American Born Chinese

It's hard to say how a book will be gauged by students when you give them a book. Some may say that all books given to them by teachers makes it automatically a "bad" book and therefore they do not want to read it or even put forth effort towards understanding any part of it. American Born Chinese has a twist that I have not yet seen in the classroom. It is a graphic novel which I thought was only something people read in their free time. This brings in a whole new type of reading into the classroom to encourage kids to actually read. I liked graphic novels in high school and I would have loved to read one for class because I found them more fun and interactive. I find that reading with pictures makes reading more fun for those reading.

With our students we could have them take a passage from another book or even something they wrote themselves and create their own graphic novel. It would be fun and the students would have to take the details from the story to illustrate their graphic novel.

American Born Chinese is about kids in school and so this allows students to see more situations than the ones that they are in. I find that so many books that I read in high school were "outdated" and I didn't like that I could not easily relate with what was going on with the characters in the story. I wanted to relate but found it often to difficult because they were from another time and place. With American Born Chinese it was all about real life, I felt.

Night

Night is a tragically sad story about a boy and what he sees during life in an internment camp, that I believe is a very good story to teach in either an English or a History class. This book sheds light on how life was inside the camps and give a deeper look into life of people in other countries. It gives the fact that it is based off real life events and what one boy/man remembers of his life then. This story gives students a look at a different time and a different place that they may not understand. This book also comes from a person their age, which allows them to connect with the writer more.

In a classroom you could couple this with a book like Schindler's List to show a different look. Also other books or movies that give a deeper look. The students could write a paper on why the Germans thought they were right or maybe on why the Jews thought about why this was happening. Lots of things could be done with a text like this. Like you could do a journal activity where the student must keep a track of there thought through the story or even through the quarter. You could also have this as a Friday reading each week until it was finished and write a response on what they heard and felt. This book is and easy and quick read with lots of emotion.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a hard thing to cover in a classroom. It is hard to read when you are alone and even if you do happen to read it you have a hard time understanding what is being said. For students to even be able to sit through this play is if you make it into a reading exercise. Like assign people to be different parts and read through it as a class. If you did this you would have to stop along the way and discuss what is being said so that the students can understand it better. Another way that you could do is watch a play and discuss it as you go along to help further understanding.

This is a good story to share with high school kids because the characters in the play are their age and they could possibly be able to relate a lot better with this. This story shows that sometimes with passion we forget to think and sometimes things get out of hand. It is important to share with our students that things can work out in a different way than how it did for Romeo and Juliet.

This story has been over used in my opinion and more and more stories are coming out now that explain in easier words what this story says. Maybe that is considered dumbing down the reading for the students but I see it as adapting the story type to the time. Reading a book is a lot easier than reading a play. When I read it I could not make it through the play without hearing voices reading off each part.

TPA

From my limited work with the Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) I have found that I really like it. The way that it lays everything you need out in such a concise way that anyone can pick it up and use it. The TPA lays everything out for you starting with what are the goals and what the students should already know to how to assess the lesson at the end. Two things that are really becoming more important in lesson planning are the students and their world around them. We really need to know who are students are. Once we know who we are teaching we can find out how they learn and what drives them to learn. If you just go in with a lesson and don’t understand who you are teaching then you will fall short in conveying the information to them and possibly have to repeat yourself a few times. Students are not robots and they don’t all learn the same way. Some students may have similar learning styles but not every student will learn the assignment or lesson the same exact way.

The second thing is the conditions that might be around the planning and delivering. A student might understand what you are saying in class but when they get home they may not have time to do the work you assign or they might pick up the book and try to get a deeper meaning and will get completely lost. What teachers have to understand is that no matter what our students are doing their minds are not always right there. I am as guilty of this as any because I am thinking of the fight I had with my husband while reading a book for class and by the end of it I don’t understand what I read or what we are even supposed to being doing with the information. Our students have similar issues as this. They have things that are more important to them than a silly assignment.

Access Tool

Silent Reading Record

Read for 30 minutes and then stop and complete the following:

1. What did you read? (Include title and page numbers.)

I read Little Women. My starting page was 13 and my ending page was 22.

2. In four or more sentences summarize what you read.

The four girls awoke on Christmas morning to find sweet little books left under their pillows from their mother, and these books tell the girls how to be good woman. Each girl decides to read a little of their book each morning when they first wake up. After they all read, they all go downstairs for breakfast and to wait for their mother to come home so that they can give her their gifts. When the mother gets home she tells the girls of a poor starving family that they should donate their breakfast to. The girls happily give up their big breakfast to help the other family. Later in the day after they have a wonderful dinner the girls throw a play in the upstairs of their home. After the play they go downstairs to find that the older man who lived next door left them sweets to say Merry Christmas.

3. As you were reading, what were you thinking? Write at least four sentences. Did you make any connections? What were you wondering? What opinions do you have about what you read?

I was thinking about the life back when this book was written and what it was like to be poorer than most. I wonder if I would be willing to give up my food so that another family could eat. I also wonder why more people can't be as good as this family. We are not taught these kind of ideals now. I read a lot of books about women finding their own way.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It Part 1

We all at some point have read something for school or fake read something for school just to get it done to say that we did it, but in reality we don't really know what we read. I have sat there and read something for class and not gotten it. I think it is important to talk our students about what the purpose of reading this assignment is. We also need their input on what is going to be important for them to get to by the end of the reading. I have read and tried to get where the teacher says to but sometimes I get lost and when I ask for the teacher to clearify something they tell me that it is explained in the text. We need to talk to our students because sometimes the reading to a student will be as clear as mud.

Somethings that we really need to talk to our students about is the "seven strategies used by successful readers" before we send them out to read some assignments. After a while the students will start to pick up on what to do while reading and will eventually understand what to look for in their own reading.

A couple of questions that I developed from this reading are: do we feed them too much during class?Can you be a good reader and a word caller? When do you stop teaching reading?

A Response-Based Approach

There is a “horizon of possibilities” in everything we read. We find that when we read we think about what we are reading and then think about what we have read. In this we are expanding our initial thoughts about the story and then grow and expand what we know. When we think critically about what we read we can then learn new concepts and new ways of life. This writer explains that in education it is important to encourage our students to think consistently about what they are reading and what they are seeing day to day. However, the application of this concept is having a little difficulty. Like with any new concept we have to take some time to learn how to tell students about it and how to use it day to day.

The concept of “exploring a horizon of possibilities” means to “live through experience.” The idea of living through experience is something we all do but we don’t really think too much about it. If we were then we would see that we not only live through our experiences but we also gleam information off of other people and their experiences. We also gleam information from people in the books that we read. In a way we live the experience with the people in the books. In this way we are learning from their experiences and can find a “horizon of possibilities” through books. Books open up so many experiences that we cannot or would not want to try. For example you could read a story from the civil war times and learn what life was really like for people back then. I find that when I read I take a step into the world that I am reading and I try to take a few steps in the writers or narrators footsteps.