I also picked a book from your collection that you had set up on the table on Wednesday, called "Ghosts of the White House" by Cheryl Harness. In this book, it sets up the story with a girl going to Washington D.C. and meeting all of the different presidents while touring the White House, therefore making it "haunted." It gives facts about the Presidents and even provides dates, important events in their lives, and personal information about them. It even gives a detailed list at the end of the book giving the dates and order of all of the presidents. It really is a cute book (I'm definitely putting it on my Functional Bib) and it presents the information in a way that would keep a child interested in what they were reading about. Honestly, history isn't a topic a lot of kids enjoy, and it is really important to know history, especially about our own country. I'm a firm believer in that (that, and I'm a bit of a history nerd) and I want to incoporate activities with history as well as good history books into my lesson plans for the classroom to get that information out to kids in a way that will make them as excited as I am about it. I mean, if a teacher is clearly excited about what they are teaching, it does make it about 10 times more enjoyable for the kids, at least from my experience. I'm really excited to read more biographies :)
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Week of 11-18 through 11-22
This week we have done a smooth transition from historical fiction into biographies. Sometimes, I have a hard time differentiating between biographies and informational books - what is the difference, really? I feel like that is something we should discuss in class for the simple sake of confusion. In my eyes, reading a biography is gaining information on that person or a topic, so what is stopping it from being an informational text, and vice versa? Like I stated in class the other day, I am currently reading a book called "Killing Kennedy" by Bill O'Reilly, which talks about his researched theory about why JFK was assassinated and who was behind it all. That could possibly be an autobiography, but it is also an informational text because of the content. I guess all I really want to know is, where is the line drawn?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The grey area you speak of is important to note. The Ghosts of the White House, for example, could be housed in the fantasy section. It also might be relevant in the biography section. As our author states in chapter one, "Some books fit well in two categories, and some books fit into none!" (Anderson, 2013) We will talk about the distinction between biography and informational after break.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your equation for success in teaching-- Teacher excitement = likelihood of engaged classroom. It is why we (Teacher Education department) believe that your dispositions are equally important to your content knowledge.