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Empower The Reader: This article related really well with the other article we read during class titled “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors”. This article made me better understand the sliding glass door portion of the previous article and the extent of how a text can really affect a reader. As a future teacher I understand the importance of being able to select books for my classroom that are diverse and ones that can inspire readers to make a difference. I believe in the idea of empowering a reader because I have felt that effect from reading a book and hope to select books in my future classroom that create that feeling for my students.
Schneider Ch. 1 & 2: I found these first to chapter entertaining and interesting to read. I really enjoyed how the author pushed the limitations of what is considered children’s literature. Being able to better understand what that category can fully encompass helps me in the selection of books for my own classroom library. The newly defined definition the author gives of children’s literature is an idea that I will be able to use in my Emergent Literacy Strategies class. The definition the author gives will also help me in this class when it comes to selecting books to bring each week to class.
Block & Isreal- The ABCs of Performing  Read Alouds: I found this article to be extremely informative and useful. This article really helped demonstrate how thorough read alouds should be. I remember teachers in school teaching me reading comprehension strategies but I never remember them teaching me step by step what should be going through your mind as you read a book. I believe it is extremely useful for students to understand what to do before, during, and after reading a book. This article will be a great reference to use when I perform read alouds in a classroom.
Emergent books:
Baby Bear, Baby, Bear, What Do You See?:
- Synopsis: Baby bear, Baby bear is a book that helps kids identify different animals. This book chooses different kinds of animals that you don't typically see in other animal books for children. The elaborate illustrations show detail of each animal making them easily distinguishable. The author also uses a great choice of verbs when describing what each animal is doing. This helps children visualize the actions these animals will typically do while expanding their vocabulary.
- Potential Classroom activities: Have students create their own book of animal names they have not heard of and include drawings of each animal. The teacher will provide picture books of different animals around the world for students to use as a reference.
- Themes: Identifying animals, nature, environmental respect.
- ABC Book : Dr. Seuss's ABC An Amazing Alphabet Book!
- Synopsis: This book is an imaginative way to get young readers thinking about the alphabet. This book provides examples of not only uppercase, but also lower case examples of the alphabet when discussing each letter. The author also uses fabulous alliteration while naming each letter. This book is designed to get students imaginations running while teaching them the letters of the alphabet.
- Classroom activities: Assign each student a letter of the alphabet. Have students create and draw their own examples of things that start with their letter. Once every student has done that have them line up in front of the class in the order of the alphabet and have them each read aloud their letter and examples.
- Themes: Alphabet, alliteration, rhyming, imagination.
- Counting book: Ten Little Ladybugs:
- Synopsis: This book is different from most counting books. This book starts out with ten ladybugs and counts down till there are no ladybugs left. This book helps young readers understand subtraction and counting in a creative way. The book has ten tangible lady bugs on the front page and after a turn of the page the ladybugs are subtracted one by one. This helps young readers be able to visualize and better understand counting down and subtraction.
Class activity: This book could be an introduction to teaching subtraction to a classroom. Read this book aloud to a class describing what is happening on each page and have students predict what will happen on the next page, before teaching a subtraction lesson.
Themes: Counting, subtracting, math, animals, food chain.
-Pattern book: Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed:
- Synopsis: This book has a repetitive pattern when it comes to the wording of the book. This is good for young readers because it allows them to catch on and predict what it is going to say on the next page even though they may not be able to read it. This strategy helps them identify and learn words during reading that they did not previously know. This book also can help children understand safety and what may happen as a result of not following rules.
- Classroom activity: After reading this book aloud to the class give students a scenario and have them predict what they think may happen. Teach them how to look for patterns in a book and how they may predict what will happen next from identifying these patterns.
- Themes: Pattern, predicting, math, counting, subtraction, safety, consequences.

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Schneider Ch. 3:

Reading this chapter reminded me of how much I used to love going to the library. I used to go all the time as a little kid. It is sad to think about how less often I go to the library now. I find myself using amazon or a book store now, but it is nice to be reminded how useful the library can be too. I believe it is important for me to encourage the use of a public library to my future students. I also never really knew anything about the history of libraries so that was interesting to read. It’s crazy to think about how limited kids used to be in their reading, if they were even allowed to read at all. Reading today is such a vital part of education and it is important, as a future teacher, for me to be knowledgeable about all the different resources to obtain books for my classroom.
Serafini- Creating Space For Children’s Literature:

I found this article to be interesting because I agree with the author that teachers need to create time in their classroom for students to read independently. In my CT’s classroom she does a great job at this. Every day, she works into her schedule IRLA time for 30 minutes. During this time every student is reading a book independently that they picked. Also during this time she pulls some students to conference with. I found it interesting that the author suggests to limit response activities in order to give more reading time. I’m not quite sure I agree with this idea, but I do want to read into it more and see if that would really be an effective decision.
O’Neil – Reading Pictures: Developing Visual Literacy for Greater Comprehension:

Before I read this article I never thought that students might need help understanding pictures in a picture book. I believe this would be a fun concept to teach students. I enjoy the different activities that the author writes about in order to teach students different concepts of understanding illustrations. I love art so this article in particular really stood out to me and made me realize that there is a lot more that goes on with an illustration in a picture book than you would think.
Picture Books:
Yo Soy Muslim:
- Synopsis: This book is supposed to be a fathers letter to his daughter about when she faces adversity because she is muslim. This book is not only relatable to young muslim girls but to any kid who dreams. The book does a good job with illustrating that this girl is like an other kid with hopes and dreams. This book would be an excellent way of introducing vocabulary words that deal with different cultures. The illustrations also provide great visuals for vocabulary students may not know.
- Classroom activities: This book can be used as a read aloud in class when you go through a unit of discussing different cultures. This book can also be used to discuss a topic such as not excluding other students because they are different from you.
- Themes: Religion, fitting in, dreams, culture, growing up different, respect and peace.
- Where the Wild Things Are:
- Synopsis: This book is about a little boy who gets in trouble with his mom and gets sent to his room. When he is in his room he dreams up a world that he travels to where there are all sorts of wild things. He is king of this world but eventually returns home where he makes up with his mom.
- Classroom activities: I can use this book to help teach my students how to interpret illustrations.
- Themes: imagination, anger, parent relationships.
- The Giving Tree
- Synopsis: This book is about a little boy that visits a tree frequently. In the book it shows the progression of his age and him coming to this tree as he grows old. Every time he comes to the tree, the tree is able to provide something for him and the tree and the boy are happy.
- Classroom activity: Teach recycling and how we can reuse and get multiple uses out of several objects.
- Themes: Growing old, Environment, conservation, recycling, nature.
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar:
- Synopsis: This book is about the transition of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The caterpillar progressively eats more and more food and different food items that are illustrated throughout the book.
- Classroom activity: Read while teaching the life cycle of a butterfly.
- Themes: Science, life cycle of a butterfly, counting.
- Green Eggs and Ham:
- Synopsis: This book is about a Dr. Seuss character repeatedly asking another character if they like green eggs and ham. The other character says every time that he does not like them. Eventually he gives them a try because he has never tried them and finds out that he actually likes them.
- Classroom activities: I can make my class actual green eggs and ham in order to get them excited about reading a book. I can use this beginning book as an activity to start to get them interested in reading.
- Themes: Rhyme, trying new food.

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Schneider Ch. 4: Reading this chapter was interesting because I didn't realize how many awards there were for books and all styles of writing. I think its great that there are different awards for almost every category of books. Personally I'm partial to the Caldecott medal because I love illustrations.
Schneider Ch. 5: Determining book quality is an important part of building a classroom library. This chapter was helpful in each category of what to look for when assessing book quality. This chapter also provided great resources for searching for quality books in many different genres.
Mills and Jennings article Talking About Talk: Reclaiming the Value and Power of Literature Circles: I found this article interesting because it gave me ideas about how to form literature circles in my future classroom. This article gave insight into how to keep students motivated and accountable in their literature circles. I believe that it is important to model what a productive literature circle looks like to your students. I found it interesting that the author had the students record themselves in their literature circles and then evaluate their meeting after it happened. This gave the students a chance to reflect and see what they could do to make their literature circles run better. Overall I believe that if literature circles are going to be part of a class, then they need to be done right for students to receive their maximum benefits.
Fictional picture books:
A Bad Case of Stripes:
- Synopsis: This book is about a little girl who comes down with a bad case of stripes. She begins to turn into anything anyone says she is. She winds up loosing who her true self is until she finally does what makes her happy. Once she does what she likes even if that means she's not fitting in, the bad case of stripes goes away.
- Classroom activities: You can use this book as a read aloud on the first day of school when students have back to school nerves or are nervous about fitting in and making new friends.
- Themes: Fitting in, do what makes you happy, back to school nerves, confidence, standing out, bullying.
- Swimmy:
- Synopsis: This book is about a little fish that stood out from the rest of the other little fish because he swam faster than them. This lead to the other fish being eaten and Swimmy was left to explore the ocean all alone. He stumbled upon a group of more little fish and taught them how to swim together to look like one big fish. By doing this they were all able to explore the ocean together without getting eaten.
- Classroom activities: You can read this book to your students to teach team building .
- Themes: Ocean, working together, problem solving.
- Arthur's New Puppy:
- Synopsis: This book is about Arthur who gets a new puppy. It is his job to train the new puppy if he wants to keep him. The puppy tears up the whole house until Arthur is able to train him. Arthur realizes that the training was a lot more work than he expected but was worth it in the end.
- Classroom activities: Read this book to your students when teaching responsibility or when talking about pets.
- Themes: Responsibility, animals, owning pets.
- Froggy Goes To The Doctor:
- Synopsis: This book is about a Frog who has a doctors appointment coming up. This appointment is just for a checkup but Froggy is so scared he does everything to try to get out of it. When he finally goes to the doctors he realizes it isn't all that bad after all.
- Classroom activities: Read this to your class when there might be something coming up that makes them nervous.
- Themes: Doctors, overcoming fears, nervousness.
- Just Shopping With Mom
- Synopsis: This book is about little critter going shopping with his mom and his little sister. His little sister is constantly wanting things she cant have while they are shopping and their mom is getting mad. In the end, when little critter and his sister are finally patient and not asking for anything, his mom finally got both of them ice cream.
- Classroom activities: Read this book and teach expected behaviors in the classrooms get rewarded.
- Themes: Shopping, patience, tantrums, good behavior pays off.
- The Berenstain Bears and the Week At Grandma's:
- Synopsis: This book is about brother and sister bear having to go stay a week at their grandparents because their parents decided to go on a second honeymoon. Brother and sister bear are nervous about staying at their grandparents and are already missing their parents. While staying at their grandparents, they learn new things and have a lot of fun. At the end of the week the cubs realize they had a lot of fun and are even wishing for their parents to go on a third honeymoon so they can go back and stay at their grandparents.
- Classroom activities: Read this book to your students when they may be missing home while in school.
- Themes: Family, vacation, staying new places, being home-sick.

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Schneider Ch. 6: Reading this chapter really helped me decide what instructional strategies are necessary for teaching reading. I learned that it is easy for students to go through the motions of reading without really knowing how to read. This chapter has helped me expand my literacy philosophy. I agree with the author that it is still important to teach phonics and phonemic awareness because those skills are required to read unknown words. I also like how this chapter talks about how literacy development at home plays a crucial part in a students overall literacy journey. I strongly agree with this and it is sad that some students are not able to get the literacy exposure they need at home to become more successful in reading early on. Overall, this chapter provided clear insight to keep in mind while teaching emergent reading in the classroom.