Katelyn McCormick Week 13

This week I noticed how excited my students were about the new writing project. Last week my students went on a field trip to the Shedd Aquarium and so this week we have been writing a class narrative about our trip. My students were eager to share their responses and almost all students contributed to the project. Students were much more attentive while my mentor was instructing them during writing this week than they have been for other writing projects. I believe students are so into this writing project because it is an authentic writing piece about their own experience. It's important that my mentor is choosing a topic for the class narrative that all students have experienced. I can understand that students are so excited because it's all about them. Since my students are so young, they are still at the stage where everything is all about them. Writing about their own field trip has engaged them in a way that other projects have not yet done. This is a case of my mentor using authentic writing topics to get students excited about writing.

I think that the aspect of using authentic topics for learning rather than prepared curriculum topics, makes students so much more engaged in the activities. This is true for all subject areas. I have learned about authentic teaching and have seen authentic learning take place, but it was not until this writing project that I have witnessed students being so interested in learning. I plan to use more authentic teaching as I continue planning lessons and units this year.