This course has taught me how to be appreciative and open to others ideas and perspectives of the world. The book series broaden my genre of reading. For years I stuck to only reading familiar books within the same subject and did little venturing out.

This course has taught me to be open to new material in reading. I also learned that I can be creative in my own way by making up a storyline to create my own book.  I always felt that you had to be some deep emotional person to write poetry or a novel. This course has taught me that it does not take a genius to create a poem. Poetry can be expressed in different forms, all you need is a prompt or a topic.

In the beginning of this course I was a little frustrated because I did not know to post a blog on this website or work my way through Twitter; I am still learning everyday. After practice and playing around with the websites, I have learned how to navigate on this website, Twitter and Wix,  I am becoming more comfortable and confident with technology. Technology is a necessity people can not live without. I am very grateful to have taken this course that informed and connected me with useful resources.

With all the information that I have learned I can put it to use in my classrooms and keep up with teachers and future educators.  This website among the others that I have joined such as Goodreads, Twitter and Wix is a great networking tool that I can use to get ideas for activities in my classroom or see what people are reading and check out their comments and reviews on the books that are out there.  One thing that I mentioned in a previous blog was using the idea of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book in my classrooms by having the students come up with their own “diaries” but in a journal form and share it with the class. Also, I can incorporate poetry into my class by having them write on certain prompts. I love the “Reading in the Wild” book. It is super informative and I will refer to it for the rest of my teaching career.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I have learned that staying connected and keeping up with the media (i.g positive and informative) and reading will help me be a great teacher because I will know how to relate material in my lessons plans for my students and find creative ways to engage them and keep them interested.

Doll Bones is a brilliantly written book. This book has a little of both reality and fantasy. The characters are young and are faced to go on a journey to put a young girl who passed away many many years ago bones to rest at her burial sight. Right off bat this book can be mistaken for fantasy because the students come across a haunted doll who directs them on their mission to a graveyard. It is rare and not really acknowledge that people now a days come across haunted dolls that speak to them and torment them but it does happen. I can say that there is a lot of demonic activity going on more than ever as it did when I was growing up. I feel that this book was targeted to the younger crowd because they are exposed to so much.  This book also has reality issues that the young character face such as strict parents/ guardians, self-esteem issues, and family issues that young teens can relate to. This book is very intriguing and as I read, I visualized every scene. I believe that the author wanted to reach the younger crowd and encourage them to get out the house and go on adventures and get back to the innocence of pretending and using imagination to have fun.

I enjoyed reading  Versaci’s article on comic books and watching the TED video. The two scholars overall claim is that it all boils down to cognition. Vision is key because it inflate the imagination and thinking of an individual and how they perceive things. Everyone’s perspective of the world is different and unique and important. In the article, Versaci says that reading comic books can develop analytical and critical thinking skills in students and change how students see literature. It also claims that reading comic books in classrooms encourage students to think more deeply about other works or genres of art and how everyone can defined their own literacy quality. Similar to the TED video, Scott McCloud stated, “Media provides us a window back into our world”. Comic books is another form of art that can expand one’s imagination and cause one to feel something different and brings them back to reality and look at the world in multiple ways. Vision and Cognition are the two main focal points that we need in order to perceive, adapt or “try” to understand, and be open minded to this ever changing world

Reading the comic books for our genre study was different than reading regular chapter books because reading regular books forces me to come up with my own interpretation of scenes in my mind. Whereas the comic book provided pictures for me which made me feel like I was watching a movie. Reading comic books changed how I read because I did not put the book down, I read the entire book in one setting because there were no long paragraphs that went on and on that caused me to wonder off in space. If I were to have had a chapter book, I would have  taken breaks in between and probably wouldn’t have finish it(depending on the book).

I can imagine using comic books in the classroom by having students come up with their own form of comic books about a prompt I may have them do. Instead of writing in a journal about their weekend or what exciting trip that they have been on, they can put it in comic book format and share with the classroom.