A Bit of Anything

First off…news.


I officially passed the GACE exam in Middle Grade Language Arts and English. I am now qualified to teach both Middle School Language Arts and High School English.


Additionally, my microdiscectomy for the lumbar (L5-S1) herniated disc went well and I am stuck at home recovering.


Well, not “stuck” since I’ve been playing Skyrim like a maniac while I’m home bound for two weeks. Level 32…yay!


And now on to the main topic.

World-Shaker blogged about Instructional Blogging which I thought was a really cool idea. I read the article, and as I’m prone to do on the Internet, clicked through some links to even more information as things caught my eye.


In the eight grade I had a teacher require everyone to get a Composition Book and keep a reading journal. Every Friday we turned it in. We had to cover an entire page with our reactions to what we were reading. NOT a summary mind you, but reactions…what the writings made us think, how it made us feel, etc. She gave it back on Monday and would have commented back to us.

I thought it was a really cool assignment. We worked on it all year. There were no restrictions on the books we could chose to read, other than common sense guidelines. We had to choose books at at least a Middle School grade level (no children’s books with a sentence per page) and we had to read a total of 10 books over the year with a minimum of 2000 pages read.

In reading the article about Blogging and teaching, I couldn’t help but to remember my reading journal. What a cool way to update the same idea. When I begin teaching I want each student to create an online blog for their reading journal. They will post once per week and I will respond to their posts. They will also be expected to respond to their classmates posts. To help prevent friends from only commenting on their own friends posts they will have to pick a new person to comment on every week, or something like that.


By using Tumblr they will be able to accent their posts with images. By commenting and sharing what they write with the class they will develop communication skills and a sense of community with in the classroom. They will be able to share ideas and books they like with one another. They will build their writing skills.


I’m really getting excited about being a teacher!