3321 M&W Ch. 2 Culture

Before being introduced to this chapter about culture in class, I wasn't aware of how big of a role culture plays in the classroom. It wasn't really something that I put much thought into before, but now I am well aware of how important each student's individual culture is. Whenever Mrs. Pickett gave us the example of how her friend helped the student who was from Germany (I believe), the teacher's actions were something that I would have thought of doing myself. After all, our first instinct as teachers is to help the students in any way that we can! But if you are not aware of the different cultures of your students, and the beliefs that they hace, then it is very eary to step on the toes of them and their famiy members. Even doing a kind act can get teachers in a tremendous amount of trouble, so we need to be aware and take the time to learn each of our studne's cultures and backgrounds. I am getting certified in EC-6, so because the number of children in our elementary classrooms is not too big, this shouldn't be too difficult of a task. However, it must be very difficult for those who are going to teach from 6-12 grades due to the vast amount of students these teachers have.

A simple way to learn our student's cultures is by doing the "All about me" projects the first week of school. Without directly asking "what is your culture", we are able to obtain information about our children in a manner that is fun for them. I know that whenever I was in school growing up, I loved to do the projects what were about me, my family, and my life. Like Mrs. Pickett said, it won't be a problem getting the children to talk about themselves and their lives, the problem can actually be getting them to stop! I look forward to doing these sorts of activities in my classroom once I become a teacher, and I know that every year I will have more and more ideas that are going to progressively get better :)

This week I chose three books that I recomend you read to your students! The first book on my list is Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary. This is a book about a kindergartenet named Ramona who is quite the little firecracker! This is a great beginner chapter book to read aloud in the class every day, and they will be excited to find out the adventures that Ramona will encounter next!

The second book that I chose is the classic Charlotte's Wed by E.B. White. Now I am sure we are all familiar with this story, and I personally couldn't imagine never having been taught it! It is quite the tear jerker, however it is a novel about friendship and the children are going to learn how they should treat their friends from reading this. There is also the move Charlotte's Web, so after finishing the book your calss can have a movie day to wrap it up!

The last final book I chose is Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atawter. This is a classic children's book that has been around since the 1930's! This is just one of those fun silly stories that is really fun to read, and is great for first graders as well!

And last but not least, a great website I found is http://www.greatschools.net . There I found a tremendous list of books that are organized by grade level. I plan on going back to this site to learn more about which books are going to be good for me to incorporate intor my teafching, and I hope you will go take a look around the site. It is very easy to navigate especially since they organize it by grade level!