Entry #4- The Development of My Writing & How I can Benefit My Future Students Using Digital Literacy Resources

The more I read about reading and writing, the strategies to go with both, and the new technologies that have developed over the years, I can't help but reflect back upon my years in elementary school. It makes me think about how I was as a reader and writer when I was much younger. What types of strategies worked best for me as a reader/writer? What type of practice did I get at writing?

Tompkins' (2012) offers many suggestions for teachers to use in their classrooms to meet the needs of their developing readers and writers amongst the classroom. I love that this book offers texts for teachers to use to benefit the needs of their students. The strategies using elaboration, generating, narrowing, and organizing one's writing seemed pretty familiar to me, but they are areas that I need to build my teaching expertise. But formatting? That was not something I ever had to learn in elementary school when I was learning to be a better writer. Maybe I learned about letter format, or format for writing paragraphs for a story. Much of that gets relayed into the ways we type on a computer now, but now we have much more to think about with formatting thanks to technological advances! Tompkins mentions the importance of formatting the designs, layouts, and fonts of any publishing and compositions through technology programs.

Now that people can create powerpoints to relay and present information to others, it would be important to stress effective formatting for these types of compositions as well. While I learned how to become a better typer in high school, I also developed my skills through presentations thanks to powerpoint. Now I have enhanced and felt more confident in my skills with presenting from the time I became an undergraduate student until now. Knowing that students can learn these drafting and presentation skills at such a young age is amazing. By the time the students enter high school they should know much about the Microsoft Works programs, internet blogging, Rich Site Summary sites, and so on. 

To be an effective teacher, it will be important to implement the various current technology devices into my instruction to meet the needs of my students, introduce them to alternative methods of composition, and it will  develop their ability to organize information. In my graduate program, I feel as though I have spent a decent amount of time studying and reading about reading strategies. However, I want to further my understandings of how to reach children by building their confidence and skills in writing. I have to think about myself as a writer and what helps me to accomplish my goals best. I need to think about my topic, record my thoughts/brainstorm, make connections with what I know and need to know, and I need to understand the purpose and audience for my writing. Rereading and revising are also strategies that I must follow through with to be sure I have included the information needed to make my writing presentable and ready to be published for an audience. There will be many students I will come across as a teacher who will need extra help in some areas more than others. I want my students to be able to help one another out as well, and I think this would be possible with the use of digital literacy tools, such as blogs and wikis as well. 

The readings from this class have helped me to understand the importance of the different stages of writing. The readings have also helped me to understand the importance of incorporating digital literacy components into the classroom as well. I think I can learn a lot about the different digital literacy programs if I set goals to try out the suggestions online that my text books, professor, and peers suggest through class conversations and online forums. Using digital literacy tools has helped me to see other peers' viewpoints on similar topics and has helped to expand my thinking. I would hope I can create the same atmosphere for my future students.