This blog post by a teacher may not be the most credible source, but it defiantly seems to give some very good information about teaching and how to use different methods for discussion. In this blog article we see three different ways of how to lead class discussion,, all dealing with small group activity. The teacher describes rotating, jigsawing, and snowballing threads that all help with student group work. I thought the ideas in this blog were very interesting because they show how there is not just one way to teach to a large classroom. Having the students learn for themselves and with each other is crucial. But, the problem I have with the article is this: What if not all of the students wish to learn in groups? I feel that there could be a very fine line between group work and working by ones self. Where does this prove problematic?

In this article, there are 30 different ways in which this website tries to get students into their writing. Some of the ideas are probable and others not so much, but the main focus of the article seems to be relating the writing the students are doing back to the students themselves. We see in the article one idea that is really great. Number eight states to have student write on their own writing. How interesting would it be to read your own writing? Maybe not always as interesting as you would have thought? Well... how can you change that? How can you write something that you would not mind reading? These are the challenges students face, but by reading their own writing and reflecting on it, we could see a possible change in the writing being produced. Another example and method that the article shows is to have a writing buddy. Yes, I know this sounds kind of immature for college students, but in reality, I believe it would be nice to have someone that always read my works and I read theirs. You can make a friend, and you can also get a better idea of how important your writing really is.

Write something you would want to read. This is basically the idea of this video. This video is one of a series called "The Writing Workshop". The professor teaching the class, and essentially all of the videos viewers show us that our writing does not always reflect our best work. The professor uses the example of a Friday afternoon, where students are ready for the weekend and are not really paying attention to the assignment the teacher is having them do for the weekend.

The professor states that the students did not really even know what the assignment was or what they were supposed to write about. All the students knew was that they needed to write a 500 word essay. We see that the students chose to write about things that held very little importance and proceeded to fill up the rest of the paper with charts and graphs.

Personally, 500 words is not very much to write, but it is still hard to write about something if you are just not interested in it. This is what I am trying to figure out. How do we get the students we are having write, get interested in what they are writing about? I am going to research more on how to get students interested in their writing.

This may not be exactly what I am going to be writing my final paper on, but there are some very good things in this video to discuss further. To begin, this video based itself on the idea of how to write a research paper. There is a professor and he basically lays out the law of how to write a common college research paper.

Now, in this video, there are a lot of good qualities but, it makes us think as future teachers... Is this how students should be taught?

My first issue is that the professor is establishing that there are only 3 different types of college research papers/. While this may be true, there needs to be a boundry that can be crossed to keep students engaged in their writing. This is the problem in my workshop. We see students with research papers that just are plain, not interesting.

The key goal... get students to be passionate about their writing.