Tompkins, Chapter 3

As a future teacher I have always been concern with teaching reading and writing. I have been taught some basics, but I always felt that it was never enough to engage students in reading and writing. This chapter I feel is a chapter I will return to several times in the future. It provides relief to teaching such topics. There are several helpful facts as well as instructional practices.

I enjoyed the information provided in this chapter about writing centers. The writing center described in this chapter is not something that I have experienced nor seen. I feel that it is such a neat idea. This center to me is a place that students would be able to visit and escape from all the rest of the class. They would be able to focus on their writing and create work that would be important to them. Tompkins describes a writing center as a place separate from everything else; it is a table off to the side of the room. She explains that a box of supplies should be included in the writing center. This box contains: pencils, crayons, a date stamp, different kinds of paper, journal notebooks, etc. All of these supplies are what students can choose from to create their own writing. Also in the writing center Tompkins suggests that an alphabet should be posted for all students to see. She not only describes what the center should include, but what should be done in the writing center. Students can write letters to each other, create new versions to their favorite stories, and create stories using similar patterns in the books they have just read. My CT I feel would really benefit from this because she does a lot of writing with her second graders and I feel a place for some to retreat to finish work on their writings would really help them.

The other thing that caught my eye while reading this chapter was the interactive writing. I had never done anything like this, nor have I observed it. I found that interactive writing is a great way to review high-frequency words as well as class creations of story problems, or stories. In interactive writing Tompkins explains that students and the teacher create a text together, "share a pen". Now depending on the age level students either write word by word, or letter by letter. The neat thing about writing letter by letter is the whole class is involved in a spelling activity and reviewing of drawing letters. Then if a student does not spell something, or write something correctly then the teacher steps in a places correction tape over it. Tompkins emphasizes that while correcting students' work in front of the class they need to remind students that using conventional spelling as a courtesy to readers, not because the student was wrong. This is extremely important because there will be students reluctant to participate and this will ease their mind.

This chapter will assist a teacher in all grade levels with engaging their students in literacy, they will make literacy fun.