Reflection

Reading and Responding to Children's Literature has been a class that I have enjoyed so far this semester. I feel as though there will be some things that I will be able to take away with me in my future as a teacher. One helpful aspect that this class has provided me with is the ability to be exposed to numerous children's books. I always loved reading children's books when I was younger, and I was excited to have the chance to do so as an adult. By blogging about books each week, I have been able to discover what type of authors/books that I enjoy. At first I was hesitant to explore new books, but now I go looking for them. There have been so many that I enjoy.
Another aspect of this class that I really like is the assigned novels. They have been great! I can totally see myself having them in my future classroom. One idea I really want to incorporate into my class is the idea of the "town meeting" that was used to discuss The Misfits. In fact, my focus in elementary education is reading and language arts. I believe my practicum will be with upper level students, and I hope I will be able to try something like this.
Reading the controversial children's books was completely different than I expected. I had never really read one before, so it was something that was completely new to me. However, there were a lot of them I loved! In fact, the author's seemed to broach a lot of difficult topics in a new light that I found refreshing. The genre presentation my group was responsible for introducing to the class was realistic fiction. By exploring books in this genre, I feel that I have a better idea of how to use literature in my future class to introduce certain topics. They could be a great teaching tool (duh!).
Something I would like to learn more about regarding children's literature is how to select books to help teach a curriculum area. Because of this, I am excited for the future project that will be coming up. It would be interesting to see what other individuals choose to do, and I would like to have copies of my peer's curricular areas.
I would also like to have more discussion regarding the class novels. I really liked the direction the discussion about The Misfits was going. Because it was a controversial book, I think there were a lot of things that could be discussed. However, we ran out of time!
It has been an interesting semester so far, and I look forward to what will be covered in the future.