Blog #2

                Just from reading the first 3 chapters of “You Gotta Be the Book”, I have gained so much knowledge about the profession of teaching and what it truly takes to be a successful teacher and role model for your students. From just the introduction, I saw how much of a struggle it can truly be to get students to be motivated and interested in reading and school itself. This is something that I feel I will struggle with when I first begin teaching. The thought of the first day where you enter your own classroom with all the students looking to you as a role model and educator and you ultimately affect their learning and who they will become in the future, is a lot of pressure but I love the thought of being that influential. I really liked how after Wilhelm got to know his students and saw that the methods he was currently using to teach weren’t being successful, he revamped his teaching style and decided that reading stories together as a class might be an effective method to use. I also really liked how he used a survival simulation in the classroom. I think these types of activities really help engage and motivate students and helps get them out of the typical everyday school routine. I think it makes them want to see what they might be able to discover and makes them want to learn! Another aspect that I enjoyed was the use of attitude inventories at the start of the school year. I like how this can give you some background knowledge about your students and their interests, which can really help you out a lot in choosing novels possibly at the beginning of the year before you really know your students. I would really like to incorporate something like this into my classroom to help me get better acquainted with students and to show them that I am really interested in their lives not only in the classroom but outside of it as well.

                When talking about teaching approaches used in the classroom, my personal view on what teaching style I think would be effective and that I would most like to use in my classroom was further confirmed. I had heard about these different types of approaches, such as bottom-up, top-down, and interactive, in my Reading in the Elementary School class that I took last semester. When I first learned about this, I was overwhelmed with information about them and wasn’t really sure what made up each approach, but after reading the chapter dealing with this, I learned even more about each method which really helped me build on the previous knowledge I had. I can say that I would most like to use the interactive teaching method in my classroom, but for most of my schooling I would say I was taught in a bottom-up method, which was ultimately “emphasized on rightness of literary interpretation” (Wilhelm 21). Every novel we seemed to read was just used to answer comprehension questions and we only gained one meaning of what the book was trying to say. I believe that since students bring so much different personal background knowledge to the table, everyone may gain a different type of understanding. By sharing all these different interpretations as a class, I believe some students may learn even better. Even for classic literature that’s studied, I believe that the teacher can still stress and emphasize the “correct” meaning of the text without disregarding other points that students might have gained from reading it. I believe that often times we are able to learn more from our students than anything else which is another reason as to why I think this discussion and sharing of everyone’s ideas is a good concept to add into the classroom. The reason as to why I really would like to have an interactive teaching method in my classroom is because I like the fact that reading is not seen as just a skill, but that it shows there is really meaning to it and I love the fact that students bring their prior knowledge to the story. Though this is how I ultimately would like to teach, I know it will be a struggle since I was brought up the bottom-up way. I really hope that I don’t revert back to this method since research shows you usually teach the way you were taught, so I hope that by reflecting and journaling about my experiences in the classroom I will be able to stay an effective teacher not only for my sake but for the students as well. One thing I do worry about however with using this interactive method is that by allowing students to work in groups and pairs to discuss, it will be harder to make sure they are being challenged and that they are learning different perspectives about the text. I need to make sure that I balance my lecturing, group work, and discussions so that students are learning from not only each other, but from myself as well.

                One point that really stuck out to me was in Chapter 1, when Wilhelm discusses the popularity of reading at this grade level. Students “did not want it pointed out that they like to read” (Wilhelm 28). I could relate to this because I think I had this type of attitude as a student in the middle school grades. It wasn’t the “cool” thing to do and at that age level being “cool” is the ultimate goal of many. I want to be able to make reading a popular aspect of school to students and make it something that students like to engage and converse about. The more students engage in reading, the better learners they will become which will help them out in the real world. I agree completely with Wilhelm when he mentions about “focusing on the process of reading, instead of solely on what was read” (Wilhelm 29) for my classroom. I think that knowing how a student processes the information read will allow myself to gain a better understanding of what they are bringing to the story and help them each with their own individual strategies. Overall, I think that you must have variety in your classroom and teaching practices to make students want to pay attention and you must show the student that you make mistakes as well, which in the end help you to learn. I believe that this will help them to relate better and trust me more which will help get more accomplished.

                I also connected with Wilhelm on the belief that sharing stories about reading and life with students whenever a chance arises is important. I think that this goes to show how you use reading as a useful part of your daily life and shows them that reading can be something that is seen as fun to do outside of purely the school environment. An issue was pointed out in Chapter 2 however about how one should help motivate those students that simply refuse to read? This is a question that I have thought about a lot and still wonder what the best strategy to use would be. I want to be able to create a meaningful learning space for all students even though not all show the interest in learning. I really think that learning some techniques on what to do with students who refuse to read and who lack interest would be a beneficial thing for myself.

                Wilhelm also mentions how he often saw the types of literature read by the students as not having deep meaning behind them and believing that they were mostly easy reads until he immersed himself in these types of novels. I could strongly relate to this from my experience in Culturally Diverse Literature with Shannon. In this class, it was the first time I had ever even heard or seen a graphic novel. I admit that at first glance I thought that it would be an easy read with little meaning too it, but my initial thought quickly changed. Throughout the course, I learned how to break down the meanings of these novels and realized that they often had very strong meanings behind them and led to important messages that we learn from today’s most “common” literature stories. I learned that just because a text might look easy it isn’t always necessarily the case which I think is important to know when thinking about children’s literature. The same goes with the new media literacy that we talked about in class and how many students use online forums and gaming as a type of literature. I personally would have never viewed this as relating to literacy until we discussed how in today’s world it can be seen as a type of literacy as long as it’s not the only type of reading being done. Speaking of reading not being done, I was shocked when I read how experts estimated that the “average child spends less than 5 minutes a day reading” (Wilhelm 52). This must be changed!!

                From Chapter 3, I gained a lot of ideas that might be good to incorporate into my future classroom. I liked the idea of literary letters. This would allow students to practice their writing skills as well as summarizing and telling me about how they read and what they liked. I think that it combines a lot of useful literacy skills together. It also talked about using SRI or the “Symbolic Representation Interview”. This initial concept sort of confused me and I’m not sure if I would be able to use it effectively in my classroom even though it helps with scaffolding a lesson. I think other ways may be more effective to present to my own students that I feel more passionate about. I also found it interesting that girls showed a tendency for perspective-taking, whereas boys were more for visualizing. I think this shows that it is very important to use variety in your teaching methods so that all students have a chance to learn material in their best learning style.

                There were many more ideas that I would love to bring to the classroom that I gained from just reading about the specific student’s responses to certain literature that they read. I liked the comment made by the student Joanne where she explained how in her mind she would write letters of advice to the character. I think that this could be a great writing assignment in which students could get a chance to interact with the characters of their book and gain a better understanding as well. Along these lines of writing, I also like the idea of making a creative writing prompt and having students respond to what they would do if they faced a situation similar to that of one of the characters in their novel which would require them to really put thought into the story. Also, I really like the idea of having students create their own ending to a story. I often was required to do this in my younger days, and it was fun to be creative. It felt like you had control over something important. Besides writing, I think that there are some effective ways to make reading seem not boring that I would like to try. One thing was role playing. I never enjoyed this in school but many students do. When I observed in an 8^th grade language arts classroom, they often did role playing of different key parts of chapters in the story and they were always thrilled to do this! It made them get excited and really think about what is happening in the story so I think that incorporating this into my classroom at times could be effective for many students and help bring other students out of their shells, which I think is what I needed. One of the biggest things that I would like to try though would be to turn my classroom into a visual scene of whatever story we are reading at the time. I think that this visual could create excitement among the classroom and interest students of all levels to really get into the story line. It could also help the lower level reading students gain an understanding of what the setting of the story really is, which could ultimately help them better understand the whole story. There are so many different ideas and strategies that I would love to try in a classroom and I can’t wait to get the chance! I know not all will be successful, but learning from my mistakes and seeing what really works will be half the fun!