Chapter 10 - WTL

I thought that chapter 10 started out with a very interesting idea about introducing "fun" into essay writing on tests. The example about interpreting the graph as if they were announcing the swimming match was a very neat idea and it seems like it would be entertaining for students to participate in. Basically throughout chapter 10 it touched on many ways that teachers can redesign tests to help kids get more out of learning. If we stick to the "boring" and unoriginal tests, students will not get as much out of their learning as they could. We need to make sure they know the specifications we want, but give them deep questions to ponder so they can come up with deeper level answers rather than just scratching the surface of what we want to hear. Mixing things up in class is always a good thing and will keep students interested in what I will be talking about, which is always a plus!

Chapter 2 and Chapter 5

I thought Chapter 2 was very interesting and in my opinion very influential in the teaching realm today. The Internet is such an important tool in today's society as well as in the classroom. In this class even, we are using "new literacies" by blogging, sharing our ideas over the Internet, and reading other people's ideas. I think that Internet projects are such great ideas to get kids involved in technology. It is also great for student's to know how to evaluate websites and understand what websites are accurate or not.
Chapter 5 was a short chapter that talked about different types of public writing. There was substantial, planned, authoritative, conventional, composed, edited, and graded. I think the important thing about these kinds of writing was that they should be written to a certain type of audience and must be edited more than once. This chapter also addressed plagiarism, which is a very serious subject and should not be taken lightly. I think that it needs to be spelled out to students what is right and what is wrong so they know fully what will not be accepted.