Wed, March 28

This week we watched three different videos based on read alouds in different classrooms.  The one that really stuck out to me was the very first one, where the teacher read the book Fly Away Home to the children.  I thought that this was a great book choice for the students to hear, because not only could they have connections to it, it brings up real world issues that they would really think about and reflect on.  I liked how the teacher stopped in the middle of the book and asked them what they thought was going to happen in the end.  I thought that was an interesting thing to do and the children had some good ideas and inferences as to what would happen.  Not only would asking this question make the children infer and predict, it would cause them to be metacognitive, because they would be back tracking in order to make that prediction, and thinking what was I thinking at that point?

Wednesday, March 21

I will be conducting a read-aloud, think-aloud in my E340 class on the book John's Secret Dreams: The Life of John Lennon.  I loved this book!  It was all about John Lennon's life and how he had a huge impact in music, culture, and world peace. It starts at the very beginning when John Lennon was only a child, and the rough childhood he had, all the way up through being part of The Beatles and meeting Yoko Ono, and finally his death.  It's a very inspiring book and sends the message that even though John Lennon has passed away, we should still set out to make the world a more loving and peaceful place.  

This would make an excellent read-aloud, think-aloud for upper grades, because for one, it's about a famous musician and I feel as though older students would really be into this and be really interested in it, increasing their engagement.  It's also a great book for upper grades because of their background knowledge.  A lot of younger kids would not know who The Beatles or John Lennon was, and therefore would not be very interested in knowing about John Lennon's life.  There's also a lot of deep concepts in this book, that could be a great discussion starter for older grades.  The idea of loneliness, world peace, love, and death is something younger grades wouldn't be able to handle as well as intermediate grades.  These concepts could arouse great discussion which would reflect their thinking.  

Using this book about John Lennon and his dreams could really help students to think about huge concepts like world-peace and love.  By reading about these very intellectual and deep concepts, students will learn how to reflect on big ideas like these, and express how they feel about them.  This is a great choice for upper intermediate grades.