After listening to this week's PowerPoint I have learned that I do not need to grade every piece of writing that my students will submit. I already had this in mind because I don't believe in overworking students to the point that they will hate writing. It was nice to have my thoughts verified. As an English and History (soon to be) teacher, it is so important for students to learn to write their thoughts down. I really don't believe in grading everything. I did have a teacher who did that to me and I hated it. I almost got to the point where I hated to write at all. I want students to feel comfortable with their writing, learn what style fits them best and expand on it; become the best they can be in that form.
Another point that I really enjoyed was that I need to model my work, not my finished work but my first draft to show my students that I'm not perfect. I want them to know that everybody makes mistakes and it takes time to get the "perfect" essay (I have never had one though!). A lot of the things discussed in the PP are things that I have heard about and had already decided to try in my own classroom. I know how important it is to have a rubric as a guideline, that my students will know what I am looking for. I never want them to guess what I'm thinking. One point that I never would have even considered was having a formal audience. I really like the thought of having parents come in a watch their students perform something like Poetry Outloud. How wonderful would that be to have someone come and watch you.
My last thought is a big one to me. Have focused and interesting writing prompts for my students. Wow. I kinda wished I had interesting things to write about when I was in high school. Um if memory serves correctly I wrote about themes and ideas in Shakespeare (to a 15 year old, boring), and themes or overall ideas in poetry (again boring!). I really don't remember any interesting writing prompts and the ones that I do were not good. I don't want to be that teacher that is intolerable and students dread coming to my class. So for me I need to remember to model my own work, praise the work of my students, provide a rubric, and have an additional audience for the students.