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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