Chapters 10 & 11

Ch. 10 Reading Aloud
Contrary to what some teachers think read alouds are appropriate for students of all ages. I know that personally even though I am a college student I still like being read a story in class. My social studies instructor reads to us occasionally and even at our age we get entertained. However read alouds aren't used just for entertainment but learning as well. Read alouds get students intrested in literature and reading as well as encouraging comprehension and expanding their vocabularies. It is important for the teacher to practice a good read aloud which entails sitting on the carpet with the students and being animated. While reading the story us different voices and accentuate words and expressions to keep the students interested. Jennifer Myers does a good example of a shared reading.

Ch. 11 Shared and Guided Reading
Shared reading is a collaborative reading activity involving both the students and teacher. Shared reading has two purposes. First it provides an enjoyable literacy experience and second it show how print works. In order to participate in shared reading the class should have active student participation, a variety of books, and a comfortable learning environment. When planning a lesson for shared reading keep in mind the needs of the students, the curriculum and the kinds of text that is needed to accomplish your goals.
Guided reading is done with small groups of students reading the same books and using the same reading strategies. The goal of guided reading is to get the students to be capable of using reading strategies easily on their own without help. When using guided reading lessons it is important to strategically group the students. Groups should be based on the students' reading level but teachers need to keep in mind that these groups shouldn't be permanent. Guided reading groups should change as students are matstering and struggling with new topics. You don't want to group students by ability and then leave them in the same group permanetly because then lower students will feel they will never catch up to the higher students.

Shared Reading Article

I read the shared reading article on BlackBoard I think it was pretty interesting and I agreed with mostly all of what it said. The goal of shared reading is to allow students positive reading experiences with books as well as to introduce them to different types of literature and authors. Shared reading shouldn't be teacher centered but rather made up of contributions from both the student and teacher. It is not shared reading if the the students aren't actively involved in the reading process.
As soon as children are introduced to books they want to learn how to read independently. It is only when they have difficulties with the subject that they sometimes become less interested in learning to read.
It is also important as the article said to have a variety of books available and encourage the students to have favorite books that can be read multiple times. Personally I think the classroom library is the most important part of the classroom. Having a classroom library with a mixture of good books motivates students and encourages them not only to read but to want to read.

Author Profile

Bruce Balan

Bruce Balan is a author of mostly children's books. On his website you can contact him to make a visit to your school and sign books. He also does many conferences. His site has some information on the books he has written as well as books he is currently writing.

http://www.brucebalan.com/

Cows Going Past
By: Bruce Balan

ISBN: 0803729022

Cows Going Past is a book for preschoolers where a child in the backseat describes a family trip through what he sees in the back seat window. Once he arrives back in his bed at home his mind is still thinking about all the cows he has seen.

Buoy Home at Sea

By: Bruce Balan

This is a book made up of a collection of stories about three friends name Buoy, Gull and Seal who live at sea. This book is for older elementary students. It is about a buoy at sea that is written about as having humanistic traits along with the sea and sea animals. It makes the reader think aboout the definition of friendship and home as well as how all everyone is interconnected.

Guided Reading

I found an informative teacher resource book about guided reading by Fountas & Pinnell. It includes information on what is a guiding reading program as well as how to use it in your classroom and what books you should choose. It also has a leveled booklist with hundreds of books that are already sorted out by level.

Guided Reading by Irene C. Fountas & Gay Su Pinnell
ISBN: 0435088637





I also found some good guided reading websites:

http://www.readinga-z.com/guided/index.html
http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/guidedreading.htm

Jennifer Myers Read Aloud

The read aloud with Jennifer Myers was really good. You can tell she is an excellent teacher. The only part I didn't like about her read aloud was that she was sitting in a chair above the students. Besides that it was an excellent read aloud lesson. The students seemed to be comfortable and enjoyed both her reading and the book itself. She has a very nice story voice. She paused at the appropriate times to maintain the flow of the story. The students were attentative and responsive to her questions. I liked her idea of having a shoulder partner for the students to talk with. I think that was a neat way for them to share ideas. Overall I think Jennifer Myers showed an excellent example of what a read aloud should look like.

Chapter 9 Nonfiction

When I think about nonfiction I normally think of biographies and journals. I never knew that reference books such as dictoinaries and encyclopedias, were considered nonfiction I thought they were in a category by themselves.

All types of nonfiction texts can be helpful in teaching social studies and sciene. I found a website on an author named April Pulley Sayre who has written over fifty natural history books for children and adults. http://www.aprilsayre.com/ On her site there are links that offer storytime plans that help ideas of how to incorporate some of her nonfiction books into teaching social studies.

I also found a website for John Malam http://www.johnmalam.co.uk/ where it has a link to help explain to children how a nonfiction book is made and all the jobs and responsibilities people have to create the book.
Through the site you can also arrange school visits and John Malam offers workshops where older kids in grades 5-9 can make nonfiction books themselves.

Author Site

I found a neat website on the author Judy Blume that I think young students would be interested in.
http://www.judyblume.com/kids.php