What 'Cha Readin'?

Welp! I just finished my last assignment and have another two graduate credits under my belt. The courses I’ve been taking this year for a reading endorsement have been very enjoyable, thanks to the instructors and the reading material. I really like taking online courses. Although, they require a lot of self-motivation and technical problems could potentially wreak havoc, I have had some understanding instructors that know how to make it all work.

This term I took a course that had us reading a truckload of children’s literature, from pre-school through young adult levels. Besides getting acquainted with what is out there, we also learned what to watch for in quality and culturally authentic authorship, and how to match books to children’s development levels rather than just using the book’s reading level as a guide. It was enlightening to have some substantial guidelines to help discriminate between books that are nice reads versus books that actually fit a child’s cognitive, psychosocial, moral development level and nudge growth in those areas as well. We also discussed censoring and banned and challenged books, which is scary for teachers and librarians to think about.

Stimulating as it is to take these courses, it is also nice to finish one up. I’ve been able to start reading and writing for fun again, hence the new blog entry, but I think I will continue to intersperse more children’s literature in with my own choices. I was quite impressed with some of what’s out there for kids. Besides using them for read-alouds to the whole class or for students to read individually, much of it also lends itself well for curriculum lessons. I just hope I can somehow retain everything I’ve learned. My memory these days closely resembles a sieve.