CH 4 "Responding to Literature"

The thing I liked most about this chapter was the topic in general, "Responding to Literature." I think it is very important for us to understand that we are all different and we are not going to see things in the same light. You can be sitting with your friends on one side of the room, and strangers on the other, and a spicy topic can be brought out in debate, and suprisingly, you and your friends disagree and you find yourself on the stranger's side, because we are all different in many ways. We cannot base our cultural differences on race alone, because I may be from the same ethnic background as another person, but I may have been brought up differently, and it is our job as teachers to learn about our children and their interests outside of school. The things they learn about outside of school creates the interest foundations that we can build on with the literature we choose for our class.
We need to motivate our readers through not only meaningful literature, but literature that is meaningful to them. We cannot just give them a book that we enjoyed as a child and expect them to find the same enjoyment. We need to study and research the TEKS of the year before and build on their schemata. I find that I like to tour the Kinder halls before I go to my First Grade field class, because I want to grab an idea of what the children might have learned the year before. Also I want to know the interesting projects that they have done, because again we must keep up and entertain while we teach, we must "hook" them into learning.
They build their responses to the text through interactions with others (everyone and anyone around them). Friends impact your way of thinking the most, especially during the young years of one's life. We have to support the role's of our readers, so we must learn about our students and make reading enjoyable for all of them, not just the majority, but all.

"Author Study"
I am going to change my selection for my author profile and I am chosing Karen Katz who is a children's author, who writes cultural diverse books. I will name 3 of her books that I find interesting. Don't go stealing my author now, ya'll heard! :)

The first book is, "Over the Moon, An Adoption Tale," and it is a picture book. It's very colorful and will grab your student's eyes and at the same time, it will teach them a valuable story about how two parents come to adopt a child from another country. It's very cute.

The second book is, "The Color of Us," and it is about a little girl named Lena who is going to paint herself. She wants to use brown paint for her skin. But when she and her mother take a walk through the neighborhood, she learns that there are many shades of brown. She begins to see the world in a new way. This book teaches about the differences and similarities of all people.

The third book is, "My First Chinese New Year," which is about a little chinese girl who takes different cultural steps in getting ready for the Chinese New Year. It tells us the different ways that one can prepare for their new year, but also shows us that it is very similar in the way that we, as Americans, prepare too.