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.