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Welcome to our Children's Literature course blog. Our blog houses a multitude of resources for your use during our course and after the course is completed. Please take time to peruse the table of contents to the left and use the resources as needed. Here's to our reading together!
Frances
As away to document our learning experiences, each week one of us will be responsible for highlighting the events of our class session. You have creative license in how you do this depending on your style, time and energy. The schedule is below:
Frances | 1/26 & 5/11 |
Daniel | 2/2 & 4/6 |
Tina | 2/9 & 4/13 |
Kristin | 2/16 & 4/20 |
Roderick | 2/23 & 5/4 |
Sarah
| 3/2 & 3/9
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Shelly
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3/16 & TZ Poetry Slam
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Nicole
| 3/30 & Tibbetts Poetry Slam
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Dear Children's Literature Students,
Welcome to our Spring 2009 semester. You are in for a fun adventure as we immerse ourselves in: reading lots of children's literature; talking about literature; working with Tibbetts Middle School students in a Poetry Slam practicum; performing creative drama; writing our own poetry; researching literature genres and literary elements.
Thank you for your understanding with my creative friend Maxime, the French Chef. I have to remember he means well and he is passionate about anything he undertakes. Maxime wanted me to ask you your thoughts about his visit to our children's literature class today. Please post your comments below so he can stop pestering me.
To post your comments, just click on the words "Post Comment" below, enter your comments and click send. Your message will be uploaded so that you will be able to read your message and other response postings.
Thank you, Frances & Maxime!
Hope you all enjoyed the Storytelling Festival October 9-11, 2008.
Thank you for posting your midterm reflections. Your insight about your own learning is another level of gaining confidence and independence as readers of children's literature and equally becomes a learning tool for both of us to assess your progress over time.
I appreciate your suggestions and will incorporate them into the rest of our time together.
Thank you.....................Frances
WEEKLY SCRIBES, thank you for posting your session highlights here. Remember, these highlights are a way of documenting what happened in class and leaves a story trail of our time together. A brief overview is fine.
Please take note of your scheduled times below and be responsible in posting before the next class session:
Sept. 8..........Tammie | Sept. 15........Devin |
Sept. 22........Amber G.| Sept. 29........Ami |
Oct. 6.............Kelly | Oct.13...........Valerie |
Oct. 20...........Elsie | Oct. 27...........Rebekah
Nov. 3........Elise (Mary) | Nov. 10.........Sarah | Nov. 17.........Elsie
Nov. 24.......Frances | Dec. 1............TBA |
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WELCOME Storied Readers to our Fall 2008 Children's Literature class. Stories are what propels us in being human! As Bruce Perry reminds us, "We are storytelling primates." Stories are what we do best. So during this course we will be exploring genres of stories, telling stories, enjoying others' stories, reading stories, sharing stories, discussing stories, engaging others in stories that will culminate in our story which will be memorable after our course is completed. You will carry these stories with you to share with others and to add to. The best teachers are good storytellers. So our journey begins!
We will have an opportunity to collaborate with students and teachers from Tibbetts Middle School this semester as we learn about engaging in talking about stories, assessing and redirecting in authentic experiences. We will become familiar with America's Choice Reading Program and teach within its context.
Please see this time as an opportunity to marinate (Harvey Daniels' epression) in stories you have been wanting to read, never would have read, you don't know about yet, that have yet to find you. Do not read because you HAVE to but because you WANT to, familiarizing yourself with children's authors and stories so you may be the spark-the catalyst- for children's storied development. Your stories will become new friends for you to share with the children you teach.
Children's author Katherine Patterson said:
(Katherine Patterson Quotes at http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_wonderful_thing_about_books_is_that_they/345500.html)
As a class family we will engage in a playful LATENESS POLICY as follows: If more than 10 minutes late to class, you (including instructor) will tell a story. The only stipulation is that it can be anything but the TRUTH. So fabrications, exaggerations, elaborations are expected and appreciated.
Again, welcome to our playful learning and storied environment!
Your host who welcomes all characters.................. Frances
WEEKLY SCRIBES, thank you for posting your session highlights here. Remember, these highlights are a way of documenting what happened in class. A brief overview is fine.
1/28 MARY | 2/4 FRANCES | 2/11 BARBARA |
2/18 SARAH | 2/25 CHRISTINE |
3/3 NIKKI | 3/10 SHANTEL | 3/17 NANCY | 3/31 ANNA |
4/7 CHELSEA | 4/14 FREDERICK | 4/21 volunteer | 4/28 volunteer
5/5 FRANCES
Dear Readers of Children's Literature,
Welcome to our Spring 2008 class. This semester you will have the opportunity of reading lots of children's and young adult literature. Please use this semster as a time to luxuriate in the rich literature being written for children. We will aslo have a practicum opportunity to work with Penny Smith & Beth McDaniels-Hill's 6th graders. We will be planning and teaching content part of AMERICA"S CHOICE Reading Program. You will meet and observe the sixlets before you actually do any teaching.
There will be much playful and imaginative fun in class as well. My pedagogical perspective is, we must be able to tap into our childlike, playful and imaginative selves in order to engage our students into the world of literature. This semester we will practice creative drama in an informal, nurturing and supportive class environment with the hope you will continue this with your own students. Come ready to play and improvise.
No doubt you will probably meet meet Maxime, the French Chef. Please provide a reflection of your impressions of Maxime's visit below. Maxime would want to know what you thought. He's a reflective kind of guy!
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!
