Hi,
Most of you will be taking this class as your last one in the ReadOregon endorsement program. I'm looking forward to all of your participation; we always learn so much from each other in this class.
I was surfing the website:http://englishcompanion.ning/group/teachingtexts/forum/topics/schoolwide-read when I came across a question that I wish every teacher would be asking or administrator: "We have money for a schoolwide book reading, would love to have some suggestions." Below is one of the replies:
"We have done The Glass Castle, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier. So far, the latter has been the kid favorite, although we did offer an alternative title, The Book Thief, for those for whom the gruesome violence would be an issue. (I had only 1 student out of 130 who chose the alternate title.) It is probably the one best suited to a cross-curricular purpose. We are considering People of the Book for next year."
There was a number of other suggestions replete with schoolwide activities to go with the book selected.
As you get ready to write your proposals and write-up your curricular findings, I would appreciate your thinking about the trade books you can include as well as the assessments and instructional activities you will implement. Some of you will have bins of books to use; backpacks of books for students to take home as well as classrooms or situations where these books are limited.
In this month's Council Chronicle, the President of the National Council of Teachers of English writes: "We know that schools in high-poverty areas have inferior school libraries and inferior classroom libraries." I would hope that this is not the case in our area, but we all know that media specialists are being cut and money for library collections as well.
Whatever we can do to make trade books a powerful entity in our classrooms helps all students realize the value of authentic reading.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
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