For this weeks make I wanted to take a look at the problems that Ada and Jamie were faced with in The War That Saved My Life. The book mentioned and gave many examples of real world issues that many children are faced with and at times they don’t have the help or support they need. The War That Saved My Life heavily focused on war, child abuse, and stigmas on physical/mental disabilities. For this weeks make my group and I wanted to create a recourse that was beneficial to any student who needs help. We created a google slide show that gave students information on places they can turn to when and if they ever need help with problems they are faced with at home. As a future teacher I know that there may be students in my class that will be victims of abuse and they might not feel comfortable discussing the problems they’re experiencing so with the resourced I’m providing they’ll be able to contact someone who will know exactly what to do and how to help depending on the problem. The resources we provided are focused around the Chico area but you can adjust the information to fit the area you’ll be working in. I believe that giving students valuable information about topics like this will lead to a better and happier community.

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In the book The War that Saved My Life, we are introduced to the lives of two major characters Ada Smith and her little brother Jamie Smith. The lives of these two siblings is full of hardships, but Ada is constantly being faced with verbally and physically abuse from their mother. Their mother isn’t the nicest and most supporting mother, she treats both of her children very differently. When it comes to Jamie their mother enroll him into school and gives him the freedom to go play outside but when it comes to Ada she is kept isolated from the world because she was born with a clubfoot. One day there was news that Hitler was planning on bombing London,  so Ada and Jamie ran toward the evacuation centers in hopes that they’d be able to successfully leave their mother and their unfortunate way of life. This goes in their favor because they are placed under the care of a sweet older lady by the name of Susan Smith. In the beginning Susan didn’t like the idea of having kids under her care because she was going through the heartbreak of losing her best friend but she took them in. At first Ada and Jamie thought that it was going to be the same living situation that they had grown accustomed to but it was quite the opposite. Miss Smith was the mother figure they didn’t have. Under her care they received love, care and support which were things they weren’t familiar with. In the end, Miss Smith keeps them and becomes their loving guardian.

 

I believe this text was created to encourage people to talk about real world problems that are taking place in our current society. This book can be used to teach students about problems that include war, child abuse, and social prejudice. I would recommend this book for students in the grade levels 6-8, it is not a challenging book to read and it’s written in a way that makes you want to finish reading it to find out what happens to the kids. I really enjoyed reading this book, the story of what the kids had to go through was unbelievable they had to overcome a lot of hardships.

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I selected Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-up for my series book. This book was a funny and entertaining book about the life of a second-grade student. This book provided me with different ideas that I could’ve used to create a make, but I thought it’d be fun to create something you could eat. Since Keena went through all that trouble to get a slice of the chocolate birthday cake, I decided to make chocolate cupcakes as a tribute for her eventful journey. This wasn’t intended to be something educational for students instead it is something fun and delicious they can make at home with their families. Hope you enjoy the recipe!

I selected Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-Up written by Melissa Thomson, this is the first book of a three book series. Since it’s the first book of the series we’re introduced to a second grade student by the name of Keena Ford. Other central characters that are included are Keena’s parents, Brian her older brother, Mr. Lemon, Miss Campbell her teacher, Eric her best friend and Tiffany. Keena was given a journal as a reward for receiving good grades and having good behavior in the first grade. This journal is the key focus of the book because it features all her daily thoughts about the struggles and also the good things that the second grade has brought her. The hardships she’s faced with range from being separated from her best friend Eric, have to drink tea that taste like “wet paper bag” with a classmate names Tiffany, hiding under a teachers desk, and even hurting her teachers feelings. Keena’s biggest mistake was the she may have possibly stretched the truth by allowing her teacher Miss Campbell to believe that her birthday is September 2nd (9/2) instead of February 9th (2/9).

I really enjoyed the book from beginning to end. I would recommend this fiction book series to any student in elementary, it’s not a challenging book per se but it introduces students to ideas of how to use a journal by reading the book. This book works for teachers and students well because it shows two different perspectives. The first being a students perspective which shows that they focus and take interest in small things and create a bigger picture, for example Keena believed her life was going to be heavily impacted when Eric and her were placed in different classrooms. The second perspective is a teachers or in this Mr. Lemon, who realized that Keena wasn’t being honest and lied about her birthday because she was interested in wearing the crown and getting a piece of the chocolate cake. Mr. Lemon teaches Keena that you have to be honest and when you make a mistake you have to take ownership of it and apologize to anyone who was affected by the lie.

In my classroom I would definitely  include two things that were used in this book, the idea of journal usage and writing letters of apology. Using a journal allows students to express themselves and it gives them a way to get their ideas in a way thats personalized for each and every student. Writing letters of apology works well because its a way for students to practice their writing but most importantly it’s a way for them to become responsible for their actions. There were other ideas that were introduced in the book would be as usefully but these two concepts were the two that caught my eye.

In the first chapter of Reading in the Wild there were many ideas that would be beneficial in a classroom. Independent reading that allows students to select a book of their choice, this is important for creating good reading habits. Reading becomes less of a burden to students when they are reading something that they are actually interested in. Another good idea was the use of Status of the Class reading logs as a way to see the progress of students engagement, reading levels and genre preferences makes it easy to recommend books thats they’ll enjoy. Miller provide material that’ll make it easy to enhance or create positive reading habits. I’m excited to see what types of book genres my future students will be reading and helping them build their reading skills which is something they’d use in their everyday life. I am afraid of the not being fully prepared for reading level differences that will vary between every student.