Monday, February 4, 2008
What are you doing?
What are you doing with your students in writing right now? What is something you have done that was great, not so great, or downright horrible? Take some time to write and reflect upon your teaching of writing...right now!!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Making Connections...
What does your work on your Integration Experimentation make you think about in terms of your students? What does it make you wonder about them as learners? What have you discovered about yourself that gives you some insight into the minds of those you teach?
Monday, January 21, 2008
Windham Syllabus
Spring 2007
Learning Through Teaching
Tomasen M. Carey
UNH English Department
“Great things happen when the initiative is in the hands of the individual”
~Donald Graves
Class Dates and Required Assigned Reading for the next class:
Jan16th Read Chapter 6 and 7
Feb 6th Read Chapters 8 and 9Feb 20th Read Chapters 10 and 11March 12th Read Chapters 12 and 13(In Residence days....April 1st, 2nd and 3rd)
April 16th Read Chapters 14 and 15
First set of presentations
May 14th Second set of presentations
Course Requirements:
These requirements will be evaluated to determine final grades.
Regular Attendance and participation at group meetings, having all of the assigned reading completed and ready to discuss it in detail. (20%)
Weekly blog entries. (20%)
One visitation in your school of a colleague. I will ask that you post your observation on our blog. There will be a special section on the blog specifically for visitations. (10%)
One visitation out of the school in an area of interest (optional but highly recommended!) Perhaps we could make some connections to Golden Brook.
Integration Experimentation Presentation
Take your learning and use a mentor text or parts of several mentor texts to model your presentation after…using the work of Katie Wood Ray to guide you. Take time to reflect. We will share our processes on the last day of class as you guide us through your experimentation and what you learned about yourself and your new found knowledge. Each presentation needs to be limited to 10 minutes of fame! Thanks ahead of time for adhering to this! I will be bringing a timer!
Classroom Visits and Consultations:
If you ever have any questions and or concerns do not hesitate to contact me at home or via e-mail. My phone number is 772-4351 and my e-mail is tomasen@comcast.net.
Here is to a great semester together.
Tomasen M. Carey
Spring 2007
Learning Through Teaching
Tomasen M. Carey
UNH English Department
“Great things happen when the initiative is in the hands of the individual”
~Donald Graves
Class Dates and Required Assigned Reading for the next class:
Jan16th Read Chapter 6 and 7
Feb 6th Read Chapters 8 and 9Feb 20th Read Chapters 10 and 11March 12th Read Chapters 12 and 13(In Residence days....April 1st, 2nd and 3rd)
April 16th Read Chapters 14 and 15
First set of presentations
May 14th Second set of presentations
Course Requirements:
These requirements will be evaluated to determine final grades.
Regular Attendance and participation at group meetings, having all of the assigned reading completed and ready to discuss it in detail. (20%)
Weekly blog entries. (20%)
One visitation in your school of a colleague. I will ask that you post your observation on our blog. There will be a special section on the blog specifically for visitations. (10%)
One visitation out of the school in an area of interest (optional but highly recommended!) Perhaps we could make some connections to Golden Brook.
Integration Experimentation Presentation
Take your learning and use a mentor text or parts of several mentor texts to model your presentation after…using the work of Katie Wood Ray to guide you. Take time to reflect. We will share our processes on the last day of class as you guide us through your experimentation and what you learned about yourself and your new found knowledge. Each presentation needs to be limited to 10 minutes of fame! Thanks ahead of time for adhering to this! I will be bringing a timer!
Classroom Visits and Consultations:
If you ever have any questions and or concerns do not hesitate to contact me at home or via e-mail. My phone number is 772-4351 and my e-mail is tomasen@comcast.net.
Here is to a great semester together.
Tomasen M. Carey
What do YOU think?
Good Morning Bloggers! I would like to thank those of you who remembered to post your final letters and reflections and to nudge those of you who have not! Also please notice I am posting the special section for observations.
This week I would really like you to think about the work of Katie Wood Ray and write a personal response to something in the text that has "spoken" to you. Perhaps you might take a quote right from the text and write to that. What did you mark in the text? What makes the most sense to you? What does not make sense? What do you like? Dislike? The point here is not to write a summary, remembering we have all read it! The point is to write YOUR personal reactions so that we can all read and share the different ideas we have read about thus far. Here is a sample reaction from me!
I really like the list that Katie keeps about the process of writers that begins on page 103 and continues onto 104. She writes "When our students envision writers at work, then need to be able to see them doing lots more than just sitting at desks. Active development possibilities like those in the lists above need to be a big part of what our students can envision themselves doing as writers."
I wish that someone had pointed that out to me years ago! If you look at my background and my history it is somewhat overwhelming. Coming from a family of self-proclaimed writers, ( my grandfather wrote his town's history and multiple plays for the local players, My Dad, has owned and created newspapers and magazines throughout his life, my sister, worked for my Dad and started writing stories for the family when she was 10!) I was unwilling and unable to see myself as a writer!! In fact, I found the idea completely intimidating and made it my goal to be anything BUT a writer! I mean really, who could compete in world such as this? And yet, over time I found myself more and more drawn to the written word. I slowly became an avid reader and revelled in how different authors used words to convey their thoughts. And so I started thinking about how I would say different things. I began to "play" with words in my head...having no idea that I was heading down the exact path that I was eager to avoid!! Still, the image of a writer was one who was perched over their typewriters for hours and I knew that I would never have the patience for something like that. I needed to move and to play outside and to experience all that I could everywhere I went. And again, I was doing things that "writers do!" I just never knew it.
It was not until very recently that I actually was able to start calling myself a writer. It seemed simple enough as I started working on some writing that writers write. I was writing and so I tentatively called myself a writer. I do not do this still, though, in the company of my family and I think they are always surprised to hear that I am a teacher of writing. It is as though they forget and are startled back into reality every time I mention that I teach writing. I can teach writing because I write and because I write I am therefore a writer! Katie's list only confirms all of my active processes that involve so much more that actually sitting down at the keyboard. In fact, by the time I actually sit down I can write with a general flow because I have done so much thinking about it before I find myself banging out everything that I have spent so much time thinking about!
This week I would really like you to think about the work of Katie Wood Ray and write a personal response to something in the text that has "spoken" to you. Perhaps you might take a quote right from the text and write to that. What did you mark in the text? What makes the most sense to you? What does not make sense? What do you like? Dislike? The point here is not to write a summary, remembering we have all read it! The point is to write YOUR personal reactions so that we can all read and share the different ideas we have read about thus far. Here is a sample reaction from me!
I really like the list that Katie keeps about the process of writers that begins on page 103 and continues onto 104. She writes "When our students envision writers at work, then need to be able to see them doing lots more than just sitting at desks. Active development possibilities like those in the lists above need to be a big part of what our students can envision themselves doing as writers."
I wish that someone had pointed that out to me years ago! If you look at my background and my history it is somewhat overwhelming. Coming from a family of self-proclaimed writers, ( my grandfather wrote his town's history and multiple plays for the local players, My Dad, has owned and created newspapers and magazines throughout his life, my sister, worked for my Dad and started writing stories for the family when she was 10!) I was unwilling and unable to see myself as a writer!! In fact, I found the idea completely intimidating and made it my goal to be anything BUT a writer! I mean really, who could compete in world such as this? And yet, over time I found myself more and more drawn to the written word. I slowly became an avid reader and revelled in how different authors used words to convey their thoughts. And so I started thinking about how I would say different things. I began to "play" with words in my head...having no idea that I was heading down the exact path that I was eager to avoid!! Still, the image of a writer was one who was perched over their typewriters for hours and I knew that I would never have the patience for something like that. I needed to move and to play outside and to experience all that I could everywhere I went. And again, I was doing things that "writers do!" I just never knew it.
It was not until very recently that I actually was able to start calling myself a writer. It seemed simple enough as I started working on some writing that writers write. I was writing and so I tentatively called myself a writer. I do not do this still, though, in the company of my family and I think they are always surprised to hear that I am a teacher of writing. It is as though they forget and are startled back into reality every time I mention that I teach writing. I can teach writing because I write and because I write I am therefore a writer! Katie's list only confirms all of my active processes that involve so much more that actually sitting down at the keyboard. In fact, by the time I actually sit down I can write with a general flow because I have done so much thinking about it before I find myself banging out everything that I have spent so much time thinking about!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Final Letters and Reflections.....
It has been wonderful working with all of you this semester and getting to know so many new faces as well. Please cut and paste your letters here....
Sunday, November 25, 2007
The Power of Words...
THE VOICE YOU HEAR WHEN YOU READ SILENTLY
is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head; it is spoken,
a voice is saying it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her "voice" but the sound
of that voice is the sound of your voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word "barn"
that the writer wrote
but the "barn" you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally- some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled chirr of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows...
And "barn" is only a noun- no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.
~~-Thomas Lux
Read this poem several times. Read it out loud. What is your reaction to this poem. What does it make you think of? Think of it in terms of your barn, your vocabulary and what this says about the comprehension of anything. What is YOUR reaction?
is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head; it is spoken,
a voice is saying it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her "voice" but the sound
of that voice is the sound of your voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word "barn"
that the writer wrote
but the "barn" you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally- some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled chirr of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows...
And "barn" is only a noun- no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.
~~-Thomas Lux
Read this poem several times. Read it out loud. What is your reaction to this poem. What does it make you think of? Think of it in terms of your barn, your vocabulary and what this says about the comprehension of anything. What is YOUR reaction?
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Beyond Words....
There are so many layers of meanings for words, never mind when we string these words all together into sentences. It is no wonder we have communication difficulties because each word is so different for each person. What do I mean? I am talking about each person's individual schema. What do we have stored away in our minds for background knowledge and how does that dictate or mold how we come to understand a certain word or phrase. Take a word,barn, for example ...what do you do to make sense of it? Think about the word, the context, what images it stirs up for you, what it reminds you of or makes you think of. What do you see, smell, hear, touch when thinking about this word? What do you feel? Is it a pleasant feeling or not? Why? Write down your thoughts. Show us "your" barn. What does this word make you think of? How did you come to these conclusions and what strategies did you use to arrive there?
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