Sarah Kristiansen SED 445

I have spent the last two Saturdays at education conferences, the Blended and Personalized Learning Conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center and the Rhode Island Writing Project Spring Conference at Roger Williams University. Blended Learning Conference The BPLC was huge. Walking into the registration area, surrounded by the vendors who had set up in the hallway, showing the new technologies to make teaching and learning more streamlined and effective, it felt more like a tech conference than a teaching conference! I went to five breakout sessions and sat through an inspiring keynote address at lunch. I learned about personalized learning, about project-based learning, tools to gather data. But for me, the most rewarding session was the first one I attended that day. Hosted by LeeAndra Kahn, it was called "Infusing Equity and Cultural Relevance in our Learning Environments." She told us to "lean into the discomfort" that inevitably comes with convers...

I'm not sure how many of my classmates still read my blog posts...I know I am SERIOUSLY long-winded. :) I was so excited to read the 6+1 Trait writing piece. We have spent so much time talking about how formulaic writing is the least effective strategy for teaching writing, which I will freely admit came as a surprise to me. For me, the problem with getting rid of the formula is that it left no guidelines at all for writing, no way to create a framework for students who are just learning to write. It just felt like setting them to the task of writing without a clear path seems like it would be a herculean task and one that would not inspire a love of writing in students. THEN I read this article. This is the not-formula formula that I have been looking for. These traits seem to be the traits that exist in all great writing, no matter the genre, and they act as rough boundaries instead of an unyielding formula. That's a win. The other part about these traits that I like ...

1. Michelle Kenney’s article “The Politics of the Paragraph” discusses the problems with teaching the five-paragraph essay. She disputes one common thought on formulaic writing, that writing formulas are like training wheels, and you need to “know the rules in order to break them.” In your own experience in high school, did you learn the five-paragraph formula or other formulaic writing? Did you find that it helped you become a better writer? If you were taught formulaic writing in school, did you have any issues when you started writing on the college level? Or did you find that formulaic writing helped prepared you for college writing?   I absolutely learned to write with a formula. I can remember learning the 5-paragraph essay format in high school, and once I understood how to formulate that kind of essay, I applied it across the board to other essays, longer papers, all writing assignments. I found the formula to be an easy way to write an expository essay. When I got to co...

When this class started, I mistakenly referred to Kelly Gallagher as "she." Every time I reference a new text since then, I read a little about the author, to make sure I'm using not only the correct pronoun, but I also want to know a little about the author. It's like reading the labels on food in the grocery store. I noted that Danling Fu learned how to write in English when she was in grad school, and as such has an important perspective as an English Language Learner, what works and doesn't. Gives me confidence that what I'm reading is important and accurate. Something that pops up early and often in this book is the idea of identifying students' home cultures as an asset instead of a deficiency. When she refers to her students as "funds of knowledge" it reminds me of literacy practices and Emdin's co-teaching article, which references students as experts. I think it's critical to recognize the importance of a student's first-...

looking forward to the class twitter feed! This article really hit me in the gut. https://t.co/2aI9VtjFTT #meaningfulwriters — Sarah Kristiansen (@skristiansen) January 22, 2017 When I started reading Michelle Kenney's article, "The Politics of the Paragraph," I knew I had read it before. A quick scan of my twitter feed and I found that I had read it just after this class had begun, and felt the need to share it. I noted that it "hit me in the gut" because the notion that formulaic writing was NOT the most effective way to teach students how to write was an absolute shock. I really thought that teaching my 13-year old how to master the five paragraph essay was going to be the secret to helping him become a better writer. Shows how much I knew! I have always thought, as Kenney touches on, that formulaic writing acted like training wheels for writers. But I am finally starting to understand that those kinds of restrictions and strict adherence to a form...

I am really glad to see an entire week of assignments dedicated to personalized learning. I feel like personalized learning is coming at me from many different directions--it started with a Socratic  seminar in my SED 406 class last semester (when Kelli-Lynne and I had to research and play the role of Don Halquist, remember, Kelli?), I attended the EdCamp professional development earlier in the semester and this was a major topic that was discussed, I have a dear friend who works for the Highlander Institute who is a major supporter of personalized learning, and another good friend is a high school teacher in Barrington and will be presenting at the Blended Learning Conference in April. Needless to say, this is not the first time I'm hearing about personalized learning. NETFLIXING HUMAN CAPITAL I tackled the Roberts-Mahoney piece first, and it might be the first time I've read something describing the detriments of big data. And maybe she doesn't directly say that data ...