In the summer of 2011, I
participated in the University of Illinois Writing Project
Summer Institute. For Four weeks, I read,
wrote, and collaborated with other fantastic teachers.
This website is the culmination of all the work I did for that
four weeks. We experimented with programs such as
twitter, wordpress, i-movie, garage band, and seamonkey for
instructional uses. We criticiqed each other's lessons
to become better teachers. We read professional books to
stay current with best practice. We explored our own
writing to become better writing instructors. It was the
best proffesional development ever!
Our Schedule:
9-10 Writing Time: I
used this time to write anything I wanted. I began the
project writing about students that I have encountered, but
this gravitated to writing about myself as a student and what
my teachers were like growing up. I also spent some time
writing for my demonstration or writing emails. It was
great to have this dedicated time to writing every day.
I used to write three pages every morning because of Julia Cameron's book
The Artist's Way.
I plan to make writing in the morning a daily practice for the
rest of the summer.
11:30-12:00 Reflection: What I loved most about the writing project is that we were give multipule times in the day to reflect. During this time, every day, we would provide feedback to the demonstration in a group for that purpose.
1:00-2:00 Reading Group/Writing Group: each day we would meeting with a reading group to discuss professional writings. We were either reading the same book or put into groups where book topics were similar. On Thursdays, we instead met with a writing group. In this group, we were encouraged to share our writing, without qualification. We asked for specific help or just shared with each other what we had written.
2:15-4:00 Technology Time: The day would always end with technology instruction or time to work on technolgy projects. For me, this time was not about learning new things, but having time to explore and use what I already knew.