Chapter 10
This chapter is about the importance of reading out loud to students. It brought out some very good points about how helpful it can be. One of my favorites is the new vocabulary that can be learned. I absolutely love interesting words and many that have stuck in my vocabulary are ones that I have picked up while reading. To be able to read aloud to students and introduce new words and their pronunciation will help their language skills immensely. Another point that struck me is one that I know is very obvious but I can defiantly see how some people myself included may forget, which is to read the book beforehand. I want to teach middle school so I would need to make sure they are appropriate for my students. I would not want to run into any mishaps especially when I am in the middle of the story. Also being able to introduce different genres to my students, I could potentially get them interested in something that they themselves would have never even thought twice about.

Chapter 7

Picture Books are part of my everyday life, I have a two year old daughter who loves for me to read to her. I enjoy spending the time doing so, besides her enjoyment of the books her vocabulary is growing so fast. While reading this chapter I kept referring to her picture books to check things like the amount of pages they had in them and the listing of the types of media used for the illustrations on the copyright page and sure enough most of them had 32 pages and the media listed. I found that rather interesting I didn't know there was those types of standards for them. I also always thought of picture books as geared towards younger audiences but reading this chapter and getting ideas on how to use them for older audiences such as middle school students was helpful. I just don't think I have ever put much thought into picture books, the fact that many do have such wonderful use of language and wonderful illustrations make them very special. I am finally getting reintroduced to them since I have a little one but I believe I have a new appreciation for them.

Author Profile

Jeff Kinney while in college ran a comic strip called “Igdoff” in the campus paper; it was then that he decided he wanted to be a cartoonist. However he was not successful in getting his comic strip published after college. So he started writing down ideas for what he hoped could become his first book. He worked on the book for six years and would publish online installments on Funbrain.com. In 2006 he signed a multi book deal to turn his first book Diary of a Wimpy Kid into a series. This series follows the adventures of a seventh grader named Greg and is meant to be read as his journal. Kinney wanted to write a story about all the funny parts of growing up and none of the serious parts. So his books are written to make people laugh which is something I think that the age group these books are geared for would enjoy.

Author Profile

Robert Munich is a children's author that I really like, besides writing one of my favorites Love You Forever he has written many other clever books.

The Paper Bag Princess is a story of a princess that has her prince captured by a dragon and she sets out to save him. In a funny twist when she does manage to save him the prince tells her : "You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag. Come back when you are dressed like a real princess."

On his website http://www.robertmunsch.com he describes what made him come up with ideas for each story. I think knowing the background information about why a story was written can definitely make them more relatable. Most of his books are partially based on real children and real events.

chapter 2

While I have always understood that I will have children from all different cultures and backgrounds in my class room, I had never really put much thought into how that would affect my potential teaching methods. Reading this chapter gave me a better understanding on what I might come in contact with during my career. I need to be sure and not only look at the surface culture but look into the deep culture of all my students. This all plays such a major part in the way students learn. There was a part in the chapter that I found really interesting; when they were talking about a question that was asked to Native-American students about “Who discovered America?” The correct answer according to the test maker was Columbus. Of course that would not be the answer a Native-American would give, their ancestors were here long before any European Settlers arrived.
One thing that I am trying to do is build a large library for me future classroom and after reading this chapter it puts more emphasis for me to make sure I have plenty of multicultural literature. I want to have books that my students can relate to so to do that I need to have many choices. I also want to give the students of different walks of life the opportunity to read books that my give them knowledge about others around them.

Chapter 1

I thought chapter one of this book was a wonderful foundation for what I am sure we will be learning this semester. The belief that that we as future teachers need to instill the love of reading into our students is so true. It is an essential building block in their education future, and it is a love that they will hopefully always carry with them. We also all have to believe in each and every one of our students, every child is born with the capability of learning. These children are sponges waiting to soak up the knowledge we can offer them in whatever way we can.
I also thought that it was an excellent point that we need to set good examples to our students and express our own love for reading. Also to give the children the access to a vast choice of books. I think that I am going to start my own collection now; I still have two years of school to go so hopefully I will have a relatively good selection by then.
When I looked up authors I thought it might be a good idea for me to look up authors that gear their books toward middle school age children since that it what age group I plan on one day teaching. I also know it would be a good idea to familiarize myself with this age groups possible taste in books. So I found a few that interested me: Jeff Kinney, J.K. Rowling (I am embarrassed to admit that I have yet to read her books), and Kathy Applet.

3321 Mon Night

first blog