Love That Dog was a seriously awesome book and was as fantastic as everyone had talked about it being all semester. I was skeptical about how a kids book could be so great but I most definitely on board now; I’m almost disappointed it wasn’t based off a true story! While reading the poem from Jack’s point of view my future teacher brain was constantly reeling, hoping I could use a lesson like this in the future.

From what I gathered it seemed as though Miss Strechberry had an on going poetry lesson throughout the school year. I imagined that certain days she would set aside “poetry time” where she would read some poems to her students, maybe give a mini lesson about the type of poem she would read that day, and then have the students write in their poem journal. From what I gathered from Jack’s writing was that she asked her student to try to write something similar to the poem they heard or write their thoughts about the poem. After each journal entry they must have turned it in to the teacher so she could give them feedback.

My favorite part about Miss Stretchberry’s pedagogy was that she was not one to critique the students work, instead I feel as though she was only inquisitive about the students work to help encourage them to think deeper, do more. She never seemed critical only encouraging which is a great skill to acquire as a teacher. As we learned by the end of the book that Jack went from refusing to write poetry to really enjoying it. I feel as though Miss Strechberry’s poetry unit reflects what we have been learning in Miller’s text about forming a relationship with reading, but in this case forming a relationship with poetry. I feel as though this type of continuous activity is very effective and is something I would love to implement in my future classroom.

On a different subject, here is my version of the “so much depends upon…” poem that Jack wrote about in Love That Dog:

so much depends

upon

a ripe avocado

sliced

next to a cold glass

of sweet iced tea

This past week I had read Coraline by Neil Gaiman. For our assigned readings this week we were all supposed to choose a graphic novel. I chose Coraline because I remembered seeing the movie when I was younger and really enjoying it and wanted to see how I would view it now, after a few years. As it turns out, however, I ended up purchasing the original written version of this novel online and not the graphic novel like I should have. Luckily for me there was a PDF version of this graphic novel online that I was able to access. This gave me a chance to see how this story is translated in the two different types of novels; it was very interesting to compare the two. I really enjoyed the story as a whole but it was definitely a challenge at first to move from a written novel to a graphic novel. I struggled at first getting a hang on how to read the graphic novel but after a while I developed a flow of how to go about each page. Once I got that down it was actually really fun; I enjoyed seeing all of the art and seeing how the story unfolded from picture to picture. I can see how children would really enjoy books such as these and I hope that I will be able to recommend this book to my future students.

For our author study I chose to read a couple of books by Sharon Creech. This is perfect because a little bit later in the semester we will be reading another one of her books, Love That Dog, and I will have a little bit of prior knowledge regarding some of her other works. Of the two books I chose I ended up liking one more than the other but they were both good reads. The first book I read was Ruby Holler which is about two orphans who feel like it is just them against the world but eventually find their way. I ended up liking this read and could tell it is the type of book I would have really enjoyed when I was younger. The second book I read was Heartbeat about a young girl with an intense passion for running. Heartbeat was very interesting because the whole book was written in poem form which might be the reason I had a hard time really getting attached to it but I did find it very interesting.

After talking in groups during class with other students who had chosen other Sharon Creech novels I realized that most of her books have some sort of theme. It seemed to me that from what I gathered Sharon Creech’s books have a theme of a sort of misery. There usually was always a pattern of something tragic which is very intriguing to me. This pattern reminded me of how most Disney movies have a parent missing or a parent dies which was a result of Walt Disney’s complicated past. I now wonder if Creech’s books are an indication of some previous influence in her life and I am now very curious to read Love That Dog to see if the theme continues.

For our series book I have chosen to read The Legend Series. I unfortunately did not get time to finish the whole book but thus far I have loved it! While choosing my series book I went through and read the descriptions for each book, choosing my favorite one; even so, this book was not what I was expecting. To me, Legend seems almost more on the brink of a young adult novel than anything else. It really caught my interest because as soon as I started reading it immediately reminded me of other books I have read and loved. I would place this book right on the shelf next to the Hunger Games series and the Divergent series.

Legend is a book set in the future when the United States has been destroyed and new governments have been formed, splitting what used to be the U.S. into two. I would recommend this book to anyone who is into dystopia type novels. Context wise it might be something I would guess it to be a young adult novel, however, writing style wise I think it fits the 5th grade/6th grade level. I am not sure that there are any lessons that would relate directly to this series, however, I feel that you would be able to use this book for any lesson related to story or plot lines (i.e. deciphering “beginning, middle, and end” or character analysis). Additionally, I really like that this book is written in the perspective of two different characters which I think keeps the reader engaged. I would definitely enjoy recommending this book to my future students because it was a book that I, myself, am enthusiastic about.