I think the Weenies Series is perfect for the classroom.  As a person who doesn’t have a lot of time to read long novels, this is the perfect book.  It is full of entertaining short stories that hold my interest and are easy to read between class and other activities.  The stories are pretty funny and can get a little crazy and I think that is perfect for kids.  I would recommend this book to the kid who has trouble sitting down to finish a book.  The stories are just the right length to be interesting and teach a lesson but are short enough that a kid can get through them in less than 10 minutes.  Due to the change in plot every few pages, this book is almost guaranteed to hold a child’s attention and if they don’t like one of the stories they can easily skip over it and move on to the next one.

I think this book is perfect for SSR (silent sustained reading) or even just for reading aloud at the end of class.  Within 20 minutes of SSR a child can get through a few stories and then may even be motivate to pick up The Weenies Series to read later in their own free time.  And as for reading aloud in class, I think this would be a perfect way to end the day.  Something light and funny to send the kids off with and keep reading on their minds.  This is a series I definitely want in my future classroom and I can’t wait to share it with students!

I skimmed through Donalyn Miller’s Reading In the Wild and I found some interesting things.  I really liked Miller’s way of doing the reading itinerary.  She used it as a way for students to realize their reading habits instead of forcing them to read for certain amounts of time and counting up those minutes the way I did in elementary school.  She would then have the students look into where they were able to read the longest, whether they read more in or out of school and what they learned about their reading habits.  I think this is a much better way of looking at reading.  I would have been interested to know my reading habits as a kid and know what I needed to work on or where my favorite place to read was.  I also liked that Miller allowed her students to read wherever they wanted in the room.  I think this would make reading more of an adventure and an escape from the norm of the desk and chair.  It would make reading feel like more of a break from school and less of a mandatory reading period for school.

What seems the most challenging for me is finding time for myself to read.  Right now I only read materials required for school since I have overextended myself this semester.  But even during summer I find myself watching Netflix and catching up on TV shows instead of reading a book.  So for me I think the hardest part will be getting back into the habit of reading regularly.

I’m excited to get students excited about reading and being able to connect with the students through reading.  I want to have a story time at the end of each class where I can read to the students as we do in class now.  I think it would be a good way to end the day and have the students leave everyday with reading on their mind.  I’m most afraid that I won’t be able to analyze books the way my teachers have.  My past few english teachers were really good at analyzing the novels we read and so when we would discuss it in class, I always loved hearing the small details that they found and how they had this deep meaning and painted a bigger picture.  I know the books I’ll be teaching to elementary school students won’t be as complicated as the one’s I’ve had to read the past few years but I just want to be able to be that super smart teacher who can find all the cool little factors in books that most people skim over.

 

 

Rebecca Autrey

The Brothers Grimm version of Snow White was surprising close to Disney’s version.  They both had an envious evil queen who dressed up as an old woman but in Disney there was only one poisoned apple and no strangling with staylaces or poisoning with combs.  The mirror on the wall was esentually the same except that I don’t remember the mirror ratting Snow White out and telling the evil queen her location in the Disney version.  The dwarf part seemed pretty similar too.  I remeber them coming back from the mines in Disney to find Snow White and Snow White doing all the cleaning with all the animals.  And when they thought Snow White had died they put her in the glass coffin in both versions and the prince stumbled upon her.  It was love at first sight in both versions but instead of true love’s kiss saving Snow White the Brothers Grimm version had her cough up the poisoned apple.

There were also some major differences.  There definitely wasn’t any cannibalism in the disney version and the queen didn’t die by burning her feet to death.  I don’t get why she even put the iron slippers on.  She could have just turned around right then and lived.  But I guess second place wasn’t good enough for her.

Also there wasn’t any blood on the snow in Disney’s Snow White I’m pretty sure but it did remind me of the movie Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart when I think Snow White’s mother pricked her finger on a rose and blood fell on the snow.

What surprised me about the story was the similarity to the classic story I know – Goldilocks and The Three Bears.  I’m not sure if that story is based off of the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White or not but it was essentially the same idea with a young girl coming in and eating the food and sleeping in the bed that’s too big, too small and just right.

Another surprise was Snow White’s age in the Brothers Grimm version.  She got married at the age of 7?  I feel like that’s young even for that time.  And how old is this prince?

Anyway, I think the theme of the story is how jealousy is bad and only leads you to do terrible things.  It contradicted a bit in that Snow White “the fairest of them all” was cool crashing in a strangers house and got the prince right away even in the darker version of the story.  But overall the queen got screwed over because of her envy and because she just had to go to the wedding and see Snow White she was willing to go through the torcher of burning hot shoes and it eventually lead to her death.

Rebecca Autey