BoscoS_Writing Instruction_LT 3

 Many experiences throughout the years have affected my journey to becoming the writer I am today. Starting from when I was in elementary school, I have received the support and guidance that I needed to help me succeed in school and make writing enjoyable. My family has always been a great support system and has held high expectations for me since the day I started school. Writing has not always been easy and they have been times where I have struggled, but the most important that is that I still enjoy reading and writing today.
Before I started school, I would always want to help my mom and try to replicate what she was doing around the house. If I saw her writing the grocery list, I wanted to help her write it. Before even starting school, I was always intrigued by reading and writing. Because my mom was a former teacher, she would sit down with me and we would write the letters of the alphabet and she would read to me every night before bed. By the time I started school, I was even more excited about writing in the classroom.
In elementary school, I enjoyed writing and I liked learning about new words and writing my own stories. I remember having spelling tests every week and working on vocabulary words, but we would always have time to write about what we wanted to write about in our journals. This was the time that I enjoyed the most. We also had writing projects where we would work on the same piece of writing for a few weeks and it would be displayed either in the classroom or hallway. I remember always being so proud of my published work that we got to share with the class and our parents. This was when writing was fun and made me feel successful as a writer and a student.
However, around third grade is when I noticed that writing was no longer fun. We started to learn cursive and I wasn't very good at cursive. It took me a long time to write the letters and I felt like it was never formally taught to me. Because we had to write everything in cursive, it would frustrate me while I was writing a story. I felt like it was very hard for me to get my ideas down on paper and writing in school was a time I was never excited for. However, because of the great support system I have at home, my mom and dad started helping me at home and made me find writing more enjoyable again.
As I went through high school and college, writing became more enjoyable and I was able to take writing classes that were taught in a way that I understood. Some of the instruction that I received in high school and college  made me like writing more and really helped me become a better writer and teacher today.
The view that mostly corresponds with my writing experiences is the Traditional Writing Classroom. Even though I do feel like there was parts of instruction that could have fallen under the Process Writing view, I do think most of my learning was taught the traditional way. I felt like writing was taught in a very linear process; words, sentences, and then paragraphs. I also feel like I learned how to "produce a good piece of writing" (Freeman and Freeman, 2004, p. 29).
As a learner I was taught how to correctly form my letters, write a generic multi paragraph paper and make a project and reports. It felt very formulated and our expectations were very clear for what the teacher wanted. It was good in some ways, but it was also frustrating when I had to memorize spelling words that were difficult to remember and be corrected on every spelling error and grammar error that I made. However, I did become very well informed and prepared on how to write papers and how to research information. This kind of instruction was most of what I remember writing to look like in the classroom, but there was also the fun activities that I could be creative with my writing and publish my work.
Writing hasn't always been easy for me, but it is something that I enjoy and am always striving to improve on. I can thank teachers and my family for supporting me with great instruction and support for becoming a successful student in school. Writing is something that I love teaching with my first graders. It makes me so excited when I see them get excited about writing. I do think it is important to teach from the view of the process classroom. Allowing students to read and write different genres, provide choice and learn the writing process is so important for student success and engagement. The most important goal for myself is to get students excited about writing.