Chapter 10: Reading Aloud

Reading Aloud to your students and even to your kids is a key to fostering the love of reading. Some of my fondest memories of family members who have since died are having them read out loud to me when I was a baby into early adolescence. One of the fondest memories I have is when I was younger my grandfather would pull me into his lap at breakfast and we would read the comic or funnies section of the newspapers on Sundays. This tradition continued as I grew up and soon I was visiting their house regularly on Sundays and eating with my grandparents and reading the funnies with my grandfather. While these were not the most adequate reading materials it still formed a very important bond between my grandfather and I that lasted for years up until his death in 2008. By reading aloud to your kids you form a special bond and might even form a tradition that is very important.

While this experience unfortunately is not always common it is very important to read something to your children. It might even have to be the newspaper but it forges a bond with your children and it is very important to their growth and development and their academic success. If children do not have the ability to receive this at home it is really important that teachers read aloud to their students. It might seem like a chore or counterproductive with older children but it is an experience that no child should miss out on. It gets their minds creative juices flowing and thinking more actively about what is going on while reading aloud than while reading to themselves. It also lets their imaginations run wild because you are creating a movie scene right before their eyes. You provide the voices for the characters and their minds create the action and scenes that the characters go through. Reading out loud to your students is a great way to keep their interest and put on a show for them at the same time. You are also teaching your students things that become more fun to learn when reading aloud.

It’s also a great time for the teacher to goof off as well. Making different voices for different characters and creating other personas for them according to how you hear them in your own mind, that is AWESOME. Okay so I might be the only total dork who does that anyways but it still allows teachers to use their acting chops and creates a great atmosphere in your classroom. It tells your students that we are here to have fun, because I know I am, and to learn at the same time. What could be greater than that? Nothing, at least I don’t think there is. It is also a great way for a newer teacher to get more comfortable with being in front of as many students as he or she might have. Acting like a complete kid and getting down on their level makes them more comfortable around you but also gives you some great insight to what kids do and don’t respond to.

By creating voices for the characters you help your students place voices within their own head to characters they know and love. By mimicking their attitudes in certain situations and bringing them to life you help show students how you interpreted their actions if they were really alive. This helps students relate and bring their characters to life in their own minds instead of reading their voices much like a friend of mine does to this day, as Ben Stein in Farris Bueller’s Day Off. No child should ever have to read a book and that is all they hear unless it is called for by the description of the characters tone or personality.

Reading aloud is a great thing and is very telling for your students. You also learn a lot about your students by reading to them. It tells you how you can and cannot engage them while teaching but it also gives you time with your kids on a much more personal level. You bring yourself down to their level by becoming multiple characters at once and sometimes make a complete fool of yourself but that is okay. You are having fun and so are your students but most importantly of all, they are learning in the process.

Chapter 9: Non-fiction

Non-fiction is a great learning and teaching genre, so are all of the other genres but this one has to deal with specifically the facts and known truths. With non-fiction students receive nothing but the facts about animals, plants, people, places and more. They are great teaching tools as well because they make subjects that students might not be otherwise interested in more reader friendly and interesting. The illustrations and format of these books play a large role in the interaction that reader have with them, as well as their interest level. Non-fiction books are also really great supplements to a boring textbook. These non-fiction books are also not subjected to state guidelines and tend to give a more comprehensive version of history than most textbooks do.

These books are great for all ages and when students read them or even adults they continue to learn about the world around them and the people that inhabit it. Non-fiction books can break barriers by giving people an understanding of a place, culture or animal that they might know nothing about. These books because they give you facts tend to be unbiased and just present the information and not the author’s opinion. This is great because it allows the reader to form their own interpretation based on the information given to them and they are not swayed by the biases of the author. But this is only in some cases. There are books that tell you things in order to sway your perception of the person, place or time on which the author is writing. It is very important that if this is a book that you choose you discuss the biases of the author or look for books that are unbiased especially if you are talking about specific people in history.

These authors also become semi-experts just without the degrees in the field that they are writing their non-fiction book about. Though there are some with degrees in the field in which they write their non-fiction books but they still do more extensive research for their books. These authors must do this in order to convey correct information and it is a painstaking process. Most good authors have their drafts and finished product looked over by the experts in the field to make sure that their information is clear and correct. Without correct information this moves the book from non-fiction to faction. Faction is a cross between fiction and non-fiction. While the people, places and time are factual the scenes that help move the story along might not necessarily be factual. It is up to teachers to differentiate these faction books from true non-fiction books.

When creating your library as a teacher you have to make sure that all of the books that you purchase or borrow from the library are the most up to date books that are available with the most up to date information possible. By choosing these up to date books you make sure that your students remember the correct information and not the incorrect information. Unfortunately it is easy to remember the wrong information because there is a bigger deal made about it than the correct information sometimes. When purchasing books you have to be very discriminating and also when accepting them from parents or the community. You can keep some of the older ones but also have a companion of more updated information and do a comparison of the information in the older and newer books to show the advancements and discoveries of certain information on different people and things. Also when creating your library it goes without saying that you balance your books with curriculum supplements as well as things that interest the students so that they continue to read or begin reading because they are truly interested in the information provided in the book.

Chapter 8: Fiction Family

Going back through all of the novels that I have collected over the years that constitute a majority of my collection are Fiction or in that genre. Some are historical fiction like the Dear American Diaries, others are Science Fiction like Rowan and Ender’s Game, Realistic Fiction like my older more classic books by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen and then Fantasy like the Dragon Riders of Pern series. I do own some traditional literature, poetry books and non-fiction but a majority of my collection is Fiction. These books are a lot easier for me to connect to and with Science Fiction and Fantasy it really feeds my imagination. The work required to really write any of these is immense because with respect to Historical, Science and Fantasy fiction the author must do a lot of research and be careful who and what they input into their stories to make their plot lines believable.

My favorite quote from this section is one written by Madeline L’Engle. She states that fiction is a “vehicle for truth” (Kasten, Kristo, McClure 2005). Within the Fiction genre that is very true. While what fiction authors write about is not implicitly true there is an element of truth illuminated by what they write and it is up to the reader to discover this truth while reading the novel. Hunting for these universal truths within fiction books is like an interesting game. Sometimes they are implicitly stated by one of the characters but other times the reader must hunt for them through the words or actions of the characters within the story. I guess that is one of the reasons that I love Fiction so much. While you are reading something fun and entertaining you learn more about the human condition and while you might not always realize it you walk out with more than you went into the book knowing.

My all-time favorite reason for reading fiction is the characters. Fiction authors create some of the most amazing characters I have ever read about just short of some of the real live people I have read about. Characters like Ender from Ender’s Game, Alanna from The Song of the Lioness and Talia from the Heralds of the Queen series are all exquisite characters. Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey and Orson Scott Card, in my opinion, write some of the best characters I have ever encountered and are great for middle and high school students. Tamora Pierce even writes well for 5th grade student if they are a little more advanced reader. The worlds that they create for their characters are fantastic and their main characters are very easily relatable and definitely pull the reader into their world. Girls can learn a lot from both Alanna and from Talia about being strong despite everything that they have been through and that people will respect them if they show their true colors. If they don’t then they weren’t really friends to begin with. Ender is a boy who is put in a very tight spot and just because he is small does not by any means mean that he is weak. He is a very bright young boy who despite the odds becomes a fantastic leader and warrior while maintaining his compassion for others.

Fiction is a great genre that offers so much. Historical fiction creates a story surrounding a real event and makes it more easily relateable for a student than just reading something out of a textbook. Fantasy and Science Fiction are only limited by the imagination of the author and thus it stretches the imaginations of the readers and makes them think of things they never thought possible. Realistic fiction is great as well because it brings characters to life that while the author might not have experienced something in particular but a friend of theirs has. They can write about it so that others know that they aren’t alone. These are good books for students who have been through a tragedy and feel like no one understands their pain but it is also good for students who have never experienced the pain because they gain some empathy for the character and people they might meet in the future who have been through something similar. Fiction really encompasses everything.

Chapter 7: Picture Books

I remember reading picture books as a kid, and I still do sometimes today. Some of my favorites were written by Beatrix Potter, an early reader’s copy of The Nutcracker, which is illustrated beautifully I might add, and a few others that escape me right now, but are in a box in my garage. I still have some of my old picture books in my bedroom but my mother has kept all of the ones that my brother and I shared as children. When my brother and I have our own kids someday I have no doubt that my mother will pull them out again so they can read like my brother and I did when we were little. With the picture books that I have in random places in my room right now it is fun to go back and re-read them as an adult and they never fail to bring back memories of when I was a child or just reading the notes that my grandparents wrote in them to give to me for Christmas or my birthday throughout the years.

Picture books are great because they expose children who are able or who are unable to different mediums of art and use of color as well as the story itself. By looking into different mediums of art you can tie these books into history lessons or even into art projects having them work with watercolor’s, or paints and for the more advanced students oils and charcoals. Tying them into history of art or artists lessons you can talk about artists who are famous for using specific mediums.

Talking about the art itself within the context of the story is important to do and works a lot better with older children even into Middle and High School. Having the students analyze the color schemes within the pictures and then compare it to the tone of the writing is a great exercise and shows how both color and text can work together to make something beautiful and a piece of art within its own right. You can also have them analyze bad examples of it and say why it doesn’t work and how they would change the color scheme or the art itself. This allows the students to think critically and use their imaginations to come up with some creative solutions.

It would be an interesting activity to do with your kids is read them the story and then have them illustrate it themselves and then re-read the story again but this time show them the pictures so they can compare and contrast their art work with the illustrator. It would also be a fun little activity to have each child writes their own story and then have the teacher collect them and pass them back out and have another child illustrate the book and then share it with the class. This can even be done with older students into middle school.

Picture books are great for both young children and older students. They can be used in a variety of ways and especially work well within cross-curriculum teaching.