Chapter 11

 Two of the strategies that I can use within my content area are "Starting with Little, Nearby Things" and "Thinking about a Person" 

By using "Starting with Little, Nearby Things" You can help a student start with anything and create something meaningful. This is one of the biggest issues with students as they're starting to write. I have noticed in my classroom that many students don't know how to start, which causes them to write short, simple sentences. There isn't much depth into their writing, because they haven't been taught to develop and think further into their thinking. How they can bring a simple idea into life and bring wholesome meaning. By showing students this strategy, it will help with development of and further explanation of writing. 

Whenever I was reading about "Thinking about a Person" It reminded me of how whenever I'd like to start having my students right about personal narratives, I like to start every school year by having them write about themselves or about the people that they know. People are prone to write most about the people that they know or the people they interact with. This helps them focus on personalities, physical traits, story and relationships. We as human beings tend to write more about relationships that we have with others. It happens to become easier on us and it also helps us as educators to see where students are in regards to writing and the ability to write and express their thoughts. 

As a teacher, whenever I was reading the section about "Intentional Strategies versus Assignments," I truly understood the reality of how sometimes as teachers, we just tend to blend everything together. As teachers we tend to want to create meaningful assignments to students and have the availability for them to creatively right, however with sometimes tend to blend creative writing with writing assignments therefore losing the purpose of creatively write just for fun. We tend to create something meaningful, yet phrase it as a "notebook entry." This makes it seem as if this is just another laborious task. I really believe Bomer is trying to help us understand that as teachers we can sometimes it sucks the creativity out of learning and a meaningful topic won't be seen as that to our students.