Course Epilogue
Dear Card-Carrying Storytellers,
Our time together has come to an close but not an end. Your awareness of children's literature has grown by the content of your children's literature website. Your booklists are the beginning of your best practices of what great teachers do. They read, especially reading and keeping current with children's literature.
As effective teachers remember that learning revolves around stories of all kinds. Tell them, encourage them, make them up, draw them out of your students; let them tell their stories, write their stories; pretend and role play. Give them opportunities to play with characters and events. This gives them more to think and write about.
Above all let them see you as a reader and writer. When they are writing, you are writing. Share stories you are reading with them. Provide a rich literacy environment that includes books in various media- books in print, books online, audiobooks, playaways. Reading and writing are synonymous. Share your writing with your students. Share your poetry. Poetry is such a fun and less intimidating place to start. Jokes and riddles bring out the playful side and involve sophisticated levels of languaging: retelling, memory, critical thinking.
I hope you will feel free to explore literature circles to maximize conversations about stories and connecting to them. One thing I ask you to remember is when you read-read with energy. Become different character voices. Practice more than just merely reading. Deliver the words with expression and purpose for your listeners. If you are going to read to your students-take time, take focus and take attitude, a children's theater actor once told me. Give your students something to listen to. Modeling this will ensure that they they too will become good readers also!
I have enjoyed meeting your characters and your stories: Apu, Annalise, Arnold, Cassady, Cindy, Eloise, Grandmo Betty, Larry & Whitney. Please remember your playful characters when encouraging your students to improvise with stories.
Thank you for the gift of your stories this semester. Our JEOPARDY GAME is waiting for you!
Posted by unm443
at 5:24 PM MST
Updated: Monday, 10 December 2007 7:09 PM MST