Lit Log 4. The book, The Empty Pot, by Demi, is a great book to use in a classroom, to teach honesty. The book is about, a long time ago in China, lived a boy, Ping, who loved flowers more then anything, and had a great gift for planting them. The old Emperor had the same love for both flowers and animals. The Emperor was growing old, and needed to find a successor. He decided in order to find someone to replace him, he would have competition. Each child was given a seed and asked them in a year to show him their best flower. After many tries Ping could no get his flower to grow. He was very upset by this, but is father told him to take the empty flower pot to the Emperor to show him that he tried. He arrived at the palace and saw all of the beautiful flowers, and as the Emperor walked around and examined the flowers, Ping got nervous. When the Emperor arrived at Ping’s flower, Ping began to cry. The emperor asked why he had brought an empty pot and Ping explained that he tried and tried, but the seed would not grow. This put a smile on the Emperors face, as he announced that the seeds he had given out were cooked, so the flowers would not be able to bloom. With this, Ping was the only one who had passed the test, by telling the truth and was named Emperor. The illustrations in this book are amazing, I love the use of bright colors as well the way the flowers were portrayed. They also were intricate and had many details. One standard that goes along with this books is, Civics, Citizenship and Government. Use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the U.S. and other nations; the U.S. Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation. The Key Idea that this goes hand in hand with is, examines what it means to be a good citizen in the classroom, school, home, and community.
Lit Log #3
The Honest-To-Goodness Truth by Patricia McKissack is a wonderful book, that teachers the reader a great lesson, as well as a life long lesson. In this book, Libby, the main character, is caught in a lie by her mother, and promises to her mother that she will never lie again. At school the next day, she practices her new ways, and never tells a lie to her friends. This makes Libby feel great about herself, but her friend feel the opposite way. After school, Libby cannot figure out why all of her friends do not want to hangout with her. She soon realizes that the truths she were telling her friends were not necessary, and hurting others feelings. I enjoyed this book because of the lessons taught, as well as how she learned from her mistakes and corrected the mistakes. This book would be great to teach a lesson on how to treat classmates with respect, as well as have empathy for classmates. The illustrations in this book were not my favorite. I felt that the illustrations were not very attractive, and the children look strange, with large heads. I did enjoy the colors that were used, and the different shading techniques that were used. In my opinion, the story was not enhanced by the illustrations, but took away from the book. I believe that if the story had better illustrations, the story would captivate more children’s attention.
One standard that this book goes along with is, Standard 5- Civics, Citizenship and Government. Use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the U.S. and other nations; the U.S. Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation.
The key Idea 3- examines what it means to be a good citizen in the classroom, school, home, and community.
This book teaches the correct behavior citizens of our community should have, as well as the responsibilities that we have.
Lit Log #2
After reading over twenty books for my lit log, I have come across some great books. One book that stood out to me was The Colors of Us, by Karen Katz. I enjoyed how this book describes the different colors of skin that people from all around the world have, but how all people are the same, no matter the color of their skin. As a teacher, this will be a great book to use when teaching a lesson on diversity, and the different countries around the world, and their native people. The illustrations in this book show all of the people the same way, with the only different their skin color. This shows the students how the skin color is the only difference between people. The illustrations are also very colorful, and draw the reader to the pictures. I like how the subtle changes in the colors used for the skin pigments, change the ethnicity of the person. One standard that goes along with this book is, Standard 2, use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives. With the key idea 1, study about different world cultures and civilizations focusing on their accomplishments, contributions, values, beliefs, and traditions. This book supports this, but describing the different people around the world, and understanding the countries they are originally from.
How I will use blogs in my classroom
When teaching, I will hope to incorporate blogs into my day to day lessons. I will have my students keep a daily blog, in which they will write about what they learned in class that day, what they did not understand, or had difficulty, and what they had questions on. This will allow both classmate and myself, the teacher, to respond to and have discussions with each other. I will use blogs mostly for ELA, but also incorporate all other subjects. To practice writing skills, I will my students write a short paragraph on Mondays, telling one exciting thing that they did that weekend. For social studies I will have the students post a weekly post about a current event they have found interesting and researched. This will allow the students to be up to date on many current events. For science, I will have my students weekly pick a subtopic, which we are learning about, that they are interested in and research about it, and then post a paragraph describing what they learned and found interesting. I hope that each student will find blogging easy and fun, while learn learning about each other and about many different subject matter.
Lit Log #1
The book Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds, by Paula Yoo, is a great book to use in your classroom while teaching about oppression. I liked this book because it teaches of the real life problems that many people from around the world face. The summary of the book is, Sammy, a young Chinese boy, living in the United States, dreams of one day of becoming a Olympic diver. Since Sammy is of a different nationality, he is faced with many racial problems, which get in the way of his success, but this does not stop him. And as his father says, “In America, you can do achieve anything if you set your heart to it.” While growing up, Sammy’s father dreams of him becoming a doctor, but Sammy has other dreams. Finally, the day Sammy has waited for, his chance to win the Olympics. While standing on the diving board about to preform his final dive, he realized that because of his race, he must really impress the judges. So Sammy decides to put all he has into the dive, and he succeeds, and wins the gold metal. Finally, Sammy’s dream has come true and his father was right, if you set your heart to it, you can achieve anything.
I think that this book would be great to teach about how people throughout time have been judged, and looked down upon for their nationality. This book will help many students understand that just because a person is of a different race, does not mean that they can be oppressed. Another lesson that this can teach is to never give up, and work as hard as possible to make your dreams come true, and don’t let anyone stop you. In the book, the Illustrations are very realistic, as if they are real pictures. this makes the story feel more real, as if you were the main character. I think that this helps students relate to the book more. When stories have cartoons, they students do not take the book as seriously.
The content of this books goes along with,
Social Studies Standard 2: The student will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.
How To Make Fried Oreos
This How To will guide you on how to make your own fried oreos!
What you will need:
- Oreos: My personal choice is double stuffed oreos.
- Pancake mix: This is what will encrust your oreos.
- Oil
- Flour/Yeast: For thickening of pancake mix
- Powdered sugar: optional
Procedure:
- Freeze your oreos. (overnight)
- Add oil up to 5 fingers high and boil.
- Make your pancake mix.
Revving Up For Valentine's Day In Your Neighbourhood
The roads are dry. Since the groundhogs predicted spring is on the way, there hasn’t been a flake of snow in the air. And as a consequence, the leathers have been broken out by a few of the hardier bikers out there already. This weekend you just might see a whole slew more of them though, as the annual World of Motorcycles Expo…
beauty on the margin/Bossypants
Bossypants
You gotta loosen yourself up a little bit to appreciate Tina Fey’s sense of humor. At first, you think you might not (or should not) take her seriously from the ramblings and rants writing style, but once you understand the depth of what she has conveyed in her book, you end up loving her hilarity. I found myself mumbling, “shit, that’s so true!” a couple of time while flipping the pages.
My family
This is a picture of my sibling, mom and I in Barcelona this summer, when my family came to visit me.
