed adding a few more of their interests for their I Am From poems. I read them my poem and I could tell that this allowed them the chance to see how I Am From poems are structured.

Ex. I am from the dewy grass on a softball field.

      I am from………

Colling began working on his poem right away. Tristin also began working on his poem right away, but I noticed that he was setting up hi poem wrong. He wrote:

I am Tristin.

I am in fourth grade.

I am healthy.

I explained the correct way to set up an I Am From poem but he told me that the way I was doing it was inccorect. This was the first dispute that Tristin and I had! As they finished their poems I asked them if they would read them out loud to eachother. They both did and they were both very responsive to eachothers stories.

The next day at Apache Tristin was absent so Collin and I had more time to work together on his story. We began brainstorming ideas for his family story. He had so many memeories that he wanted to write about! I explained to him that he was going to be reading his story in fron of this parents and automatically he dropped about four story ideas from his list. I am guessing that they must have been stories that were a bit fabricated! Collin had so many ideas but he kept leaning towards a memory of he and his brothers having a snowball fight on Christmas morning. I encouarged him to write about this because it seemed to be a very happy memory of his.Collin began to explain the four square concept to me because I wasn’t at all familiar with it.

The next week in class Tristin showed up about twenty minutes until time for me to leave. So I reviewed with Collin his ideas for writing his story. I then tried to get Tristin caught up by brainstorming ideas of family memories. When I met Tristin for the first time he was really excited to tell me about his cousin Timothy. So I knew automatically when he came up with an idea to write about a time that he went over to his cousin’s house to play video games, that was going to be his story topic. I was excited abou that because I think he must look up to his cousin and he seemed to be really interested in that particular day. Tristin and I began working on his four squares.

The next day in class Tristin was gone again! This really upset me because our time is so limited and I was afraid that we were not going to be able to finsh his story. Luckily, Frederick and Heather worked with Tristin that following Monday when they went in to work with their students. They actually told him that whatever he didn’t finish he had to take home for homework, and believe it or not , he brought his completed  story to class the following Thursday!

            Collin and I finished working on his four squares that day. We were a little behind and I knew that the next week was giong to be our peer editing day, so I told Collin to put his cour squares together and fisnish writing his story by next class. And thankfully , he too finished his story on time for peer editing.

I was really excited when I got to read my students finished stories! They worked really hard and I could tell that they were both proud to read them. It was such a great exoeriences knowing that I truly helped students!