3321 M&W Author Profile: Mary Ann Hoberman

Mary Ann Hoberman is a wonderful children’s author who writes books and poems. She was born on August 12, 1930, and says that since she was a little girl she knew that she wanted to write and be an author. Some of her more famous books include the You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You series. These books are fun stories to read any time, but especially for one on one reading like at bedtime. You can take turns with the child, you read one page, and they read the next. There are four books in this series, all which are delightful! I really did enjoy her website http://www.maryannhoberman.com. There you can easily find all of her books she has written, her poems, a biography, and other links. I really like how the book section is put together; it is a picture of the cover page of all of her books. This makes it especially easy to remember the book whenever you go to the bookstore! I remember seeing so many of her books at Barnes and Nobles whenever I was there last :)

3321 M&W Author Profile: Frog and Toad Are Friends

This week’s author profile is on the book Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel. This is such a great book for children ages 4-8 and is about the two wonderful friends who are great role models for children. The duo goes on all sorts of adventures together through out the five stories and they experience many embarrassing things. Things like being seen in your bathing suit (we all were embarrassed when this would happen to us), looking for lost buttons, waiting for mail, and waking up after hibernation. Children will be able to relate to these stories with friendships of their own and experiences that they have been through with their friends. A really cool website that I found, http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/frog/frogtg.html, has all sorts of activities and lessons that go along with the book. There are activities such as making an origami frog, activities about friends, and children will make their own description of what a frog looks like. It’s a good resource for teachers to use and tweak to make their own!

3321 M&W Author Profile: Mercer Mayer

Mercer Mayer has published over 300 children’s books, which he not only writes but illustrates as well. He is best known for the Little Critter books that he writes and illustrates, and these are books that I absolutely loved as a child! They are so much fun! On his website I read that most of the books he writes are about things that happened to him whenever he was a kid, and also about things that happen to his children now that he is grown up. The little critter books are about a family of critters, there are Little Critter, his mom and dad and little sister and little brother. My personal favorite book of the series is Merry Christmas Mom and Dad. In this book, Little Critter gets ready for Christmas and is very excited about being a good helper. He tries to do all sorts of things like help wrap the presents, buy presents for his parents, and hang up Christmas lights. But even though he means well, he ends up getting overwhelmed and tangled up in everything. It’s a very funny book, and great for around Christmas time.
The Mercer Mayer website that I liked the best is http://www.littlecritter.com. Here there are interactive games, an art gallery, coloring pages, sing-a-longs, and interactive read and plays. Children will love this website!

3321 Group 2 Presentation 11/30: Pink and Say

The second group to present today did their presentation using the book Pink and Say. This story was definitely a tearjerker, but it was such a wonderful tale of the courage and friendship between the two characters. This would definitely be a great book to use with older kids, middle school for sure, whenever studying the Civil War. I loved how the group members each took turns reading different sections of the story; it made it easier to pay attention since everybody did it a little different. I also enjoyed the activity that we did, and it they had us write about the character Pink in a creative way. They did a great job!

3321 M&W Author Profile: Lois Lowry

The author that I am writing about today is Lois Lowry. A book that she is very well known for is Number the Stars, and is the tale of a young little girl who lives in Denmark in 1943 during World War II. The young girl, Annemarie Johansen, has to courageously help her family smuggle the Jewish out of Denmark, and amongst these is her best friend, Ellen Rosen. This book shows us how even in a time of war and terror there is still a sense of pride that we all have, as well as human decency. This story obviously isn’t for young children, but it is a great book to have in your classroom for the older classes.
This author’s website is http://www.lowry.com and has a lot of neat things contained in it. Her biography of course can be found there, along with descriptions of her books, and speeches. You should go take a look!

3321 M&W Group Presentations 11/30: The Empty Pot

This group did their genre presentation over the Chinese folktale The Empty Pot and how that book tied in with integrity. I especially enjoyed how they had the book projected up on the screen so that we were able to all see the detailed illustrations. It was a nice change from your usual read aloud. I thought that it was great how they took the time to do a book walk before reading the story; this gave us time to take a look at the beautiful illustrations, and would have been a great way to get the children interested in the story if this was in a real classroom. I enjoyed how the activity that the group gave us to do; the worksheet with the empty pot and we wrote our definition of integrity in it and shared with the class. I think that this is an activity that students would have enjoyed doing. They did a great job!

3321 M&W 11/25 Presentations and Author Profile on Marcia Thornton Jones

I was absent and missed the first day of presentations, but I did hear that the groups did a fantastic job. I was told that there was a skit acted out with masks and all, and my fellow group members were a little scared after seeing this presentation. That means they did a great job!

For my author profile this week, I am focusing on Marcia Thornton Jones. She is a best selling children’s author and has over 126 books published! She is best known for the Adventures of the Bailey School Kids series. This series is made up of over 80 books, and children just love to read them (I know I did whenever I was a child). In each of the books the Bailey School Kids encounter a seemingly innocent character, like their teacher or school custodian, who might be a mythical character like a vampire or ghost! Children will read this and the whole time be wondering if the character really is mythical or not, and of course finds out at the end.
These chapter books are fun for 5th graders, and there are now the Bailey School Kids “Jr.” chapter books series for 2nd to 4th graders. The URL to her wonderful website is http://www.marciatjones.com/

3321 M&W Author Profile: Tomie Depaola

For this author profile I decided to focus on Tomie Depaola since the read aloud video was on one of his books. Tomie Depaola is a well known children’s author who had been published for over forty years and not only writes but illustrates as well. All in all he has written and illustrated over 200 books in his time and is still giving us more. His works have been recognized with numerous awards including the Newbery Honor Award and the Caldecott Honor Award.
Probably his most famous book is titled Strega Nona, a book that he illustrated himself as well. It is about an elderly lady who always helps out the people of her village by doing things like curing headaches, getting rid of warts, and helping single ladies find husbands. She needs help doing some chores, so Big Anthony comes to help her do them. She warns him not to touch her magic pasta pot, but he doesn’t listen and whenever she is away he uses it to serve pasta to the community. He doesn’t know how to turn it off, so the whole town ends up getting flooded with pasta, and as a punishment he must eat all that pasta. It is a very cute book!
The website that I found is his official website and the URL is http://www.tomie.com. There is a biography about Tomie, his artwork, his stories, and information on being an artist. It’s very interesting and you should check it out!

332 M&W Reply to Good Read Aloud Video

This teacher performing the read aloud did a wonderful job! I loved how she reminded her students of the text-to-text connections before she began the book, this way they could be thinking of them while she is reading. Something else I really liked was how she obviously has taught her students about the different parts of the book and she asked them what the dedication page was and they raised their hands and knew right away. She did a great job of keeping the book and illustrations in view of her students, and didn’t read the book to herself and then show them the pictures after she read the page (I’ve seen this many times). The one thing that I know you told us never to do when reading to our students was sit above them and that is what she is doing. She isn’t eye level with them, and she could have sat on the floor with them. She did a great job of explaining what the Italian words were to her students, and didn’t just ignore it and assume that they knew what the word meant. I loved how she interacted with her students throughout the book, this was a great way of keeping them engaged and interested in the story. This video was a great example of how to conduct a proper read aloud and I am glad I was exposed to it. Thanks :)

3321 Author Profile: Hans Christian Anderson

The author that I decided to speak about this week is Hans Christian Andersen. This Danish author wrote classic children’s stories and poems. He is an oldie, born April 2, 1805 and died August 4, 1875, but definitely a goody! Some of his most famous fairy tales include “The Little Mermaid”, “Thumbelina”, and “The Ugly Duckling” just to name a few. His stories are readily available to us and can go well in the classroom especially since many have been made into motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films and they have been translated into 150 + languages! A great gook that I found is called Hans Christian Anderson: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories and it is an accumulation of all of his works into one book. Due to the fact that he has written so many pieces, it is over 1,000 pages but I think that it would be a great piece for a teacher to have that could be used for read alouds and story time. You can purchase it for only $16.32 off of Amazon! Here is a cool website that I found on Hans Christian Anderson http://hca.gilead.org.il/ and it has all sorts of information varying from his life, to detailed information on his works and links to the actual stories. It was pretty neat and could be used for all sorts of things!

3321 M&W Guided Reading Websites

A great website that I found that was great for guided reading resources is called www.readinga-z.com. They had quite a large amount of options that you can choose from, and there were literally thousands of books, lesson plans, worksheets, assessments, etc that you could print off right from your own computer. But there was a BIG problem that I did not really like in this website…you had to pay to access this information; $59.95-$84.95 per class for one year! This was a major turn off so I went and found a different website :) but I did decide to blog about it anyways in case any of you are willing to spend that type of money!

So the next website that I came across was absolutely amazing! It is called roythezebra.com and I tried out some of the different links on there and had so much fun, children would definitely enjoy this website. It is an interactive reading website for emerging readers and there are interactive reading games (that are actually fun :0), guided reading stories, literacy worksheets, and songs. And these are only the free things that this website has to offer. They have a reading store that you can purchase reading software off of. The reason I enjoyed this website so much was because this would be something that children can do not only at school but at home as well to help their reading skills. And it is fun so they will be excited about learning! You should really go check it out the URL is http://www.roythezebra.com.

3321 M&W Nonfiction

This week we learned all about the nonfiction genre of literature. I have got to say, I look at nonfiction in a completely different light now. Yes, I am one of those people who has always immediately categorized anything that is nonfiction as boring. I know that this is completely wrong, but before this class I always thought of nonfiction as things like our history text book (gag!) and I don't have any good memories concerning my old history text books!

I loved the examples that our professor brought to class! It especially interested me whenever we talked about The Magic School Bus. I was OBSESSED with The Magic School Bus growing up; I had every single book and never missed an episode of the show! I never actually stopped to think "hmm, is this fiction or nonfiction"? Without thinking it through the first thing that I want to answer is fiction, because "fiction is fake" and since it is a cartoon I don't automatically think of it as real. But the things that these books and television episodes teach are scientific facts and children really learn a lot from them. I suppose this is where the "faction" category comes in, and I think that it is quite a catchy word that is very much common sense. It is perfect for teaching children about important things, and the small fiction or cartoon (I'm not saying they're the same thing) portion is what draws children in.

After reading and discussing chapter 9 I'm no longer afraid of being bored with nonfiction books. I definately want to have a lot of nonfiction books in my classroom, and I thought that the nonfiction/fiction scavenger hunt was a great idea; especially to introduce children to the nonfiction genre and break those horrible stereotypes. I plan on using that activity for sure in my future classroom!

3344 MGP Expository Piece

My topic for my MGP is pets! My narrative is a story about a dog who finds her perfect family, and my persuasive piece is about trying to convince my students and their parents to adopt a pet. For my expository piece I was going to do a "how to play fetch with your dog". I had a couple of ideas like "how to give your dog a bath", "how to feed your pet", and "how to take your dog on a walk" but I thought that "how to play fetch with your dog" would be the best to do. It is simple enough for first graders, and I have to keep it to just a couple of steps so it shouldn't be that difficult.

What I plan on doing is making some sort of visual (I haven't quite decided which kind yet) and have pictures of me actually doing the steps with my dog. Of course, first I thought of doing a poster board but that is way too generic and I want something different and creative. I've thought about making a video that actually shows me going through the steps of playing fetch with my dog, but I'm not sure if I'm good enough with technology to accomplish that! I would love to hear from ya'll to see if you might have any other ideas as far as which format I could use : )

3344: Stiletto Stoners

Since Dr. Harris wasn't in class on Wednesday, Mrs. Pickett told us to blog about the "Stiletto Stoner" article and how we feel about it. Personally, after going online and reading the whole article myself it was written in a light that made it okay that these women were going home every evening and getting baked. Then you scroll down to the bottom of the page and read the reply's and it's all these women saying things like "we need more women like this in control" or talk about how they are only 22, 23, etc. and saying that they are "successful" and smoke weed every night (hahaha....successful to them was $20,000/year). As an educator, this article was telling all of the children who read it that it is okay to be a stoner and if you smoke weed that you will be successful and empowered like these women. That is not the right message to send to our children! We spend a whole week, "Red Ribbon Week" talking to children about staying away from drugs, and "just say no" and have programs like the D.A.R.E. program and this article is going against all of this. I personally look at the Marie Claire magazine in a completely different light, and I don't plan on purchasing their magazine any time in the future. It's funny how much one article can change a person's mind about a particular product.

M & W 3321: The type of books I love to read!

We are supposed to talk about the types of books that we like to read, and the one thing that all books have in common that I enjoy reading is romance! I am a sucker for love and right now I am in love with the Twilight series. Oh my gosh I read these books and it is like nothing else is going on around me. I become one of the characters, and just get so wrapped up that the story becomes real. I consider a book to be good whenever I don't want to put it down, and I haven't found that in a very long time until I started reading the Twilight series. The thing is, I want to keep reading and reading but I don't want to read all of them and it will be over! Then I won't have anything to look forward to :( however I still have 3 books left! So maybe you guys will have some suggestions for me to read, just remember that I love the romance!

A woman who I babysit for shares my Twilight obsession and she recomended a book for me to read called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. She loaned me the book but it is still sitting in my backseat! I was told that it was a love story about a prostiture and a farmer in the 1850's and it is based off of a story from the Bible; all in all it is about the unshakeable love of God. I can't wait to read it! If any of you guys have any suggestions then please tell me!!

EDRG 3344 What is a Narrative?

What is a narrative?

A narrative is a type of writing that is distinguished by having a clear beginning, middle, and end. The author of a narrative has a goal to get his/her story across to readers and in order for them to successfully do this their narrative must have great detail that makes the reader get lost in the story. A narrative also has specific story elements such as a plot, setting (time and place), central characters, and usually a conflict and resolution. An example of a narrative is Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter. A couple of other examples that I personally LOVE are The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Willams, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, and Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. Each of these books have a very well defined beginning, middle, and end as well as vivid detail.

EDRG 3321 M&W Chapter 7

Today in class we learned all about picture books. I wanted to discuss some things that were brought up that I never really thought about before whenever I read picture books. It really made me think whenever we talked about how every single part of the picture book is meaningful. The artwork in these books are so detailed that many people take them for granted and it is a shame that they don't appreciate the complexity and detail. I personally never thought that the different colors used had any meaning or symbolism to them, I just thought that the pages were filled with simple drawings. The fact that these books that are so commonly labeled as "only for children" is so unfortunate. Something that I do love about picture books besides the artwork is the lines of text and how they vary so much depending on the mood that they depict. In my opinion whenever the text is printed in these ways the children become more engaged and focus more on reading the words because they are so eye catching and interesting.

For my author profile this week, I chose two books/authors to talk a little about; both are actually mentioned in chapter 7 of our text and I did further research on them. The first I want to share with you is What Do You Do With a Kangaroo? by Marcer Mayer. This book is about a little girl who has to figure out what to do whenever a bossy kangaroo jumps through her window and starts telling her what to do. The book has a very cute ending, but I don't want to give it away! Mercer Mayer is a great author who has been writing books for children for over forty years and I recomend that as teachers you own some of his books in your classroom library. Another great book is Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. This book is about a little boy Alexander who is having the absolute worst day. We get to follow him from waking up in the morning with gum in his hair, to all sorts of little things happening to him throughout the day. Children love this book because they can relate to Alexander, after all everybody has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. As adults we too can relate to this story because reading it will remind us of little ones that we know and how they can sometimes blow the littlest things completely out of perspective......and so do we!

3344 MGP Narrative

There once was a beautiful dog named Callie who wanted nothing more than a family to love her and take care of her. But the man who owned her was mean and scary, and always left Callie tied up to a chain in the front yard. Callie always saw the other dogs walking by with their families, and she decided that she would do whatever it took to get away and find one of her own. But how would she break free from her chain? Day and night she chewed and gnawed and tugged until finally, it broke and she was free! She ran and ran like she never had before, she wanted to get as far away as possible from that mean man and never go back. Suddenly a truck with cages in the back came up behind her and a person put a leash around her neck and put her in one of the cages. “Oh no” said Callie, “I’m never going to get to have a family now”.

That truck took her to a place where there were tons of other dogs and cats, all in bigger cages and all very sad. “Where am I” asked Callie to the dog in the cage next to her. “You’re in what humans call the pound; all of us animals without a home have to stay here until a nice family comes along and wants to adopt us and take us home” said the old dog. Callie stayed in this “pound” for weeks and watched different families come and go; they usually wanted the cute little puppies and never the big dogs like her. Even though the odds didn’t look good, she never gave up hope and was always prepared whenever visitors would come.

One day a little girl walked in and Callie could tell there was something special about her. She ran over to Callie’s cage and said “Mommy, mommy, I want this one! She’s so pretty, can I please have her?” But her mom said “Don’t you want this cute little puppy over here instead sweetie? Look how little he is!” The little girl had her heart set on Callie, and was already in the cage petting her and scratching her belly. As they put a brand new collar and leash around Callie’s neck, she said bye to all of her friends at the pound and got into the car with her new family.

They took her to their home, and walked her to the biggest backyard that Callie had ever been in! She ran in circles, fetched the ball, and had never had so much fun in her whole life! “This is it” thought Callie, “I finally have a home and have a family that loves me as much as I love them!” Every morning the little girl would take Callie outside to play and go potty, and then she would give her some breakfast before she left for school. Then in the afternoons she would come home and play all sorts of games with Callie; they went on walks together every day, and Callie absolutely loved whenever it was time to get a bath! They spent every second they could together, and were each other’s best friends. At night Callie no longer dreamed of finding a family because her family found her and loved her more than anything in the world.

3344: Memories!

Well, today in class we all took turns sharing some of our memories. There were some reallllly funny ones, and then there were extremely sad ones and I think we all got a little closer and understand each other a little bit more because of this. It was hard for me to decide which memory to share, but instead of explaining my sad memory I'll do this on a happy note and talk to you guys about my warm memory.

In class to represent my warm memory I brought an old card from my boyfriend that he had written a very special note to me in. Like I said today, we have been dating since I was 14 years old and he really is one of the most important people in my life (after all family is first and I do consider him family). I know we aren't married, but we have been through so much together and I really don't know what I would do without him. He has stood by my side through my toughest struggles and has seen me hit rock bottom, and then he has also been there and been the reason for many of my best memories! Whenever I am depressed or feeling down, he is always there supporting me and just is so caring that when I think of him and know he is there for me I just know everything is going to be alright. This is exactly the reason that I chose memories of him to represent warmth! He is my best friend, and he just feels like home to me....there isn't really words to describe it.

These memories really mean a lot to me because whenever he leaves for the Army in February these memories are all I'm going to have to keep me going and to give me faith whenever I know we aren't going to be able to talk to each other. I have a huge box full of things that represent our memories together....things from movie ticket stubs, to letters, to put put golf score cards, to old cards. You name it, and if we've done it together then I have some little something from that day or event in that memory box! I know to some of you, it may seem like "Oh my gosh, he's just her boyfriend calm down girl" because I am not married and I don't have children like many of you do, but if you have ever shared a love that is pure and great then you know exactly how I feel, and exaclty how Josh makes me feel <3

(I put two pictures of us at the top of the post....the one on the right was a goofy one when we were playing with my webcam our heads aren't really shaped funky like that lol)

3321 M&W: Author Eric Carle

This week I am going to focus on the great children's author Eric Carle. I grew up absolutely in love with his books, and to this day can remember being in first grade and reading his stories like the classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Many of you are probably already very familiar with Eric Carle, and know about his books. His first book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was pulished in 1967, and was a collaboration of his work and author Bill Martin Jr. whom I talked about last week. He is an author of over 40 books, some of which aren't even available to purchase in bookstores anymore. He not only writes his books, but also illustrates all of his work. His art work and illustrations are very distinct and stand out from all others. He uses a collage technique to create his artwork, and his books are all full of an array of colors. A couple of his books, such as The Very Lonely Firefly and The Very Quite Cricket come alive at the end with an "added dimension" such as a yellow light that lights up in The Very Lonely Firefly, and real life sound of a cricket at the end of The Very Quiet Cricket.

Some of his most famous stories, and my personal favorites, are Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Do You Want To Be My Friend?, The Mixed-Up Chameleon, The Grouchy Ladybug, The Very Busy Spider, The Very Quiet Cricket, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, and The Very Lonely Firefly. I know that was a long list, but trust me.....these are CLASSICS that all children love! I truely believe that if you are teaching the lower grade levels that you should include these (or some of them) in your class library. His stories teach children about animals and nature as well as life lessons. There are so many of his books that I don't feel it is necessary to go into detail about them because that would take forever, and I am sure you are already familiar with many of his books!