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Standard 1-2 Reflection

Page history last edited by Stemmy 12 years, 6 months ago

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Standard 1.2 Literacy and reading

Candidates are aware of major trends in reading material for children and youth.  Candidates select materials in multiple formats to address the needs and interests of diverse young readers and learners.  Candidates use a variety of strategies to promote leisure reading.  They model their personal enjoyment of reading in order to promote the habits of creative expression and lifelong reading.

 

Artifacts:

  • Practicum Elementary and Secondary:
    • Both:  Book Talks
    • Elementary:  Book Recommendation Table, Book purchase recommendations
    • Secondary: Strive for 25, Scary Stories Day

 

            Reading material selection and promotion is an important task for librarians, especially today with a number of reluctant readers.  I feel a number of artifacts meet with Standard 1.2 regarding reading, reading material, and strategies.  The first two of these artifacts were in EDUC 717, and those are multicultural text sets.  One text set is an individual endeavor on a topic of my choosing the other is a group project based around literature from a specific culture.

            My individual text set’s topic was Fractured Fairy Tales.  A fairy tale is a story practically every person has heard and exists in every culture.  What I tried to do, was find some common tales that many people have heard but have been changed in some way to fit a different culture.  Some stories are Bubba the Cowboy Prince, which is a play on the Cinderella story; Pretty Salma:  A Little Red Riding Hood Story from Africa, the title is self-explanatory; and Los Tres Pequeños Jabalíes, a southwestern three little pigs.

            I feel this text set meets the 1.2 Standard as the materials meet a diverse group of readers.  I think the stories would capture the interest of many different readers as some of these universal and timeless tales are told from different cultures or perspectives.  These stories may also “promote the habits of creative expression” as they may be inclined to write their own fracture tale.  I was inspired to create this text set by an article I read for EDUC 717 that discussed a lesson where students picked out the differences between the fractured tale and the original.  Students were also asked to rewrite a tale from the villain’s point of view, so I feel this text set would work well in a P-12 setting and plan to use it in a way similarly to the author.

            The group text set was based on Native American culture and a very educational experience.  Our group worked together and selected a range of texts based on the Native American culture, some well known others not so much.  One thing I did learn was the range of material in children’s fiction for this culture was limited.  We found a number of stories that would do well in the Everybody section of a library and few books for higher-level readers.  Our search was limited to local libraries, as we needed to have the physical books for our presentation.  However, I feel if I conducted this search in the future when I am a media specialist, Titlewave would provide more materials for higher-level readers at the Elementary level.

            Two artifacts within SCED 518 meet Standard 1.2; the first is the Alternative Book Reports.  The alternative book reports are just that, instead of writing a report, students create something else that would show their knowledge of the text like a song, poem, bookmark, comic book, etc.  These alternative reports are a great way of testing a student’s knowledge while allowing them to use their creativity.

            The key assignment for this class is the second artifact, which is a rewrite of a chapter from Adolescent Literature as a Compliment to the Classics.  For this assignment, I took out the information in each section of the chapter and added the information I found.  The purpose was to find ways to teach classical literature using young adult books; engaging activities and assignments one of which utilized the alternative book report assignment; movies; websites; articles; and even songs.  I feel this artifact meets all parts of Standard 1.2, as the educator can follow the trends and choose the appropriate young adult literature to accompany the classical texts; and the assignments and activities use a variety of strategies to teach the content, which will hopefully promote reading similar young adult books and allow students to showcase their creativity.  I would hope to collaborate with English teachers and perhaps Social Studies teachers in the future to see if we could include some or all of the ideas within this key assignment in their own lessons.  I say Social Studies teachers because English teachers have combined reading assignments (Out of the Dust, The Killer Angels) with lessons in Social Studies classes.

            In ISTC 615, we reviewed three journal articles; one of the journal articles I completed was on selecting reading materials.  This article discussed ways the librarian involved students in the selection of books for the library and I thought it was ingenious.  Students who were stronger readers were chosen to learn about the selection process in the library.  After being taught about the selection process, the students picked out books not in the collection and looked up reviews for the books.  Students are taken on a field trip to pick out the books from a bookstore, and are given recognition in the library with a display of the books they chose and their names on a list.  I feel this is a wonderful way to select materials for students as the students are doing the selecting.

            During my practicum experience, I feel I met all of Standard 1.2 though a number of activities.  In my Elementary placement, I conducted book talks with students regarding, the Black Eyed Susan books for this year, and I read a number of books with the students.  I also recommended a few books I felt were appropriate for higher-level students when my mentor was conducting a book order.  We also set up for the first time a book recommendation table where students could pick out a book they like and put it on the table with a slip sticking out of it that had their name on it.  The kids really enjoyed recommending books, as the whole table filled by the end of the day and was never lacking in books.

            In my Secondary experience, we conducted a reading achievement program called Strive for 25 where students strove to read 25 books by the end of the year.  For every five books the students read, they were rewarded with a treat they could choose.  When they reached twenty-five, they could choose a graphic to color and write their name on, to be placed on a large bulletin board outside the library.

            What I feel is my major strategy, is book talks.  Every Friday at my secondary placement was a book talk day.  My mentor would choose a theme and talk about books that fell under that theme.  Teachers would sign up months in advance and normally an entire subject area in one grade would attend (for example all of the 7th grade science classes).  I modeled my book talks after my mentor’s style, which was to pull books for specific reading levels and gear the books towards the level of the students attending.  The reaction of the students to the books was fantastic, halfway through the day we would need to run through the stacks to find more books relating to the topic, as the students would check out nearly all of them.  This was an amazing experience that I will try to use in elementary and would definitely use in secondary.  The only way I could think of enhancing this strategy would be to have a suggestion box of sorts for students to suggest the topic of the next book talk to get them more involved.

            Finally, I found this one artifact highly entertaining along with the students and faculty.  The week of Halloween my Secondary placement mentor turned her book talk day into Scary Story day and turned the library into a graveyard.  It was incredible, the students were extremely excited and motivated to be there, unfortunately not every student in the school was able to attend and a few were disappointed their teachers could not sign up.  My mentor, the teachers, and I read a number of short scary stories leaving the students excited about reading, and our shelves lacking the scary story books for over a month.  It was a wonderful twist on the book talks and it is something I will use in the future.

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