Reflection

I have really enjoyed Children's Literature this semester.  I have found it to be an interesting class that does a great job of exposing new literature.  I like doing the reading blog a lot.  It takes a good amount of time each week, but I think it's going to be a great resource when I am a teacher.  I like that some weeks we have a certain genre to concentrate on while other weeks we are free to explore whatever books we want.  I enjoy having assigned novels to read as well because the discussions in class really help me picture how a discussion could go in my future classroom.

I also really like doing the genre project.  My group did information books, a topic I am not very familiar with.  I learned so much when researching and reading these types of books.  I learned that as a teacher I need to know a lot about many different genres in order to inform my students and encourage them to explore different ones.  I also really liked being able to access the handouts from other groups because they will be very valuable once I have my own classroom.

I think it would be interesting to do some type of book group in future semesters.  During this activity, students could choose from a variety of books and be in a group with others who chose the same one.  Meeting with the group a couple times and discussing the issues present and questions that the readers had would be useful because in many classrooms there are literature groups who do similar tasks.  It's just an idea, and I think students would enjoy doing it! :)

Overall I think this semester has gone great so far and I'm excited for what the second half has to offer.  Viewing everyone's "glogs" about the author/poet/illustrator study will be really fun I think.  Learning about how to encorporate technology is important because most of us will have the opportunity to do so when we become teachers!