The assignment was to create a social media post about your chosen book. I chose Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling and to present it on Instagram.
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Today, I worked collaboratively with Mrs. Fredette on coming up with lesson activities to do with Informational picture books who was dr. seuss? by Janet Pascal & Illustrated by Nancy HarrisonDuring Dr. Seuss week, the students will read this illustrated biography about Dr. Seuss. Afterward, they will collaboratively to create a Facebook Page based on the information they have gathered from the text using the provided template. Danger! Children at work By Sharon Franklin![]() Students will read the text and then create a cause and effect chart based on information found in the text. Titanic The story lives on! By laura Driscoll & Illustrated by Bob KayganichAfter reading the text, either cooperatively or to themselves, students will write a front page newspaper article about the Titanic sinking including important facts and an accurate timeline based on the text. Great Migrations: Elephants By Laura MarshFor this text, we would collectively read the text as a class, taking notes of key details in the text. The students would work in pairs to create a diorama of an elephant's environment accompanied with a paragraph describing what they have created. Then they would present them to the rest of the class.
This is a picture of my group's Tableau from the book Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match: Marisol McDonald no combina by Monica Brown and illustrated by Sara Palacios. In this Tableau, we are depicting the transformation of Marisol starting with her happy being mismatched, to, after she was criticized by her peers, matching, to encouragement from her teacher to be herself, and finally Marisol's acceptance of mismatched self.
Reflection In the article "Critical Literacy: A questioning stance and possibility for change" by Cynthia McDaniel the author provokes the question, "do students learn to read or read to learn?" That is an important distinction. If students are just learning to read, most students wouldn't need to continue their education past the first grade. However, if students read to learn, really learn and not just to regurgitate facts found by skimming through the text, they will have the opportunity to develop their own thoughts and beliefs about society. McDaniel's article essentially breaks down into two parts. The first being allowing students to read text that goes against the status quo rather than having them read text that supports the dominant ideology. The second being having students respond to text in a meaningful way rather than having them just word vomit facts about the text. Reflection
Today in class we learned about quality contemporary realistic fiction is a vital staple for the classroom library. Contemporary realistic fiction reflects on life and helps children understand things like self acceptance, problems that people face, or reactions and consequences of situations. Additionally, children can connect with characters in contemporary realistic fiction and glean a feeling of comradery. Evaluating quality contemporary relistic fiction is also incredibly important. It is important that the text is examined for racism, sexism, cultural stereotypes or inaccuracies, and ableism, just to name a few. It is also important to look at the author and what authoritative stance they are able to take on the subject they are writing on. Using the criteria from the article "Building Arab Americans’ Cultural Identity and Acceptance With Children’s Literature" by Tami Craft Al-Hazza and Katherine T. Bucher and adapting Arab Americans to Deaf Americans, this can be an effective tool to evaluate my selected text this week. Evaluating the book El Deafo written and illustrated by Cece Bell, the author wrote the book to reflect on her own childhood growing up deaf. The Newberry Award winning graphic novel is extremely well written. Cece (the main character) exhibits characteristics of any other girl in society, she enjoys playing, wants to have friends, and even has a crush on a boy in school. The author includes different ways that hearing people (mostly inadvertently) make Deaf culture foux pas. For example, shouting, speaking super slowly, trying to force ASL, and many others. The author also displays the different stuggles that many deaf students could relate to like feelings of isolation, embarrassment that everyone is looking at them, ect. Overall, El Deafo is a quality piece of contemporary realistic fiction and I would love to use it in my classroom one day.
Reflection:
Through learning about historical fiction, I have discovered that although maybe not my favorite genre of literature it is so vitally important for students to be exposed to it. Historical fiction allows students to be able to learn about a historical event through the eyes of a character who is portrayed to have gone through that event. I also learned how important it is to evaluate historical fiction in order to make sure it is accurate to actual events in history and portrays cultures in accurate ways and does not feed into stereotypes. In my classroom, I have always loved the idea of doing novel studies. I knew a teacher who did a novel study on Number The Stars by Lois Lowry during the same time that the students were studying world war two and the holocaust in their social studies class. I think planning ahead and making lessons interdisciplinary is so incredibly effective for really giving context for both lessons. The assignment for today's literary analysis was to take a piece of traditional literature and tell the story from a different perspective. The story, "The Princess and the Pea" by Hans Christian Andersen. This would be a fantastic way to assess reading comprehension in a creative way. This would also take into consideration the fact that not every student will connect with the protagonist in a text.
Another great way I have seen traditional literature taught is by taking an original (or as close as you can get) version of the text and read a couple of different versions and compare and contrast them. Doing a unit like this, you can teach on characterization, point of view, or the author's voice. |
Mrs. randolph*For the purposes of this blog, all student and faculty names have been changed to protect their privacy. All identifying information has been removed.* Archives
March 2017
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