Donut House

The quote which first stuck out to me in the article Donut House was, "learning to read, not reading to learn."  I think that thinking about children reading to learn is a wonderful idea and perspective to take in my future career.  It is such a challenge to think about not teaching children to learn and focusing on the phonetics.  Using sociodramatic play in classrooms and whole language approaches are great benefits to leraners. 
The donut shop idea is such a wonderful cultural experience for the students in the class.  A unit lesson about real life aspects would ge great to implement in my future and i really hope to have the time to make it thoughtful, and cover the standards that are necessary for my grade level.

Classroom Experiences

When in the classroom this past week, I experienced the children reading and writing and discussed the reading levels with the teacher.  I think this is something that is vvery important to my learning process as a future teacher.  In the second grade classroom, I witnessed the children doing guided reading on the "average" grade level with the group as a whole.  They later transition into independent reading while the teacher conferences with children on an individual basis about the stories that they are reading.  During this time I was able to walk around the classroom and read along side students who were interested in reading aloud.  I was particularly intrigued by one boy who had his desk facing the chalkboard away from the other students.  When I asked him to read aloud, I was taken back.  I do not believe in juding students by the placements that their teachers have placed them in, and wanted to see what it was that he was secluded for.  When he began reading the (extremely advanced) comic book aloud, he was reading at a very steady pace and using intonation in his voice for the characters.  I then discussed his advanced level with the teacher and she explained to me that he was one of the most advanced students in her class, she showed me the levels that each student were on and I was overwhelmed with the range of readers.  Some students were reading at a kindergarten level while this student in particular was testing at above a 6th grade level.  This resignates with me becuase it shows that not only do i need to prepare myself for the range of readers i will be dealing with, but I also must learn how to cater each of them so that they are always advancing, and moving forward.   I need to continually think about how i am going to reach all of the learners.

MGRP

As of today (one week after I should have),  I finally was struck with an idea that fully had my interest for the multi genre research project.   While sitting in the education library, I looked up from my boredom at the computer and saw a poster on the wall of an old woman in black and white.  Squinting, I saw the woman's name.  Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman whom I had heard of briefly in the past was staring me in the eye,making me question what I really knew about her contributions to America.  Although I am fully aware that the actions that she took while alive impacted many Americans because of her courage, I never really knew what it was that she did.  I immediately googled her name and began reading up on the information that I could find (which included over 1.5million results).  I realized that this would be a perfect research topic because of the lack of knowledge that I have about her.  I have already found multiple books relating to her life and can't wait to being my deeper research about her influences.