Group 1 Evaluation

One powerful revelationt that i had from this unit was that every bit tof descriptive writing is a specific part of a grammatical structure. I always thought of grammar as being punctuation, nouns/verbs/adjectives, direct object pronouns, etc...i actually never new about the "brushstrokes" of writing...the participles, absolutes, appositives, etc...those "image grammar" stylings are so essential when teaching creative writing, which in and of itself i believe to be essential to teaching professional writing. I really love the writing as painting metaphor; i always kindof had that idea as a writer and as an education student but i wasn't able to translate it into a teaching method as this group did with the help of Noden's text.
I thought that the unit itself was organized well; i like that it went through the book in order emphasizing the important points that the group had chosen for instruction. I also would have chosen to teach the same points from the text that the group chose. I thought that the structure of the unit was strong-- Sharon would start out with an intraductory concept and discussion, exemplified and elaborated on by Samantha and her activities, and then kindof concluded and unified with a meaningful, critical-analysis ending by Meredith.
One of the teaching methods that most stuck out to me in this unit was the way the teachers had the class tap into their prior knowledge and then expanded on that knowledge. The also showed the class rather than told the class about Noden's concepts and strategies. The activities were insightful and went along well with what the group was trying to convey; they didn't seem random or subordinate or like simple time-fillers...although i do wish that the timing was planned a little better on the second day so that we could have had more time to work on the activities rather than rush through them. Other than that, i think the teacher-leaders managed the classroom quite well; they gave the class lots of opportunities to contribute our own ideas to the discussion and gave us opportunities to share our assignments (even though these opportunities weren't always siezed by the class). Sometimes the instructions for activities or homework assignments were not explained quite clear enough but that was usually corrected with a second, more contrived explanation.
An important question that the group raised was the concept of in-context teaching as it relates to memorization. I like that we were asked to think about this question and brainstorm about it because we often forget things that we worked so hard on memorizing and remember things that seem random, obscure, or obsolete in hindsight. Why is that? I think it does have something to do with whether or not we learned the material in context...I think that all content from all subject areas can be taught in context in school, even in contexts related to eachother (like when teachers of science, english, and social studies, for example, will get together to do a combined unit on one topic.) When we learn things in context, it seems to have more relevance to our own lives, therefore, we seem to remember it more. I think that is important for writing teachers, especially when it comes time to teach grammar, which can at times seem completely boring and unrelatable to students.
As a teaching colleague i would congratulate Sharon, Samantha, and Meredith on their group teach. I think it went very well overall and I can tell they put forth a lot of effort in planning their lessons, discussions, and activities. The only negative thing that i would critique them on was that i think they sometimes seemed to forget to address us as a class of colleagues and were more in the mode of addressing us as students in a classroom. I think that focusing more on how Noden's mothods would or would not work in a classroom would have been beneficial, rather than implementing his methods "on" us as if we were students in a writing class. However, I don't think this was a big enough problem that it distracted the class from the presentation as a whole...there definately were times when I felt that they unified us all as teaching colleagues.
I will definately keep this book so that i can implement some of these methods, strategies, and activities into my own classroom.