It’s Monday What are you Reading?!?

This week I was walking around the library and looking for books to read and then I saw the Berenstain Bear collection! Right when I saw these I knew that I was going to read these. I used to love reading these books when I was younger. These books are fun and exciting for kids. I think I liked this series because there is a young boy that I probably related myself too. Most of these books were wrote in the 80’s.
I read The Berenstain Bears and the Truth, The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat, The Berenstain Bears’ New Baby, The Berenstain Bears: Kindness Counts, The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners, The Berenstain Bears Go to the Doctor, and The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food.

These books were all awesome and brought me back to my younger days. My top two were The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners and The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food. The first one is about when Mamma Bear try’s to improve her family’s manners. She tries to improve her family’s manners which is unsuccessful until she thinks of a great idea. She comes up with a plan to insert a chart list that has all the chores on it. Mamma Bear also comes up with penalties that everyone gets when they are being rude. This book is funny and also shows the kids that read this book what they can do to help their parents at home. The second book is about when Momma Bear starts to notice that Papa Bear and the cubs are starting to get chubby. She gets help from Dr. Grizzly and shows her family on how the body works and what they should do to become healthy. They start eating healthy and start good fitness habits. This is also a good book for kids because in this day of age we do have an obesity problem and this can help students see what they can do to have better health

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I also read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! This was a very clever book and the children will have a great time with it. Students get to interact during the book, teacher can do multiple activities with it.
** I apologize for not having any pictures of the books on here but for some reason I couldn’t get anything to paste on here. I will figure out what the problem is and fix by next week.

Teach handwriting or not?

For this post I wanted to talk about something that I think is important to students at a young age. In different class I am taking we are talking about if we should teach handwriting or not. Many people don’t think we should teach this anymore because everyone is using the computers now and no one just writes on paper now a days. We also are talking about how there are people who believe that we shouldn’t spend as much time with vocab either since there is spell check.

We read a book that has 8 chapters in it that have different articles that show support for handwriting and why we shouldn’t get rid of it. Each of these articles have done studies on how if we teach handwriting different parts of the brain is triggered and how that helps with development. One of the articles did a study of 200 hundred students and half of the students were shown words and then had them write them down on paper. The other half were shown the words but then they were supposed to type them on the computer instead of writing them on paper. After this they waited a week and came back and had the students do a vocab test. The students that wrote them on the paper remembered twice as many compared to the group that just typed them on the computer.

I believe that we can’t stop teaching handwriting and vocab because we don’t have enough evidence. We don’t know if it will affect the students learning or not.

Reading Challenges and Plans

I will challenge myself for the rest of the semester to pick one book each week that I know will be challenging for me. I think this will help me because it will push me out of my comfort zone and everyone needs to do that to get better. When I first read this assignment I thought to myself that I would just read the books I like and that’s it and just get through the semester. But after I thought about it I was telling myself why just read the books I know I will like? I might as well use this opportunity to increase my knowledge of books and read the books that I am not totally interested in or the ones that I might see challenging to me. For me the books that will challenge me are the ones that are very factual. These books are harder for me to read because they have so much information and they take a long time to read.

I am most looking forward to this challenge I set for myself because after I do this I will have a better understanding of what my students that love this text think. I will be able to talk to them about these types of books and suggest to them certain books I’ve read that I think they would like. I think the hardest part of my goal is that I will have a hard time finding this type of books that isn’t just a textbook. I will have to ask friends, teachers, or the librarian to see if they have any suggestions. I plan on achieving my goal by writing down what book I read that week and make sure I have one of those books read for each week.

Reflection on semester so far

This semester I have learned a lot about myself as a reader already. I have learned that I don’t mind reading as much as I thought I would. If I get a good book that I like the time flies. I find myself putting myself in that situation that the main character is in and seeing what would I do. Reading children’s literature has been fun too. Being able to read books that are award winners is a great way to learn what books would be good in my future classroom. This class has helped me learn and think about what books I can use and what kind of activities I could do for my students. My personal taste as a reader is mystery, sports, and action. The princess books or the books that involve girl stuff isn’t in my taste for reading. I think it’s just a guy thing to be honest.

The perfect book for me would be a mystery one. There would be a little boy that went on an adventure to find treasure chest. I remember reading books like that when I was younger and loved them. I was able to put myself in that boy’s shoes and I would do my own adventure on the farm. Out of all the different awards we have read the award I liked reading the most was the Newberry. I don’t really know why those books stuck out to me the most but I just had fun reading them. The grade level I’ve like to read the most so far is second and third. These books start getting more information in them but yet they are still fun to read.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This book was written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. Bad News for Outlaws won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2010. This book is about a man named Bass Reeves. He was a well known African American back in the old west areas. He was a peace officer and when ever someone that was on the run heard that he had their warrant there was no use in running because he was going to find them. It was difficult for Bass because not many white folk back then approved of the thought of a African American law man.

 

 

The second book I read was written by L. King Perez. This book won the Pura Belpre Award in 2004. This book talked about the life of Chico and how his and his family went up and down California to pick the fruit and vegetables. He always had a hard time at school with fitting in but he was going to start third grade and he could tell it was going to be different. He was very good at math and the teacher and his classmates could tell. Everything was going good until a fourth grader started to bully him. Chico used his good math skills to get out of the situation. This book would be a good book to read if a classroom is having trouble with bullying.

 

The third book I read was written by Tanya Lee Stone. This book won the Sibert Medal award in 2010. This book looked back on 13 women that stood up for what they believed in and they wanted to do more than they were suppose to. Back in the day women had no rights and weren’t suppose to be able to fly airplanes or do any job a man would do. But these women pushed and pushed for more rights. Even though these women didn’t succeed they inspired younger women that were able to push through that thresh hold and were able to become pilots or go to space.

 

The fourth book I read was written by Louis Sachar. This book won the Schneider Family Award in 2004. This book is about a young man named Armpit and he has always been a trouble maker. When he left a camp called Camp Green Lake he couldn’t find a job because no one wanted to hire someone with a back ground. There was a young disabled that was 10 that believed he a good human being and the decided to take small steps to improve his image. Everything was going great until a roommate of his from camp popped back into his life and offered him a get rich card. This would be a good book for kids to read because we can teach them some things that are not right to do. 

The final book I read was written by Andrew Glass. This book won the Golden Sower Award in 1996. The boy’s name in this book is Plug. His mother sends him into town to get some soap and so he won’t forget what he was suppose to get when he got there he would say “Soap! Soap! Don’t forget the soap”. But when he was walking along the road he would meet people and talk to them. After awhile he forgets what he was suppose to get at the store. This a very funny book and kids will love it.

 

Finding Time to Read

I am having some trouble with finding books to read but I am getting it done. This semester seems like every class I have has a lot of homework. The good thing is that none of the homework is hard it just takes time to do. With having class and football Monday-Friday 8-6 and a game every Saturday it gets busy. I’ve been making myself go to the library almost every day for at least 2 hours. This has helped tremendously and I haven’t been pushed to finish a homework assignment at the last minute yet this year. Reading at the library has worked for me the best because it is quiet compared to reading at my house with the roommates there.
If we are reading lower level books I try to read 3 when I go to the library but when I am reading a longer chapter book I am reading a third each time. This has seemed to be working for me. I tried right away to just read for 5 or 10 minutes if I had some spare time in my schedule but that ended up not working for me. I feel like I could improve on just staying in the library another hour but usually I’m tired and just want to go home and relax. The biggest obstacles I’ve found is that my roommates either have one or two classes and that’s it this semester so they are always trying to get me to go out with them and hangout. The other obstacle is that I have is I am a very slow reader. Sometimes when I get done with a long book I think back and can’t remember some details of the book. So I’ve figured out that if I read it twice I do a lot better and have a better chance at remembering the book and what happened latter on a couple weeks later.

It’s Monday! What are you reading

This week I read Because of Winn-Dixie. This book was awesome! 

 

 

This book is about a girl named Opal and she went to the Winn-Dixie grocery store and ran into a dog that was making a mess. She was ended up calling that dog her own and named it Winn-Dixie. Through out the story Opal she finds new people to hangout with and be friends with. She always went to the library and met the librarian to listen to stories. Then she would go to the pet store and listen to Otis play the guitar and  swipe the floor. Last part of her day she would go to Gloria’s house that everyone thought she was a witch. She would hangout and keep her company. In the end of the book she had all of her fiends over for egg salad and punch. They all sat around Otis while he played his guitar and sang songs from the past.