I really loved the final presentation, it is always great to see and hear Professor Spradlin :). I like the way that she summarized our whole semester. What I learned this semester is that there is still a LOT more that I can learn. I learned that worksheets were of no help to me in my education and I want to make sure I do not make the same mistake with my students. I really enjoyed all the videos that we had to watch this semester, they were all very interesting and educational. Mechanically Inclined was great and I realized that, that is a book I want to keep for my future classroom. I found the examples great and the first voice narration to be refreshing. I do not really feel like there was anything that we missed that I wanted to learn. I do miss the fact that we were not in class, and did not get the personal help and communication with Professor Spradlin which I love. I wish there would have been more hands-on activities, but obviously it is hard being an online class. I feel like everything worked and this class really was great. As someone already mentioned, I was not very fond of using Tumblr for classroom purposes. I loved coming on and seeing everything you guys have posted, even the things that were not class related; but, I hated when I wanted to come on to real the responses and see the assignments and I had to keep scrolling down and down. It was just a hassle when I was limited on time and just wanted to read the things intended for the class. Overall, I loved the class and there is really no complaining to be done. I guess what could make it better is doing it exactly how it was done but possibly meeting up, maybe once a week? Anyways, this is our last week and last response. You guys have a great summer break and enjoy your vacations! :D.
After realizing that a good number of you had heard about School House Rock, I have to say I am disappointed. I cannot believe that I have lived this long without having heard of it until this semester! When I first listened to Conjunction Junction I was drawn in, and thought it was catchy and brilliant. I really thought we had heard that song a few weeks back, but after reading the responses from a few of you, I think I may be wrong. However, I did hear it for this class I am not sure why and I think it is amazing. And then we had to watch the Subordinate Conjunction about two or three weeks ago and I instantly realized I wanted to incorporate Educational music into my classroom! I was just wondering, for those of you who have heard these songs before did they help you? The three School House Rock videos this week were great. I did not find “Busy Prepositions” to be very catchy and the singing was not that great, but the point comes across and the video is super cute, like all the other House Rock ones. The adverbs and adjectives were both much better; however, I loved the “Unpack Your Adjectives” the best. I really love them because they are not only catchy and give you words to remember which are adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions etc, but they also create them and provide examples. So, for someone who really likes these songs and learn them, it can truly be beneficial. Something I would also love to do with my students is have them create educational songs as well, or maybe grab a song like “Busy Prepositions” and try to make it better. I really enjoyed the preposition poetry activity and the handout with the preposition words is also great. My preposition poem that I picked is “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” by Walt Whitman. The Modifiers Presentation was great, and the lady at the bottom always made me smile and caught my attention; which I feel would be great for students as well. The Grammar Girl Podcast I did this week is “Readers Share Their Funny Errors”. I wanted to read something new and this was it. It was very funny to see the errors/typos that people have made and makes one realize not only that everyone makes mistakes, but that “spell check is not always your friend” and that is something that I feel needs to be emphasized to our students. Yes, a lot of times spell check can make people’s lives easier, just like the online citation machine that exists, but many times it can also just make you look like an idiot. I know I have had it happen before. And, we need to make sure that we know what we are saying/spelling and also look over it before turning it in; which not all of us do (neither do I, guilty as charged!)
I enjoyed the School House Rock videos. Conjunction Junction is my favorite but we did not see that one. Watching Busy Prepositions prior to engaging students in a preposition poem lesson may help to get them thinking about the ways in which the words are used. I know I was trying to think of…
The School House Rock videos were my favorite this week. Everyone seems to like the Conjunction Junction one, which I agree is totally awesome; I fell in love with it when we had to hear/watch it a few weeks ago in this class. However, I have go to admit that I think I may be liking “Unpack your adjectives” better. The SlideRocket modifier was pretty awesome, and I really liked the mini quizzes that it has. I also agree with you about the importance of the modifiers, and I agree that this presentation explains it really well. I would also want to use this in a future classroom. Taking this class is driving me nuts because there are so many things I want to keep for the future!!! What should I do? I know if I write it down somewhere, I will probably lose it or misplace it..I see that the Grammar Girl Post you picked is pretty popular this week. I have not read it yet, but I am interested in taking a look at it now, especially since I have also been answering the phone incorrectly! However, I really do love Grammar Girl and it is one of the resources I would use in a future classroom, but I feel like that one is much easier to remember than all of these other wonderful sources that we have been exposed to.
Yay School House Rock! I remember watching these as a kid and singing along to them all. I even found myself still singing along a little bit now. It is hard for me to say which one would be my favorite because as a kid I loved them all, and they all helped me in their own ways. I loved…
You are so lucky to know School House Rock! It is amazing and definitely something I would use in a future classroom of mine! I never heard any of these songs as a kid, so you can understand why I am so excited about this! Also, Conjunction Junction is pretty awesome, we had to watch it a few weeks ago in this class; and ever since then I have been loving educational songs. I feel like music is something enjoyed by most, if not all, people so I can see myself finding songs to integrate into my lessons. I was wondering, since you had heard these songs in the past, and I am seriously considering using music, did they ever help you? Were you able to actually remember what the songs were saying for tests, homeworks, or while writing?
The Grammar Girl podcast that I chose this week was “Commas with Participial Phrases.” Quite honestly, I picked it because I felt like I needed a little reminder as to what a participial phrase is, but the tips expressed about restrictive and non-restrictive clauses were something that were…
I really like how you stated that,”Knowing how to apply these concepts on my own is great, but that’s only half the battle - the other half is knowing how to define them and explain them to students in a way they’ll be able to grasp” because it is something I feel this class has been reminding me a weekly basis. I am still feeling a bit overwhelmed wondering how I will be able to define/explain these concepts in the way that my students will understand. I have had teachers in the past, mainly science or math, who were absolutely brilliant but could not clearly explain/teach, and it was obvious they knew the material and what they were talking about, but things don’t always come out the way we imagine them. I just hope I will be able to come across crystal clear with my students.
At first glance, the Prezi, “Sentence Combining,” didn’t seem like it would be very engaging for students. I thought that it was be just as effective as a PowerPoint. My opinion changed once I arrived at the practice examples though. I think the examples that were provided were really useful to…
-After reading what you said about the Grammar Girl Podcast that you read it seemed very interesting, definitely more than the one that I read this week. It will be something I will be looking into :), especially since I consider myself pretty “liberal” with the word “that” as well. I like the point you made about the video “Development of African American English in ‘Springville’” when you said that it seems like the States which have not advanced much since the times of slavery, haven’t changed their speech either. That was not something I had thought of, and after I saw that comment, I realized that there is some truth to that. In regards to your last point on the video about how African American vernacular English and white speech have developed independently; but, why do you think that is? I just feel like it is so ironic that the video points out that when whites wanted to speak the most different from African Americans, it is when they spoke the most similar. So, how about now, when we are fighting for equality, why is it the speech has become so different?
So, I would like to answer questions that my peers ask on my response but do not know how to do it. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me how :). Thank you!
I had a bit of a harder time this week locating the videos because, maybe it is just me but, they were not on Blackboard and I had never gone on Tumblr to watch them before. I finally realized that it says that the videos are on both blackboard and Tumblr, so that is when I was finally able to find them. The sentence combining was awesome, as always, and it is something I would love to keep for a future classroom. I love the simplicity of the explanation and the examples provided. The video “African American English in Springville” was very interesting to watch. The thing that caught my attention the most about this video was when it talked about how when slavery was there in Texas, all the white people wanted to speak as different as humanly possible from the African Americans, but ironically enough they spoke even more similar than they do now. I really enjoyed when they showed some pictures of some slaves from Texas in the 1940s, as well as the recordings. I really thought it was interesting when the guy pointed out that many African Americans still living there could possibly be some of these people’s children or grandchildren. I really liked the coordinating comma splice video explanation, but I am going to be honest, I was a bit confused about the nominal clause one. I did not and still do not understand what the point of it was. So maybe someone could explain it to me? The Grammar Girl that I read was titled: “Bad Grammar: Good Fiction” this has probably been my least favorite grammar girl, I am not sure why, maybe because I feel like it wasn’t really teaching you as much as some of the other ones I have read. I would have to say that my favorite quote from this article was “I’d go so far as to say that correct grammar might even keep aspiring writers from publishing their work, and that correct grammar in the wrong place might diminish the reading experience.” I guess it is probably because it reminds me of the ongoing conversation/question we have about the importance of grammar. My favorite part about “Mechanically Inclined” this week was when it talked about adjectives and adverb: The Modifier Within. I always enjoy this textbook because I love the examples Anderson provides as well as activity ideas, like the construction paper one with the strings of adjectives.
Web English Teacher
http://www.glogster.com/dani0119/grammar-awareness/g-6lcsncgufomot1dsqgk5ma0
