Chp. 4- Raise Your Expectations

After reading this chapter, here are a few of my thoughts:

1. I agree with Regie when she says that no matter the students' background it is so important to expect excellence.

2. It is so important to remind the students who their audience will be for each of their writing projects. This is so easy, but yet I am guilty of not always discussing this.

3. Our students need to be writing every day in order to get better and to gain confidence! My students can't wait to write and/or share their writing every day.

4. Handwriting matters! We have this discussion a lot in my classroom. I tell my students that so many times it is their writing that introduces them to someone they don't know, so they need to make a good first impression. I have one student that use to even write his name sloppy. I finally told him that I wouldn't accept his papers any longer like that and that he needed to take pride in his name. It still isn't perfect, but it sure is better. I think I'll use Regie's take on neatness in my classroom, "Sloppy handwriting is disrespectful to the reader." p.67

5. I also agree with Regie on including more shared experiences. We recently received an EET(Expanding Expressions Tool) tool to use for writing. Our speech teacher came in and did shared writing with my class, then I did one with them. I was so proud of their work and wanted to use the tool more, so I turned them loose after two shared writing experiences. Once I read their stories, I could tell that they weren't quite ready to attempt this on their own because their writing looked so differently than what I had witnessed from our previous shared writing session. So I know now that we must do a couple more shared writing lessons with the EET in order for them to have a successful piece of writing.

6. Another key point that I agree with Regie on is to be sure to respect the writer. (I feel this is true at all times in order to build a relationship with our students.) This goes hand-in-hand with starting out with a positive comment. It is so true that if we hear a negative comment first, we basically want to shut down. Our students are no different.

7. "What might help this writer?" is something that I ask myself as I'm conferencing with a student or writing a comment on his/her scoring card.

I also enjoyed seeing the different samples and reading about Gail Westbrook and her expectations of her students. I especially liked the charts/tables on p. 58. I can see those being useful even in 3rd grade.