Valuing Student Experience Analysis

Valuing Student Experiences

The experts and teachers featured in this segment know that students' lives are a rich source of inspiration. When children know that their families and cultures are respected and that they can freely explore their interests and passions, they find reasons to write in their own experience. In the video segment, Christine Sanchez honors her students' heritage by beginning the writing workshop with a Navajo greeting. Silvia Edgerton shows respect for her fifth-graders' culture and language through her positive responses to their purposeful use of Spanish within their English writing.

Questions to ponder:

1. Could these or similar practices be adapted for your classroom? What are some other ways to honor your students' cultural backgrounds?

• The incorporation of a Navajo greeting and positive responses to the students’ use of Spanish within their English writing could definitely be adapted to my classroom through the use of different languages and different greetings from different cultures could vary from classroom to classroom because students can come from many different cultures and speak various languages.

• Some other ways you could honor students’ cultural backgrounds include researching the different cultures in class, creating writing assignments that are related to each students’ culture, or dedicating an

entire week for students to bring in pieces or aspects of their cultures and having the students write about the item that interests them the most.
2. By having her students create "heart maps," Latosha encourages them to begin thinking about what matters to them. What other strategies might help students identify their interests and passions?
• Other strategies that might help students identify their interests and passions include a semantic web (beginning with their name in the middle and branching off to different topics), as well as allowing the students to draw pictures of their families, friends, and activities.

You could also ask the students to discuss their favorite things with a partner or dedicate a class period early on in the year for you to give vague topics and have the students answer with a more specific answer to better pinpoint their interests (E.g. Teacher: “Sports. What is your favorite sport?” Students: “Softball. Basketball.

Volleyball.”).

Modeling a "Writerly Life"
In this segment, Christine Sanchez demonstrates for her students how to get ideas from other writers and record them in their writer's notebooks. Mark Hansen takes his students out into the community to make observations that could lead to writing topics.
Questions to ponder:
3. By sharing her thinking aloud, Christine models what writers do. What are some additional strategies that writers might use to find topics? List strategies that you could share with your students.
• Several ways students can find topics is to freewrite, writing anything that comes to their mind without worrying about writing mechanics; listing phrases or single words that they can combine into a story later; or by mapping/clustering/webbing by jotting down ideas and later connecting these ideas.
4. To help his students zero in on a community problem, Mark encourages them to jot down their observations while they are out on their walk. How could you provide your students with opportunities to gather more information about these issues?
• You could provide your students with opportunities to gather more information about community problems by showing clips of a newscast, taking them out on a walk around the community, allowing them to research on the topic on their own, or by inviting an advocate for the issue being discussed to the classroom to bring a deeper awareness to the issue.