Monday, November 23, 2009

Monday-11-23-09-Class Presentations

Presentation 1: Water, Sun, and Moon
I really enjoyed the presentation and the use of the costumes. The costumes helped keep me focused and interested in the lesson. The group demonstrated that they were able to work together. It appeared that they collaborated very well. I also liked how they had the class participate by holding up a fish. This would keep the students focused and listening so they would know when to hold up the fish. The would be actively engaged in the lesson. Good job.

Presentation 2: Recycling
I enjoyed the powerpoint presentation of the book and the music. It was a good lesson on recycling since we are trying to take care of the world. I liked how we had to sort out pictures of objects and place them in the correct recycling bin. This is a good hands on activity to get all the students involved. Good lesson.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Guided Reading Websites

I looked up several websites for Guided Reading. Since my wife started using Guided Reading last year but the last half of the year. She has the book "Guided Reading: Good Frist Teaching For All Children" by Irene C. Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell (1996). They have had training and this year used the Fountas and Pinnell Assessment and CD ROM to input all their data. She says that the Assessments pretty much were even with how she had grouped her students. The following are some interesting websites about Guided Reading. A lot of good information.
Guided Reading Websites
A. http://www.readinga-z.com/
This website has everything you need to teach reading. It has leveled readers, benchmark books and running records, reading lessons and worksheets, fluency passages, and assessments and much more.

B. http://www.mrsjonesroom.com/teachers/guidedreading.html
This website gives you a whole list of Guided Reading websites.

C. http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/guided_reading.html#ResourcesandReferences
Gives you a lot of information about shared and guided reading. Has a link to skills and strategies to focus on, leveling books, running records, where to find leveled sets of emergent readers etc.

D. Websites with Emergent Readers to download:
http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/printable_booklets.html
http://www.kinderbeesprintables.com/printablesindex.html#september
http://www.marcias-lesson-links.com/VeryEmergentReaders.html

E. http://www.lindaslearninglinks.com/gdrdgkdg.html
This website gives you a peek at how to do guided reading in kindergarten. She gives you exactly what you have to do Monday through Friday. She includes some neat Literacy Center Activities.
There are many good websites out there but these are just a few.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Read Aloud

I watched the video on the read aloud and found it rather interesting. I found the concept of text to text connections interesting. It makes the students think of how the book the teacher was reading makes them think of another book they have read. This is good to discuss similarities and differences between books. This is a good comprehension tool. Students were given an opportunity to share their text to text connection. Student's are asked to predict what is going to happen in the story. Then they read to see if their predictions are correct. The teacher had good classroom management. I liked the way she brought the class back together by stating,"come back to me in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." Great way to get them back to focus on the lesson and book. The teacher kept the students actively engaged by asking questions througout the reading of the story. I liked how she would say "a good reader would" then she would state something a good reader would do and she would model it. This is good because students need to see that the teacher is doing it. I think this has more of an impact on the student than just telling them what to do. Great video.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Chapter 9-Non Fiction

Nonfiction literature encompasses nonfiction or informational books as well as biographies. These types of books get us wondering about certain things. I found the elements of nonfiction interesting. I didn't know that the format of the book is how it works as a whole. Some of the elements are format (size, shape, book covers, endpapers, typeface, and distinctive markings, Visual information, Access Features, Accuracy, Style, and Organization.
I also didn't know like fiction that there were som many different types. The different types include: concpet books, informational picture storybooksp, photographic essays, survey books, specialized books, journals, diaries, sketchbooks and documents, life-cycle books, Activity/craft, experiment and how to books, identification books/field guides, reference books and biographies.
I also find in interesting and helpful that each chapter provides a guideline for choosing literature. This guideline can be found on page 237.
I also liked the use of graphic organizers. children can use them to document the information that they have gathered reading nonfiction books. I have observed the use of the KWL Chart, the comparison charts, and the semantic mapping in my wife's kindergarten classroom. She is a strong believer in graphic organizers.
Great and informative Chapter.

Non-Fiction Books

If You Lived in Colonial Times by Ann Mcgovern.
This book takes a look at the various customs and dress of the Colonial age. This is a good book to use during Thanksgiving to compare the life, customs and dress of the Pilgrims to how we live, our customs, and how we dress today.
Click on link to view book: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780590451604-4

The Diary of a Young Girl by Ann Frank.
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary is a reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.
Click on the link to view the book:
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=17-9780553296983-13

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Lon Po Po- a Chinese Version of Little Red Riding Hood

COMPARING FAIRY TALES
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND LON PO PO

Question Lon Po Po Little Red Riding Hood
By Charles Perrault
How many children
are main characters? 3 1



Where we meet
the wolf? Beginning of the Story:
Wolf comes to the house. In the woods.

What the characters
call the Grandmother? Po Po Grandmother




Where the mother is during
the wolf’s visit with the children? Visiting Grandmother At home


Who saves the children? The children save themselves No one


What happens to the wolf? He dies. He eats the girl

How the story ends? The mother returns Wolf eats Little Red
with baskets of food from Riding Hood
the real Po Po and the three
sisters tell their mother about
the Po Po who had visited them.


I would use these stories to teach:
· comparing similarities and differences
· Story Elements
· Sequence of events
· Making Predictions
· Using Illustrations
· Making Inferences
· Rewrite the end of the story
· Pretend you are one of the girls, how would you tell your mother what happened?
Here are a couple of good websites I found that have some neat lessons.
“Little Red Riding Hood”- http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html
Creative Connections: http://www.teachervision.fen.com/folk-tales/resource/7940.htmlLesson on Comparing and Contrasting: http://www.vickiblackwell.com/lit/lonpopo.html
Lon Po Po: A Chinese Fairytale Lesson Plan
By Elizabeth Mazzurco website: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/lessonplan.jsp?id=658&print=1


Other versions:
Little Red Riding Hood (Charles Perrault). Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten up by the wolf in the end.
Little Red Cap (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm). In this story although the grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood get eaten up by the wolf, a huntsman was passing by and heard the wolf snoring and said that couldn’t possibly be a woman snoring. He cut the wolf’s belly and out came Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.
Little Red Hood (Germany/Poland). Same ending as Little Red Cap. The girl and her grandmother get eaten by the wolf, a huntsman comes by and cuts the wolf’s belly open and out skips Little Red Riding Hood and later out comes her grandmother barely alive.
Little Red Hat (Italy/Austria). In this story it is not a wolf but an ogre who gobbles Little Red Riding Hood up at the end of the story.
The Grandmother (France). The girl meets a werewolf. Just as she is about to get in bed with the werewolf she realizes that it isn’t her grandmother. She tells the werewolf she has to go to the bathroom. The werewolf ties a string to her foot and gives her enough string to go outside to do her business. As soon as the girl gets outside she cuts the string and runs away. The werewolf jumps out of bed to follow her but gets to her house right when she walks inside.
The True History of Little Golden-Hood (Charles Marelles). In this story the girl is called Little Golden Hood. In the end when the wolf tries to eat the girl (Blanchette or Little Golden Hood) she puts her head down and begins to cry for her MaMa. As she lowers her head the wolf gets a snip of her red hood and it begins to burn his throat.

I didn't know there were that many different versions. All were about the same with slight variations. I only knew about Lon Po Po as my wife had the book and told me it was good for comparing and contrasting and teaching of Chinese Culture. I hope you enjoy the information.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Historical Fiction

My favorite fiction is Historical Fiction. here are a few books and websites.
Prehistoric and Ancient Time

Julius Lester
"Pharaoh's Daughter: A Novel of Ancient Egypt"
Egyptian princess, Batya, rescues a Hebrew infant who becomes a prophet to his people, while his sister finds her true self as a priestess to the Egyptian gods. Lester (To Be a Slave) creates a captivating story and a compelling portrait of a Moses torn between two cultures, from the time of his discovery in the bulrushes to his solo flight to Midian.
Short cut to view book: http://www.librarything.com/work/546439

Another book, one of my favorite books is:
"East of Eden" by John Steinbeck.
The story is primarily set in the Salinas Valley, California, between the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the Great War (World War I), though some chapters are in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the story goes as far back as the American Civil War.
I had to read this book in my American Literature class last Spring. I am not fond of reading lengthy books but this book was good. The book explores themes of depravity, beneficence, love, and the struggle for acceptance, greatness, and the capacity for self-destruction and especially of guilt and freedom. It ties these themes together with references to and many parallels with the biblical Book of Genesis (especially Genesis Chapter 4, the story of Cain and Abel). East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952. East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories. Steinbeck wrote this story for his two sons and wanted to describe the Salinas Valley for them in detail: the sights, sounds, smells, and colors.
Short cut to view the book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EastOfEden.jpg

Early Twentieth Century (1900-1939)
Curtis
"Bud, Not Buddy"
Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father. The story is written in the first person so the reader comes to know Bud's thoughts and feelings right away: the longing for a father and a permanent home. I particularly like his "Rules for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself" that guides his actions and his fear of vampires. This is a really good book.
This website gives you a web-base unit to do with this book and it has a picture of the book: http://eduscapes.com/reading/bud/

There are many other historical eras that I like but I would be here all night. Anyway these are just a few. Enjoy!!