Children should be able to have something that they can relate to that will help them solve their problems. The literature that they are reading can help them with social situations and work their way out of some of the problems that they may find themselves in.

I think that this is a very good point, but it can make a difference in anyones life, not just African American males.

This is a very hard race and gender to find literature about. We need more authors to write realistic fiction so people have something to relate to when they are reading literature.

A lot of people are against reading and literature. It gives them a bad attitude about school and a horrible mindset going into it, not immersing themselves into school and allowing themselves to experiencing it the way that they need to.

I think that it is important to be able to have more contemporary themes in reading. Students need to be able to relate to something when they are reading.

Hopefully it gives the students a different point of view on what they have and make them appreciate what they have more than they normally would.

Once students are made aware of what they have versus what people who aren't as lucky as them have they truly understand what they have and are grateful.

Like I said before, many students that are privileged have no clue what it like to be poor and not have everything that they want or need. It is shocking to them that people live without daily necessities.

A lot of people in privileged areas have no idea how lucky they are to have the things that they do, especially young students.

This is so important, especially in CT. We have one of the biggest gaps in America. I think that it is really important that the students are aware how lucky they are if the live in a more wealthy area and that students can work hard and grow and get better and make their lives better if they live in an urban setting.

This is a way that writers of fables are able to express the way that they feel about social justice issues.

This is good for children because if they get attached to a specific character it is good for them to see them again in another folktale or fable.

It is crazy how children relate to animals a lot more than humans. It helps them realize that humans ma not be the only ones that are affected. It is a creative and different way to express emotions and the way that humans act that grab children's attention.

You want the fable to be easy to grasp for children so they are able to understand it. Children are not going to understand long stories that are complicated and drag out.

Morals and social points of view make for a great fable. It takes the idea of the moral of social point of view and puts it into perspective of what it might look like in reality. This will make the moral or social point of view easier to grasp.

This is a great way to motivate students to do great work. If they know that their work is going to be published it will give them incentive to work harder and do well.

Students will probably question you, but you just need to have the appropriate answers to respond back to the students.

This is something that would be great in the special education department. You can use picture books to help the students who may have a learning disability that causes them to read and decode below grade level.

This is something that you probably wouldn't think about. Picture books are something that you would normally associate with children's literature, not something in a secondary education classroom.

I think that picture books are a great second option to learning materials. It is something different and new that students are not expecting in the classroom.

I think that it is important for children to respond to the poems that they are reading. It gives them something the reflect on and possibly compare their writing to.

Teaching children that their poems don't need to rhyme or have repetition is something definitely should be touched on and not overlooked. This will spark kid's imagination in itself and will teach them that there are no restrictions when they are writing poetry.

This is awesome. It allows students to have access to multiple reading sources each year and the readings are selected to benefit the students in the class personally.

I love this idea. It gives teachers an idea of what is going on in their student's lives and creates a personal relationship with both of them. Not only is this feedback, but it creates conversation between the students and the teacher.

This makes sense. Often in schools students are not taught poetry until they are in high school in a literature specific class. I personally do not remember being taught poetry. Maybe it was briefly touched upon in elementary or middle school, but we never spent a lot of time on it.

I think that this is awesome. From a young age we want to promote reading to children. If this instructional method show kids that reading can be fun, we want to use it to prove that reading isn't always a hassle and can be something that we want to do for fun.

I agree with this statement. My sister was not taught phonics and she and a decent amount of her grade had to attend summer school because they could not read.

Introducing phonics and fun literature to students can be a very effective way for them to want to learn how to read. Phonics is a very important fundamental for students and introducing it through literature may help students practice this skill in a fun way.

When you walk around a store everything is labelled into gender specific items. These same stereotypes are brought into the classroom and they need to be diversified. It will be okay if a boy comes into your classroom wearing a dress, or a girl walks in with a buzzed head. Try and bring diverse selections of books and pictures into your classroom so that all students will feel welcomed.

A lot of children are aware of their surroundings even at a young age. They pick up on the things that their peers, teachers, parents and everyone around them say or do. They are aware of what might be going on in the world around them and will follow what those around them are doing. Thus they are picking up on the social norms of society.

This is such a true statement. I currently work in a preschool and it is very hard to break the typical gender stereotypes that the children already have in their mind. From a young age the children believe that only the girls should play with the dolls or dress up in the kitchen and they boys should be the ones playing with the action figures or matchbox cars. We have kid who are afraid to play in certain centers because of what their peers may think of them. At 3 or 4 kids should not have to worry about what others will think of them and what toys they should and shouldn't be playing with. As educators we need to break this stereotype so children feel comfortable doing or playing with whatever they want.

A person's gender should not affect how they learn. We all have the ability to learn whether we are girls or boys or transgender or questioning our sex. We all have the right to learn no matter what.

So many women get criticized for standing up for themselves and what we deserve. We have the right to be treated equally and with respect and to have people stop objectifying us.

This statement is so important. You need to be able to create a welcoming environment for all students in your classroom that allows them to learn and feel accepted. Students who may be LBGTQ need to feel safe and accepted inside of the classroom, because outside of the classroom you do not know what may happen to them.

This is awful. Students who have a different background should have access that brings their culture into the classroom.

This does not surprise me unfortunately. It is sad that people do not care about children of color and how they are not represented accurately or at all in the classroom.

This is insane to me. These children deserve to be reading books by authors who have the same color skin or the same background as them. If students of color are reading books over and over again by people who arent like them, it is discouraging. It makes them feel like they are not able to do the same thing as other people.

I think that this app is great, but it can also be used in higher grade classrooms at the elementary level. I am really interested to see how i might be able to you this app in my classroom when I become a teacher.

I agree that free writing is really important for students to have, but I also agree that it can be focused. You can have your students write about whatever they want, but make sure they include whatever your lesson was about.

Having the students picture what the story may look like is a great literacy strategy. It is good for the students who have a more difficult time picture what the story may look like.

I enjoy this tool because it allows you to adapt it to what you are teaching in the classroom.

I think that it is awesome that technology is being introduced more frequently into classrooms. It is something that is becoming more predominant everywhere including classrooms.

I think that sharing is a great way for students to get feedback on their writing from someone other than the teacher. It will also help boost their confidence and improv their public speaking skills.

I love the idea of conferences with students. It really gives them an idea of where they are and how they are doing on a given topic. It is nice for students to be able to see how they are doing throughout the entire process and given a chance to improve their work instead of just getting a final grade at the end.

I think this is great. I have noticed from my filed experience that kids do not remember strategies unless they are practicing them. If you are reteaching these minilessons a few times over the school year, it could help them retain the information.

I agree with how we need to encourage students to start early on pronunciation skills. This will help students with their reading skills and it will teach the kids to be proactive readers and spellers.

This schedule was very beneficial. I really like how there were a few different options of lessons that we can choose to complete. I also really like how these lessons all differed in times too. I also enjoyed how to broke down what you as the teacher are suppose to be doing and what the students are suppose to be doing.

I like this because it allows the teacher to be able to see where the students are in their reading and makes sure that they are understanding and comprehending what the text is saying.

In my EDU 200 class, the students were given options of where they wanted to read and what book they wanted to read. They were given the option, so SSR was more appealing for them. Once a week they were also given the option to do online reading games on the computer instead of physically reading a book. This really helped them want to participate in SSR time.

A lot of students do not know how to sit and read properly without goofing off and fooling around. Promote an environment that will allow the students to be able to sit and read independently and quietly. You just have to make sure that the students are staying on task while reading and getting an effective amount of work done.

Teachers need to have a balance of reading time and worksheet time. I know that a lot of the time worksheets are now being frowned upon and said to just be busy work, but there is definitely a time where it is appropriate for students to be completing worksheets, but you also need to make sure that students get a good amount on independent reading time.

I think that the organization and the way that a classroom is set up will set the background for the mood of the classroom. We dont want the classroom to be too overwhelming, but we want it to be inviting and promote learning.

This makes sense. One big essential question will promote thinking, but allow the students to go off in various different directions that will relate to their lives.

We want to be able to teach these males effectively and have them relate to things that are going on around them, but we may not be able to relate to. This literature needs to be appropriate for these students to read, but something that they are able to relate to.

Some of these students that may live in low socioeconomic areas have more to worry about than completing their homework. These basic social needs need to be met before their academic needs are taken into consideration.

You have to take into account that these students are facing the same issues that are going on with grown adults outside of the classroom. Their color of their skin, their socioeconomic status are just a few things that they have to worry about on a day to day basis. These may be issues that they are faced to deal with outside of school that are out of your control. These stereotypes may feed into their behavior in the classroom.

You have to be able to know your students and understand their behaviors. You have to be able to decipher what is a behavior out of spite and what is something that you genuinely have to be concerned about and report it. In this day and age people get offended very easily, but we need to be able to be advocates for our students and realize that not all behavior is bad and that detentions and suspension may not be the right answer for the students wrong behavior.

I think that is school be this way. Students should be aware of whats going on in the world around them and be able to respond and connect to it. I also think that by doing this you can do current events or something like that to tie in a social studies element.

This is very surprising to me. It is crazy how in different states teachers are not held to the same standard that other states are. I feel that this class is helping to be be able to properly teach children's literature and how to bring it into the classroom in the right manner. If teachers are not taking a class like this one, then students are not going to be adequately taught.

It is sad now that teachers have to teach to the standard or the standardized test. Teacher evaluations are something have are now based off of how well your students do on the standardized test, not how well the excel in the regular school day/school year. The school forces teachers to teach to the test and that these certain tools or resources need to be brought into the classroom to promote success on the tests.

This statement makes a lot of sense. Schools have developed in the past 20-40 year. We are doing so many more advanced things in school now that our parents did when they went to school. Literature and the curriculum that goes along with it have developed so much.

I like how the standards are broken down into three sections in reading: foundational skill, informational text and literature. It makes it easier to get more information in and to be able to provide more information for them to know,.

I think the standards are set up nicely and really easy to read. It guides you by grade and by standard and lays out exactly what you need to know in each grade.

These anchor standards are really important because they are the main standards of each subject that we are being taught to.

This is an important part because so many people think that the CCSS are forcing our teachers to teach the way that they do, but they arent. The CCSS are just telling us what they students need to know by the time they are finished with each grade and school in general.

These standards are so important. A lot of people feel that they are unnecessary or too hard, but these standards are preparing our students for their future in either college or their career.

We need to get these students thinking about who they are and how they can defy the odds. They need to be made aware about the labels and standards that they are held to.

This reminds me of a program here in New Haven. The children are more willing to learn from these programs as opposed to learning at school. They want to be at these programs to better themselves.

I agree that too many kids are being labeled "at risk" or "troubled". It is important that they do not see themselves as this label, as it will just make them believe their label. We have to show them that they are not their label and can be successful.

I think that it is good and necessary that all of the following areas are used for Africans to be exposed to literature. It is important that literature is used in various other settings other than at schol.