Anyone can follow a course on P2PU. Participating is the next level of engagement. The sign-up is a space where interested individuals can express their interest and background in the topic and commit to working with the rest of the participants. Please answer the following set(s) of questions if you want to become a participant or organizer.
Standard Set
This set of signup questions is common to all study groups, courses, ... in P2PU. The answers to these questions will be public once you get accepted.
- What made you interested in this topic?
- What do you hope to achieve by participating?
- Are you interested in helping with the course organization?
Public Custom Set
This set of signup questions is particular to this course. The answers to these questions will be public once you get accepted.
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When and where are you writing with students?
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What's one aim you have for your time in this course? Do you have the necessary time to accomplish that aim over the next six weeks while supporting and exploring course topics with others?
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In two sentences or less, what's the last book that you read that you liked?
Between Participants Custom Set
This set of signup questions is particular to this course. The answers to these questions will be visible to all participants once you get accepted.
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What do you teach (grade and subject), at what school, and what is your email address?
Answers
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Bio:
I am an extremely shy ailurophile who loves Charles Dickens, Alan Moore, dystopic visions and the macabre.
Location: Oregon
Standard Set Answer:
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I have always enjoyed writing but am quickly learning that a passion for an activity does not equate to teaching skill.
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Any tips on ways to encourage and augment writing in the classsroom will be wonderful.
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I am not interested in helping with the course organization.
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I am writing with my students, both language arts and social studies, as a way to explore topics, bring voice to the past and to assess and gauge understanding.
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I would like to gain new strategies for incorporating writing into the classroom and ways to make the activity more engaging and authentic. I do have the necessary time to accomplish this goal.
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The last book I read and enjoyed was Sanctuary by William Faulkner.
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Bio:
I teach sixth grade and I am part of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project
Location: Leeds, Massachusetts
Standard Set Answer:
Our state and school district now has new curriculum standards, and our district is moving towards an online Curriculum Map (Atlas), and I want to be thinking more about how to make changes that reflect the shift while still maintaining a vibrant ELA program.
I write with my students just about every day. We do daily writing and larger projects.
My aim is to further get a handle on the Common Core, particularly as it relates to my state of Massachusetts.
The last book that I read was A Dance with Dragons, part of the Songs of Fire and Ice series, and it was a mammoth tome that I could not put down because of the character development and the imagined world in which the story unfolds. Yeah.
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Bio:
Passionate about teaching and learning. In education industry for 10 years as a teacher, coach and administrator. Still learning.... definitely want to learn how to write well:)
Location: Dallas, TX
Standard Set Answer:
English is a second language for me. I want to learn more on how to teach English to non-english speakers and make students proficient in the language.
As a fourth grade teacher, had to teach writing skills for state standardized test. Want to learn more and sharpen my writing skills. I am ready to spend the time necessary to accomplish the goals for this course. Last book that inspired me was 'Good to Great' .
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Bio:
Fresno Pacific University
Location: Fresno, CA
Standard Set Answer:
Want to help teachers improve.
Learn more
Course organization is my forte.
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Bio:
I'm a corporate educator currently on sabbatical.and going back to work in the fall
Location: Toronto Ontario Canada
Standard Set Answer:
I'm constantly looking for ways to improve and strengthen my writing skills
participation - awareness of my skills, meet new people, additional resources
help with course organization - yes
Blogs
To learn and get more practice on how to learn to learn through writing
One I'm reading now is The Creative Entrepreneur by Lisa Sonora Beam.
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Bio:
I am a 4th grade teacher of Students with Disabilities in a Title I school in NYC. I have been married for two years to my college sweetheart. I love hockey and baseball. I enjoy reading. I am very organized and always looking to learn something new.
Location: Staten Island, NY
Standard Set Answer:
One of my professional goals this school year is to improve my writing instruction, with a focus on the new CCSS. My students are varying in their abilities as well as their disabilities. I am also part of a new Instructional Support Team at my school and would love to turn-key the knowledge that I learn here in order to deepen the instructional practices at my school. My students stuggle at writing and I would love to find ways to further their development.
At my school, there is a set writing block when process writing is conducted. There are other opportunities when we write in the content areas as well. One aim I have for my time in this course is to further develop my professional understanding of writing therefore providing my students with the necessary tools to improve their writing. I certainly have the time to dedicate to this class and will make a point of sharing, supporting and exploring this topic with others. The last book that I read that I enjoyed is entitled, The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins. This book described a murder that occured in the 1800s and the techniques of both the investigators and the tabloids in finding the killer.
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Bio:
I teach 6th grade Language Arts in Waukee, Iowa. My goals as a teacher are to help students realize and reaffirm their love of reading and writing.
Location: Waukee, Iowa
Standard Set Answer:
As a 6th grade Language Arts PLC, we are working on implementing the Common Core State Standards for Reading and Writing. As a sixth grade we have moved to standards-based reporting this year which focuses us deeply on the CCSS.
I'm also interested in this topic because I have always been impressed with Bud Hunt's work. He continually pushes my thinking and I'm looking forward to learning with him in this more formal setting.
I hope to gain a better understanding of the CCSS themselves as well as their role in my classroom. I'm also looking to learn how I can bring other content areas into my classroom.
I'm interested in hearing more about what is meant by "helping with the course organization." I'm happy to help however I'm useful.
We have daily focused writing time, usually between 10 and 20 minutes long, never shorter, rarely longer. I write alongside my students then, although that's also my primary conferring time. I have also challenged myself to write a blog post every school day this year. They're essentially short letters to my students where I reflect on a topic pertinent to our class. I want to model "being a writer" for my students.
As this course (seems to) hit very closely to what our PLC is currently working on, I will make time for the coursework. I'm excited. I haven't been excited for "school" in a long time.
I read Tuck Everlasting as the school year began. I love "almost-realistic fiction."
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Bio:
I am a high school English Educator. I have worked for my school district for almost twelve years and am beginning year four in the classroom.
I am also the proud mother of two wonderful teenagers and the wife of an adoring husband.
Location: New York State
Standard Set Answer:
I am interested in this topic because I want to make writing meaningful for my students and begin to incorporate the foundational pieces of using the Common Core Standards. I have been watching the Common Core Standards informational videos available through www.engageny.org and feel that any learning I can do to enrich my own understanding of the standards will benefit my students.
I hope to achieve a level of understanding of the standards and how best to implement pieces with my students.
I am willing to help in any way that I can.
I am writing with my students on a regular basis in class. My goal is to expand the amount of time spent on writing and the quality of writing for students this year. I have a personal rule that everything I ask the students to write, I write also.
One of my aims is to learn from other participants and walk away from the course with lesson ideas that I can implement in my classroom to assist my students in becoming proficient writers.
The last book I read that I liked was LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by Susan Beth Pfeffer. I plan on having students use this book as part of literature circles this semester.
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Bio:
Location: NC
Standard Set Answer:
I am interested in Common Core because I am responsible for curriculum at my school, and I would like to facilitate a smooth transition to Common Core. This forum will be a way to supplement my understanding while I navigate NCDPI's statewide training module. I would like to provide resources for teachers that are valuable and translate into the classroom.
I hope to achieve the knowledge necessary to incorporate Common Core into Instructional coaching this year as a way to ease transition for teachers. I also hope to continue the implementation of writing across curriculum at our site.
I may be able to assist with course organization - not sure what is required.
While I am out of the classroom as a teacher this year, I am in classrooms daily as an instructional coach. I am writing with students daily while conducting demo lessons in their classrooms.
I hope to gain a clear understanding of the impact that writing has in the CC. I have presented workshops in writing and writing across the curriculum internationally, so I am interested in the impact this will have on my own practices and those with whom I collaborate. I have the time to partcipate as I will be guiding others in my district toward writing in the CC.
I just finished To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension by Ellin Keene as she explores beyond teaching comprehension strategies to what a "real" reader does to comprehend. I enjoyed Keene's humor, her challenge to my current thinking, and style of writing that probe me to think deeper as both a reader and writer.
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Bio:
what up?!
Location:
Standard Set Answer:
1) I am a public school teacher and, naturally, want to learn as much as I can in terms of preparing myself with all necessary teaching strategies and knowledge to teach my students better and more effectively.
2) I hope to achieve my knowledge about the teaching profession, the passion needed to sustain personal interest in a line of work that may seem difficult and low-paying at times. I hope to get to "meet" new people that I can learn from. I hope to learn...
3) Yes, I'd be interested in helping with the course organization, of course, once I get the hang of what needs to be done and how I can best do it. I have some knowledge (from my own graduate studies) in Indigenous systems of knowledge, philosopy, and pedagogy and, if I can lead some course organization with some special focus on how alternative pedagogical practices might help to improve the teaching profession, then I would be too happy to do it.
1) I am always teaching students to write in classroom everyday. I teach grammar, sentence structure, and writing. Writing in many genres and teaching students the skills to write for different purposes is vital in what I do in the classroom. I especially like sections on critical thinking and developing lesson plans on how to develop and use critical thinking.
2) One aim for my time in this course: I will make the time. Cohort types of adult student learning are the best, I think, because they rely on the uncertain and surprising areas of adults' prior knowledges they bring to the group and the discussions and explorations and directions these make take us. These are great types of opportunities to engage with adult learners who are open to learning and who engage each other. So, I WILL MAKE THE TIME.
3) I've just re-read one of my professor's book titled, "Deforming American Political Thought: Ethnicity, Facticity, and Genre" (Univ of Kentucky Press, 2006) which explores different genres of materials on which have been inscribed alternative social imaginaries of American political life, history, and sociopolitical imagination and how these social imaginaries compete with conventional, and thus more familiar, political imaginations. Going through the library a few days ago, I bought Mark Danner's book "Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War" (Nation Books, 2009) which explores the darker side of terrorism and war, and the deep, sustained violence of terrorism & war that strip bare societies so that we are forced to stare into the depths of hell and see us all in there.
