Chapter Three

The first thing that caught my eye on the chapter is, "Scaffolding, which is supportive teaching that includes questioning, modeling, feedback, and instruction with the idea that adult support is gradually withdrawn as learners become more autonomous (pg 38)." Whereas, I thought it meant building on their prior knowledge. There are so many things that go into teaching and we are just getting started!!!! I didn't know that aesthetic reading (reading for fun) didn't demand anything of you. I learned about other methods of reading, like efferent, which is more demanding and requires more work. Readers are more likely to slow down, reread passages, attempt to read every word, and struggle, which I did not know did more for me when I was a child. I remember it being frustrating to learn, but look where it got me for continuous effort. But all of our readings fall in between either efferent (hard) or aesthetic (easy). We have to learn the difference between these because it is the balance of where we want our children to be reading, not too difficult, but not too easy as well. We need to talk about the new concepts and vocabulary with them. I always found it helpful to write down words that I didn't know and then I would look them up later. And we cannot get enough of critical thinking, I believe it is a fun part of elementary school and needs to be addressed more often at an early age versus an adult, because if you don't have the proper education, it makes it very difficult to figure out problems later on. I thought it was helpful that they listed ways to assess comprehension on page 45. I also think it's good to go over the story and discuss it as a class, that way we know they read it and it clarifies any unanswered questions they may have. That's all I have for now, but Chapter 3 is the beginning of many very important chapters that we need to study!

"Author Study"

"The Giving Tree," by Shel Silverstein, is about a tree who loved a little boy. Every day the boy went to the tree to eat apples or play and it would make the tree happy. But when the boy got older he wanted more and more from the tree. This story teaches about giving and taking and love. It's a must have for your classroom library!

"The Year I Didn't Go to School," by Giselle Potter, is a children's book based on the author's past. The author's parents had a theatre company in which they performed, "Mystic Paper Beasts," and this story tells it all. It's different, I have to say. But that's what we need, we need to broaden our horizons and try new things.

"Counting Christmas," is a baby book, probably and more than likely used in Pre K classes, because it is a beginner book. This book, by Karen Katz, one of my favorite authors and illustrators, counts down from ten days of Christmas to one. It's really cute when you are teaching the basics.

Chapter Two

Chapter two starts off with a question that I want to answer by myself first, which is, “What is Culture?” To me, culture is about the beliefs your parents and community have taught you about yourself and them. It’s a person’s heritage or past, and it’s what separates us as individuals or puts us into a group. But the book explains it as, “Ways of knowing, believing, valuing, and thinking among a group of people.” I think it’s similar but their answer is more in depth. But I learned different aspects of culture, like deep culture and school culture. See, in all my years of education, this is the first time I have seen it divided up and discussed. The outside community is very important and they way the surrounding community focuses on education. You can come from a good family, but live in a bad community and the community can change a person, especially in adolescence, that’s when they are the most influenced and want to fit in. We need to know our children’s home lives, their communities, and what they value. It is important for us to incorporate all of our children’s different needs and to get their families to cooperate and to get involved. Remember that not everybody is the same! And I think it’s smart for us to acknowledge our own biases, if we group students as the smarter ones, versus the ones who always need help, that’s not good and I know it’s going to happen when we get out there in the real world because I saw it when I was doing education hours for Palo Alto. So basically we have to keep all this in mind and fill our libraries with culturally diverse literature, which should be fun and interesting to do.

"Author Study"

"Stellaluna," by Janell Cannon, is about a bat and her adventerous life as a baby bat. From being chased by an owl, to falling into a nest of baby birds, the story is entertaining and keep your students hanging on to finish the rest of the story. It's an older read, maybe for your 3rd graders and up.

"Evie to the Rescue," by Hermann Moers, is a fictional story about a little girl who inspires a baby lion cub, at the zoo, to go to Africa. The cub shows up at her door and off they go into the land with a Swan, and the journey starts from there. It's nicely illustrated, which is something I look for in all of my books that I select. They have to be appealing to your children.

"Ella, an Elegant Elephant," is about a little shy elephant that has to move and start a new school but at this school there is a bully and she does not like Ella. It's a real good book, especially if you are addressing bully issues between girls.

Websites for Author Profile

Well as for my author profile, I am going to do it on Jennifer Armstrong, because she seemed the most interesting and her books are something I would want in my classroom. I googled her name and certain websites I know are going to be useful are:



http://www.jennifer-armstrong.com/

This is her main page, or "Official," the one I discussed in my previous blog with you guys.
And this one is about her biography, but is part of the same site:

http://www.jennifer-armstrong.com/biography.htm

This is another site, that I will be comparing the "Official Site" with:

http://www.jenniferarmstrong.com/

This website will be most helpful, because there is an actual interview with her, to give me more insight on what she thinks is most important about herself and her work. It also has all of her awards and achievements, which will help me in the biographical sketch. The website is:

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/childrens_writing/99157

This website has all of her books listed, in which there are 100, or so:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/jennifer-armstrong/

That's all I found so far. But my plans are to go to the downtown library this weekend and see what I can find! Talk to ya later!

Children's Literature Authors

How can I blog about Children's Literature Authors without mentioning Dr. Seuss. Those were the best books that I remember when I was little! :) Do you guys remember them? Well, as I read on the biography part, there is really a real Dr. Seuss, which was my first question when I visited the site. There is also a catalog, which is like a store, where we can get books for our classroom, and what is a classroom without Dr. Seuss? There are also "Read Across America Events," so we can check events going on in our area. So check it out!

http://www.seussville.com//lb/home.html

I found an author, Jennifer Armstrong, who's books look really interesting and very colorful. They are all illustrated by different people, but seem very appealing. I would've sat in the circle and listened to them when I was younger. :)

http://www.jennifer-armstrong.com/

I clicked on Cynthia Leitich Smith's page and she had a grouping of favorite young children's authors, which I found most helpful, I just wanted to share them with you all.

http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.com/lit_resources/favorites/by_age_group/pic_books.html

Chapter One

Sorry guys for my blog being so late, but I have been busy with my mother passing away and all the stuff that comes from that, but it's all coming together now, so I am going to catch up with you all! Thanks for your understanding.

~Dawn

Chapter One:

Living Literature’s Chapter One mainly focuses on reading being the main goal of teaching. Which I must say that I do agree, and I think that we all do. You have to be able to learn to read in order to succeed in any other subjects, or in all other subjects. The goal for us as educators is to have the children understand what they are reading and to be able to entertain their brains through literature. If you have a good book, this goal shouldn’t be difficult to achieve. Every child loves a good book. But I think that’s the hardest part of it all, is finding good books and good authors. We can’t just go throw a library together with just any books, that’s why we are taking this class, to understand the literature that we will put into our libraries in our rooms. The book asked if I truly believe that I can or should teach my students to want to read, and my answer is yes. We have to make them WANT to do it, not make them feel as if they HAVE to do it. And our beliefs do influence our students, and I believe that they can pick up on them, or feel as if we are pretending to believe something else. I am scared to be a teacher now, because San Antonio’s youth’s future resides on my shoulders, and I think we are all in the same boat, we are scared that we won’t do a good job, but we just have to try twice as hard as everyone else and give it all that we got, and I truly believe that it will be enough. As long as we say, we did all we can do for each and every child. We also as educators must always be students first, because with time, all things change. As for designing the libraries, I love the idea of making it a comfortable atmosphere. I remember when I was a kid, my 3rd grade teacher had a bunch of bean bags and headphone sets in the library area, and that was always one of my favorite centers to go to. And as I close this up about Chapter 1, the most important thing I think I read was when I saw, “Children learn what they live.” And that is so true. They do watch everything we do and learn from everything we do, so it’s very important that we show them and teach them how fun literature can be. Thanks for reading guys!

"Author Study"

"The Hippo-Not-Amus," by Tony and Jan Payne, is a large sized jumbo picture book about Portly, a hippo who finds life as a hippo pretty boring so he leaves his home and goes exploring life as another animal. It teaches the kids about all different sorts of animals, and the book is really cute and colorful.

"The Berenstain Bears, That Stump Must Go," by Stan and Jan Berenstain, is about Papa bear stubbing his toe on a tree stump and not liking it at all, so he goes to great extremes to remove it. These books were my favorite when I was a young girl. They are a must have for beginning children's literature.

"Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed," by Mo Willems, is about a mole rat named WIlbur who is different from all the others because he loves to wear clothes, but his Grandpa finds out and the story is about what he has to say about it. Very cute and children in 2nd and 3rd grade really seem to be appealled to Mo Willems' books and illustrations.