For my second chapter book, I decided to read “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson. This book is a story about a young girl going into high school who was sexually abused at an end-of-the-summer party. Instead of telling anyone what really happened that night, she called the cops to stop the party and is not shamed and bullied by the entire school. This book depicts the scary reality of what victims of sexual assault go through. Do I tell someone? Will the believe me? Will the look at me differently? I thought that this book, while sad, was an extremely well written and a must read book. I read this book when I was in seventh grade and I decided to read it again this year because of how common sexual assault is, especially on college campus’.

I think that anyone from middle schoolers to adults can, and should, read this novel. It would also be a great book to read as a class. Some discussion points you, as a teacher, could use are sexual assault, the effects of it, where and what you can do to get help, as well as bullying. Bullying is so common in our generation today with technology always at our hands, and we, as teachers, need to present how harmful this can be. Since we are constantly around large populations of children, we need to keep a special eye on any forms of bullying, big or small, because we need to stop it at its source.

 

Overall, this book was a great read for several purposes. This book is comprehensible for anyone ranging from middle school through adulthood. It would be especially good for anyone who has been sexually abused and feels as though they don’t have a voice, because they do. There is always help out there and nobody should be afraid to find it.

For my verse book I read Inside Out & Back Again and I am so glad that I did. This book was about a young girl, Ha, who had to go through the experience of leaving her home and everything familiar in Saigon to her and move to a whole new place, America, during the Vietnam War. This book created so many emotions while reading it. Reading a book in the form of verse was different for me, I have never really done much verse reading, but I thought that it was very interesting and it is a great way to tell a story. While reading verse form, I always find myself reading it as more of a journal. Each verse is a different day, or journal entry. I think that this created an even more personalized feel to the story and it grabs your emotion ‘strings’ and plays with them. This book would be great to use in the classroom, especially if your current lesson is on the Vietnam War. I think that while reading this book and studying the Vietnam War at the same time, it will make the students think more about how much wars really do affect people and how they turn their lives ‘inside out’.

My Cento:

I am reading the series “The Land of Stories” by Chris Colfer. I am really enjoying this series. It is fun and exciting and it is also an easy read. I chose to read this series because I always loved fairy tales when I was younger, who am I kidding, I still love them, and I thought that this would be a fun series for me to read. This is a great series that a wide range of ages could read. I think any ages between 8-12 years old would enjoy this series. The reading is easy so someone young could still read it, while it is  longer book, each are around 450 pages, this could prove a difficulty for the younger kids to read. This book is filled with excitement and it adds a twist to our original fairy tales which prove to be popular in a wide range of ages.  

The two central characters in this story are Alex and Conner. They are twins in sixth grade who are going through a hard time at home. While they look alike, they are very different. Alex is very focused in school and Conner tends to fall asleep in class just about everyday. After receiving a treasured fairy tale book from their grandmother for their twelfth birthday, they soon realize that there is something even more special about this book than they thought. they were able to transport into “The Land of Stories” and be apart of their most treasured fairy tales, the good parts and the scary parts included. Now their mission is to find out just how they are going to get back home to their mom.

I think that this would be a great book to read to the class while we are doing a fairy tale lesson. It gives the kids a new look on the fairy tales that they all know so well, and lets them really feel like they are in their favorite fairy tales.  Since this is a much longer book, it would be hard to read the whole book in class while keeping everyone’s attention, so like Miller talks about in “Reading in the Wild” this book is one that you could read a few chapters out of and then put it on the bookshelf and let the students who want to continue it do so.

I think reading aloud is a great tool to use in your classroom. Highlighting what Miller talks about, it is a great way to introduce your students to some different genres of books that they might not pick on their own and it proves to your students that reading is, in fact, FUN! A few downfalls to reading aloud is that it is hard to chose a book that everyone will enjoy and stay attentive during. So, taking into consideration some of the different ways that Miller uses to pick out read aloud books, I believe it is a great activity to do in your classroom.