Blog 8: "To Bless, to Address, and To Press"

Hicks (2013) speaks about the importance of students using "Bless, Address, and Press" to provide feedback to their classmates. Over the past week, I have spent some time looking at my peers' blogs to notice if any of them stood out to me. During each week, I usually look at my peers' blogs to determine which ideas from Tompkins the students addressed in greater detail. I believe that giving feedback to our peers is essential especially since we are going to be providing feedback towards our own student's work one day in the classroom. I realized that Catherine's blog #6 stood out to me the most because she spoke about the instructional strategies she was going to use in the classroom. Relating to the index card activity, I realized that most students including Catherine wrote about how they enjoy completing the genre piece project because it is engaging and meaningful to them.

Bless: I want to take the time to praise Catherine on deciding which strategies she wants to consider to teach in the classroom to help her students reach success in both reading and writing. Catherine offers some great ideas on how she might incorporate this activity while she introduces writing to her students. I noticed that she spoke about the index card activity that Dr. Jones introduced to us. I also loved the idea of using the index cards during the pre-writing stage for our genre project. She spoke about how she enjoyed this activity because as a writer she tends to skip the first stage and does not think about organizing her information with the topic she choose before she drafts her pieces. However, this activity allowed her to organize her ideas in a way that she could determine which words she wanted to use within her three pieces and which words were not necessarily important. For myself as a writer, I have realized that I have been just brainstorming ideas and then move on to drafting my piece, without even thinking about the pre-writing stage. I will now consider to use the pre-writing stage as a way for me to organize my important information.  Therefore, I will definitely keep this strategy in mind to teach my students that the first stage helps steer you in the right direction.

 Address: I loved reading Catherine's blog! However, I have a few questions that I would ask Catherine including what grade level do you think you could start this activity with? In what ways would this activity support students writing? Furthermore, I would like to know if she would use this activity only in reading or writing or do you think a teacher could apply this activity in other curriculum areas? Lastly, I am wondering which genres she decided to choose for the genre piece project since she loves to be creative in her own work.   

Press: While I was reading her blog, it seems like Catherine and I had similar writing experiences throughout our student teaching as well as observation placements. For instance, while being in high school, we both never really had the opportunity to write three pieces relating to one topic. Instead, our teachers asked us to concentrate on one long writing piece using the topic we chose. I believe creating three pieces for one topic through different genres assists you to become a stronger writer. Also, it enables you to become more familiar with a variety of genres that students are introduced to during reading or writing instruction. In addition, I am able to take on different perspectives for this assignment through multiple points of view. 

Furthermore, I appreciate how Catherine explained in her blog that being creative and curious are two important habits of mind. I could not agree more with her, I also think that being creative and open-minded while writing these three different genre pieces is significant. Moreover, we both wrote in our blogs to Dr. Jones that creating interactive and fun activities in the classroom allows the students to sustain interest in their work. 

I believe it is challenging to provide feedback and think critically of what our peers wrote in their different blogs. At this moment, I am still developing as a writer and practicing giving constructive feedback towards my peers. Honestly, I believe it is important to apply this skill, because sometimes students do not even think about celebrating other students writing and giving them positive feedback that they became successful in. Before reading the chapter from Hicks I have never heard of this phrase before. In additionally, it encourages me to think outside the box and gain insight from my classmates. 

I am glad that I get this opportunity to reflect on one of my peers blogs during this semester as well as to notice how my blogs are similar or different from my classmates.  

I am excited to write a creative poem filled with lots of figurative language, a persuasive essay, (speaking about the advantages and dangers to swimming), as well as writing a descriptive piece while including the five senses, dialogue as well as word choice. Also, I had a great experience writing poetry and descriptive pieces while being in undergraduate school here at Nazareth. I believe it is very engaging and interactive for me.

While creating these three different genre pieces, I will highly consider using (Tompkins, 2019) 6+1 traits while I brainstorm, pre-write, revise, edit before I publish my one large piece of writing. The 6 +1 traits that I will focus on includes "organization, ideas, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, as well as conventions" (Tompkins, p. 70). It is important for me to use these different traits while I am writing because it gives me the opportunity to determine my own strengths and weaknesses.  Tompkin states, "Writers need to know how to organize their writing and learn ways to make their structure clear and logical for readers" (Tompkins, p. 73). I think this quote is empowering because in order for me to prove an argument, I need to make sure to see if my sentences flow nicely in an organized way. Also, I do not want to distract my audience to the point where I could lose them. 


Therefore, I believe that teachers should introduce a genre piece project to students during writing instruction as a way to become more familiar with the different genres they are reading. Also, students can practice writing one-word phrases relating to their topic on index cards while thinking about a purpose and an audience in mind. As a future teacher, I will give my students an opportunity to create a long writing composition on a specific topic that is intriguing to them. Lastly, this project would support students understanding of multiple genres.

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann. 

                           Blog #7 Descriptive Writing

Throughout my undergraduate and graduate courses, I have learned about multiple genres that are important to teach to students in a classroom. While researching for my upcoming genre presentation, I gained insight in knowing more about descriptive writing. In the article Improving Student's Achievement text through think, pair and share, this author explained that descriptive writing vividly paints a picture in a student's mind. It portrays a person, place or thing in such a way that the reader can visualize the topic and enter into the writer's experiences. In addition, interacting with others about their visualizations and personal experiences allows students to discover and share what is meaningful to them in the text. Through writing, the article explained that students were able to express their own feelings, and thoughts during a pair share activity.  However, a descriptive text is a piece of writing that is intended to convey meaning to the reader. It stimulates the five senses and provides an image for the readers. Giving students to visualize as they read gives them confidence; it helps them learn to think as they write.

In the article, Descriptive Writing from Tompkins (2012) edition, he states that the five techniques that students should keep in mind while writing a descriptive piece includes "adding specific information (identfiying examples), choosing words carefully (enriched vocabulary, using abstract nouns, and vivid verbs), creating sensory images (sight, taste, hear, touch, and smell), using figurative language (smilies, metaphors, imagery) as well as to writing dialogue (correct punctuation, writers SHOW, not tell)" (Tompkins, p. 146).

Furthermore, "students were asked to gather descriptive words or phrases during pre-writing and use them as a resource while writing their rough drafts"(Tompkins, p.145). This would allow classmates and teachers to give feedback on their writing. Also, teachers may teach mini-lessons about the different writing techniques used for descriptive writing that would support students understanding of what the descriptive genre consists of. For example, the teacher would choose appropriate mentor texts for students and then explain why she decided to use this book to help their learning. Furthermore, in the article, it states that this activity the teacher introduced can be applied in partners, small group or as a whole class.

Also, I learned from reading this article were some instructional procedures that the teacher attempted to assist students with improving their writing. For instance, "the teachers distributed objects to students and in a sentence the students would identify what the object is and explain it to a partner" (Tompkins, p. 144). If the descriptions the teacher taught were not meaningful or useful for the students, then she would be flexible in her instruction and add more sensory words, craft images as well as to teach more vocabulary to help them gain more knowledge of what they were learning.

In the article, the teacher demonstrated two activities that she would teach and model in front of her class. One activity that the teachers completed with their students was "making clusters and building sentences while using the five senses" (Tompkins, p. 145). The teacher would choose a big topic to discuss and the students would describe the object in short phrases to understand the topic they are learning. I would incorporate making clusters in my future classroom during writing instruction because it supports students to understand what an object consists of. I believe that my students would be engaged and excited to try this activity. The students would have the opportunity to use the five senses and be creative in their work. Meanwhile, this allows the students to take ownership and responsibility of their own learning.

In elementary school, I have always been asked to create either a visual map or graphic organizer in order to describe an object or character from a text during writing instruction. I remember when I read a text, "Owl Moon" I had the opportunity to choose a character or object to speak about and describe it while using the five senses. I enjoyed this activity that my teachers introduced me to because I was able to become creative in my own work and think of great descriptive words to use. This mentor text was great because the author included most of the senses in the book that I could use in my web.

Lastly, the article spoke about how a teacher can assess a student's writing. "It states that teachers can observe and conference with students to make sure they are on the right track with their writing" (Tompkins, p. 152-53). In addition, teachers can look at students use of information, including sensory images, figurative language, as well as the dialogue.

Therefore, I am excited to teach this descriptive writing genre in my future classroom while using the strategies that I learned in the articles I read. I hope to gain more insight with using the descriptive writing in my graduate classes this semester as well.

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Tompkins, G. E.  (2012).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (6^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Siburian, T. A. (2013). Improving student's achievement on writing descriptive text through think pair share. 3(30), 43rd ser., 30-43. Retrieved June/July, 2013.