I always loved activities where students are analyzing from a different point of view like "what if you were the big bad wolf, just looking for food instead of the three little pigs" maybe the wolf hadn't eaten in a long time.

I agree here that the end result of critical thinking is to determine validity. Great way to think about it.

I here critical thinking a lot in classes and books about teaching and learning but, to be honest, I don't think I have heard the actual definition and it has always been kind of an assumed understanding for me.

I like this exercise for students to determine how realistic someones position especially on a controversial topic like Columbus

This is the deficit of rote learning where students memorize facts about history instead of an overarching purposeful way of learning and connecting the facts.

This unit lesson is clearly designed to be all encompassing and diverse which benefits student interest for the curriculum.

This is true the trickster is usually funny and they are usually the long lasting character who makes it through the story alive and unscathed.

Referencing bugs bunny and wiley coyote might require a video introduction to modern day students but it is a good example of the trickster archetype

This is good because it gives student's some responsibility to find their story, which may require an exciting trip to the library.

Writing books with a predetermined vocabulary must be very difficult for authors.

I wonder here if they had some type of statistic or data gathering for determining these most likely to be picked books?

Bridging the gap between listener and reader is so important for young emerging readers as they transition from always being read to aloud to reading themselves.

This is so true, I remember always being hurried to pick out a book in the library while I could spend hours just looking, skimming and hunting for books.

Great! finally a mention of common sense! I think this really important as sometimes we as teachers might forget to use commonsense in planning and implementing lessons.

I had never heard of this activity and I think it is valuable as it provides comfort and success for students with sophisticated sentences

It is clear that phonics instruction within literature is the most beneficial way to provide learning opportunities to students. However, I think in this article we see both sides to teaching phonics and how they both have their benefits.

It is so important for a teacher to demonstrate expressive oral reading for students. For one it engages the children more and it teaches about the use of exclamation, questions, pauses and how to annunciate properly in specific circumstances.

Using whole stores is an important component to providing a love of literature and for a child's future in reading by valuing a meaning emphasis and to show them that they are not just reading because the teacher or their parents told them to.

This brings up a concept or practice that she mentions "conscientization" where adults try and understand why they are powerless and the forces that control their powerlessness. The use of "they" when talking about social injustice is not helpful, that's why "conscientization" is an important practice.

Creating a community of readers who share responses in socially in socially constructed ways is what all teachers should strive to achieve in their classrooms with their students.

Interesting to learn about this term. I may have to practice some conscientization. For older students this practice could be valuable for their future and teach them how to create directed and organized social change.

This story sounds really cool and I plan on checking it out. The LA riots were a part of a difficult and tumultuous tim in American urban history that all high schoolers need to learn about.

This is true and I think the author's hopeful outlook on literatures impact is a huge factor in making this statement true. If you believe it then you can teach it.

This really is showing the disconnect between classic rural fairytales and the urban lives of their readers.

This is a lesson in responsibility as the students update their reading logs after each SSR and of course adds the writing component to independent reading. Students can be proud of their reading logs and it will help them during sharing time as well. Also this instills a sense of ownership for students as it is their reading log about the books they chose which differs from their classmates.

Yes! This sense of joy and ownership connected to literature is intended to create interest in literature that will last. Students would hopefully be proud of the book they read and as they grow up, be proud of books they own and can recommend to others. I know this is true for me.

The fact that kids are enjoying the sharing time and what they have to share, is incredible! It shows that allowing students to choose their literature can create an extremely engaged population of students.

Yes! Classical music has been proven to increase brain activity in children and adults. It also will help children focus in on their individual papers and keep interrupting behaviors to a minimum

Timed writing is an important skill to teach even in younger grades because in a few years students will be taking timed standardized tests.

Being able to illustrate and visually represent an idea is very important for all students. This skill touches on fine motor skills, visual processing and conceptual thought. Very important part of the lesson and an effective check for understanding.

Providing a safe school is very important to facilitate learning but many of the low income black students leave school and are exposed to dangerous conditions on the street and at home. This can make the educational achievement far less important to students then their own safety and survival. This idea reminds of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the importance of physiological needs like safety, shelter and food. Maslow believed people must meet their basic physiological needs in order to move up in the pyramid and live complete, happy and be self actualized.

The fact that Frederick Douglass can attribute his political success just shows how important meaningful high interest texts can be to disenfranchise populations. I'm sure many lives have been and can be change with literature.

Yes! I think social, political and cultural dimensions are immensely important to teaching and arguably more important than the scientific considerations. Although, all those dimensions mentioned, if taken into equal consideration, can be a recipe for success in the classroom.

I hope that when I am a teacher, we have a more liberal educational agenda where differentiation is encouraged and I can develop my own teaching methods.

Serafini makes a good point here. If teaching a child how to read just meant reading books aloud and filling a room with high quality books then any literate parent can homeschool their child. Though it is important to do those things as a teacher, there is clearly much more to teaching literature.

For this standard, students would have to read a variety of poems, plays and prose to understand the structural differences. Then the students must use the structural knowledge to properly write and speak about poems and plays. A good play for this standard would be Annie and a good collections of poems to understand structure would be from poet Roald Dahl.

Students must read a wide variety of fiction story types, understand the moral, and explain what key details help identify it. I think stories about the greek gods would be fun and exciting for kids, possibly Hercules as a book and movie follow up.

This would require child to read different versions of the same story in order to understand different cultures. Students can make Venn diagrams or use other graphic organizers to compare and contrast

any of the classic fairy tales, cinderella, little red riding hood and more would help teach this standard.

This would require students to learn about point of view during the story. They might not have to understand terms like first person and third person, but they might be able to tell if it is the author or the main character telling the story.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid series would be helpful to understand point of view because the main character is also the story teller.

The idea of prompting and supporting students is crucial to teaching. For prompting, a teacher might ask the whole class, calling on students raising their hands in the group or walking around to individual students to assess their knowledge.

For support, a teacher might provide a graphic organizer for a story and events, word banks, helpful hints, fill in the blanks, highlighting key words or verbal support with encouraging language. The obvious support would be reading the story aloud or to an individual student.