LSSL 5385 YA Literature

Chapter 6 – How do adolescents develop? At the start of listening to this video, I never thought about any of these topics when I was selecting books for my classroom library.  I knew that I wanted to have books that were of high-interest, but I was looking more topics and subjects than ones that focused on adolescent development.  Looking back at my adolescent years, the questions being asked were spot on.  Thinking back, I remember moving on from the Nancy Drew series because (now that I’ve had a chance to really think about the topics mentioned in the video) the characters no longer held any interest for me.  I started to get turned off from reading, until I found Donna Jo Napoli’s Beast and Zel , and Annette Curtis Klause’s Blood and Chocolate and The Silver Kiss .  Throughout all my four years of high school, I must have read those four books at least twice every year.  I now know why it is imperative to offer students not only just high-interest no...

Chapter 1 – Why do we share literature with children?             Being an educator, I was told from several at my campus that a benefit of having children read literature is to help them build their vocabulary.  I agreed, understanding that x -amount of minutes equals to an x -amount of new words that will get added to their word bank.  Unfortunately, this became a motivator for some teachers (myself included) at our campus.  There was no longer any purpose or reasoning behind the choice that we, as teachers, made in choosing the books we chose for our classes to read.  It wasn’t until I overheard one of my kids say that they wish they could read a more ‘modern’ book that I realized just how far off the path of promoting a love for reading I had fallen.  For the past three years, I have made it a point to listen to my kids and ask them what they would like to read and/or are interested in reading.  ...