Vignette 1

Here is a link to my first Vignette! I hope you enjoy listening to my first memories of school from my and my parent's perspective of my learning to read. 

Vignette 1

                      This is a picture of me when I got my first Biscuit book from the story . 
                                             

Week 6

Week #6
     First off, I liked how each group presented on one after-reading strategy. I thought that was smart to have us teach each other instead of just going through each one as a whole class. I think I would use all the strategies we went through because I see benefit in them all. The dinner party I thought would be fun to do with middle school students. I think giving them who their character is as well as time to prepare would make conversation flow a little easier then doing it randomly in class one day. I think it would be interesting to do it where you split the class so that everyone can participate and then there is no pressure from having your peers watch it. I think this activity definitely would be engaging and show the depth of knowledge students should have about the book.

 I loved the frozen moments one and want to try it with my future students. I did it in a theater class two years ago. I think it would be cool to add music to it. For my theater class we were given a book then we had to pick five frozen pictures to create from it. We had to find a song to go along with the mood of the book as well. This made it even more fun and then the students had to try to figure out what may be going on at certain points of the book similar to how we did it. I was thinking that this would be a good way to teach foreshadowing because by having each group do a scene they could say how that scene may cause another one to happen or hints at what is to come.
 I also enjoyed doing the I AM poems because I am not the best at writing poetry so having the layout was helpful. I think it also is a cool way to see what students know about each character and go beyond what it says in the book. I think it teaches empathy because students learn to feel and see from that character's perspective.

Doing the hot seat would be fun in almost all content areas I think. I believe it would work best with reading or history where there are characters or historical figures that could be represented. It would be interesting to try it with science concepts as a review activity or something. For instance having people be plate tectonics, types of weather, types of plats/animals. But it definitely works best in reading because the students can show how well they know the characters and what they want to know that the book doesn't say. Other students not in the hot seat get the chance to ask questions. The students in the hot seat may not always know the best way to answer questions but if they know the character well enough they could probably guess well enough what they might say.

The last one was stand in silence. I like this one because of how you worded the statements so that no one knew if they had been the bully or someone who was bullied. I think if I did this I would also want to create safe statements for better participation. I did an activity similar to this in high school and with my wing where you step into the circle if it applies to you. I think either way works well to show students that they are not alone because especially with bullying it has effected everyone at some point most likely.

Week 5

Week #5

         I enjoyed the value card activity. I had actually done it the week before in my assessment class however I liked how we did it this time better because we related it back to our class. It was nice to see what we valued and then to be able to see what we thought a character valued. I think this is a useful tool to see how students interpret a character. There can be many answers as long as they can back up why they picked certain values for the character. I think this is good especially for middle school students because they are at the age where they are trying to figure out what is important to them and why. This activity gets them to think about these more. It would be cool to extend this activity by having them write about their values. They could simply write about each value in their top four and why they picked it. They could also write examples or stories about their values. For example I said that I value service to others. I could write about how I go out of my way to help my friends and a story about a time I did that.

        Another activity we did was the Grand Jury activity. This was not my favorite only because I am not a huge fan of debating things myself. I do however find value in the activity. It teaches students to be able to have an opinion and be able to find evidence for that opinion. It can also teach them to talk or write persuasively which are both important skills to have as an adult. I thought it was cool how one of the people in our class mentioned that by debating the other side than what she believed it challenged her and stretched her mind. I think that we as teachers don't always do enough of that so this is a good activity to practice this. It is a very engaging activity which in a middle school class I would consider using.

       I thought our activity where we got to talk about our opinions of the book, connections to the book, and then an article that showed another side to the book was worthwhile. It was helpful to see why the book may not be the best choice. It reminded me that teachers need to research their books they choose and be able to explain to parents why they are having their students read the book. I would not have known it was a controversial book otherwise. I think this activity could be adapted for a class as well. The columns could still be thoughts, connections to other things, and finally another view on the book. It think seeing another person's view on the book would also stretch their minds because it forces them to think about something they hadn't thought of.