YGBB

"You Gotta BE the Book," written by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, was very insightful for me as a beginning teacher of Language Arts in the middle school level.  As I saw today in my teacher observation of a reading exercise, students are not interested in learning about books, especially when in comes to long novels and subject matter that does not appeal to them.  The students were constantly interrupting the teacher and staring off out the window instead of paying attention to their teacher.  I found Wilhelm's book to be a coincidental treat.  The book gives many ideas on reading strategies, student interaction, and teacher observation.  With this new information, I hope I will be able to get my students to participate and enjoy literature in the courses I will be teaching.  One way that Wilhelm inspired me to do that is through his "Looking at Student Reading" section.  Hearing students ideas, as Wilhiem provided for me, really gives me an "in" to students minds and how they feel about reading.  In my classroom I am going to have a large selection of novels that I will let students vote on.  Of course, as long as they follow the school ciriculum.  I will stay far away from addressing literature as "school work."  Reading discussion is also going to be a heavy enforcement in my classroom through the interactive approach to reading.  The interactive approach allows students to come up with thier own ideas about what the book means to them.  Also, meaning making goes along with classroom interaction.  In meaning making I will state the importance of the novel, summarize, draw conclusions, and answer questions.  Lastly, I want my students to learn how to read through the "Bottoms Up" approach.  In this approach Wilhelm says, "once students have understood and mastered the subskills of reading, they can apply these in context to decode letters and words; they are then well on thier way to becoming readers." (20)  I think that through effective phonics, children can grasp contexts better on thier own.