Chelsea's Reflection on Graves (Ch. 4&5)

In Graves' book, Chapter 4: Organize the Classroom for Writing was about
a teacher, Mr. Bangs, that had a good set up for his students to write, in
which he learned a lot from. He learned from his mistakes as the days
went on with his writing block, and tried to fix those mistakes to make
things better for the children to write. I like that Mr. Bangs had conferences
with his students on their writing. This way, the children would get a lot of
feedback for their writing. I don't know how good having conferences would
work though because the teacher has to have a lot of other work ready for
the kids to do when they finish their own writing if the teacher is still
meeting with other students. I also liked the fact that Mr. Bangs let his
children write letters to other students and people of the community by
creating a little mail delivery post. The students must have been excited
for the first part to send out and receive mail from people. I still get excited
today when I get something in the mail. It's sad that the children didn't
really keep up with it for the whole school year because they started to get
bored, but Mr. Bangs made it more exciting for them by writing their letters
outside of the school to people of the community.

In Chapter 5: Write With the Children, is basically about teachers having to
write along with their students or model the writing. I agree much with
this chapter. I think it is a very good idea for a teacher to write with his/her
students. I believe, the students will become more respectful. Modeled
writing can be a lot of fun. Teachers interacting with students about a
topic they chose together, and possibly even starting off their own story as
a class. There are a few ways to model writing for the class. I think any way
is useful for the students, whether it be just writing your own story when
they are writing theirs, or standing up in front of the classroom, writing
step-by-step how the writing process goes and providing examples. My
mentor teacher did a modeled writing for her students one day, and they
were having a lot of fun with it, and also getting much accomplished.