Angela Sain's Blog

I did my multi-text with Heather Heath and we did used Judy Moddy Saves the World for our main book.  We focused on being a good citizen as well as the Rain Forests and how we can help save them from being destroyed. Multitext study JM finished

WOW! This book is amazing. I really enjoyed reading this book and could not put it down once I started it.  The word choice is the book is awesome.  As we talked about in class, I now know words that I can use that I never thought of before reading this book. I would suggest this book to everyone because it is at a fifth grade reading level but if I can enjoy it at the age of 21, anyone can.  If I ever teach fifth grade, I will most definitely plan a unit around this book. I plan on reading the sequal because I was so sucked in.  I would plan to read so many pages a day but I always read more.  I have never seen the disney Peterpan movie, but I really want to watch it now after reading Peter!

I think these activities are really cute and they will get students engaged.  I know when I was in school, I loved when we got to read plays and read certain character parts.  I feel that elementary children will really enjoy the reader’s theatre because it is getting them involved but it is also a great teaching strategy and it is helping encourage their reading skills and comprehension.  This activity goes along with morphology because it conveys meaning of the story.

I thought the sketch to stretch activity was also great.  This goes along with what we have talked about all semester about modeling for students.  This is a great way to get students involved without them actually having to do work.  It would also be a great idea to expand on this activity and have the students create their own artistic impression of a scene or selection of the book.

This article was very informational and a great resource.  I really enjoyed reading this article because it is very useful and I could definitely use the techniques discussed in this article in my classroom.  We have been taught in all of our education courses that modeling is very important when first introducing something new.  I loved how the article had charts explaining the shared reading components.  I think this is really good because it maps it all out for you. I found it really neat that this article had teacher responses to readings under different areas.  I liked this article alot and will be using it as a resource when doing shared readings in my own classroom.

This article is a great resource for upper elementary teachers who have students who are struggling with reading.  I really liked how this article started off with a scenario and then it described how to help that student.  In my internship classroom, there are many different reading levels and the teacher uses the method that is explained in this article.  She has different reading groups and each group is reading the same type of book but they are all different reading levels to help each individual student.  I liked the line that came from Betts “Maximum development may be expected when the learner is challenged but not frustrated.”  This one line explained instructional reading level very good that it is when a child is given a book that isn’t too easy but isn’t too hard either.  I completely agree that this instructional technique is beneficial.  One aspect of this article that I really liked and found helpful is that different people’s ideas are expressed and described.  I also agree with the line that says “these students with reading difficulties need instruction matched to their level of reading development.  We have talked a lot in all of our reading and literacy classes about this idea and it can never be stressed enough that every student has a different reading level and all of them have to be addressed.  I plan on keeping this article and reading it again when I begin teaching in my own classroom so I can accurately address students with reading difficulties.

I loved all of these poetry books. They are all great poetry collections and great for kids to read. I especially enjoyed Love That Dog. It made me laugh and it made me sad all at the same time. I think this book would be great to introduce poetry. Brown Angels was very good also. The portraits were great in this book and they told a story along with the poems. The connection between all of these books is that Love That Dog referenced both All The Small Poems and Brown Angels in the text. I really liked that Love that Dog was written in a little boy’s point of view.  Children could read this book and relate to Jack and it might help them think of things to write about. I related to Jack because I have a hard time thinking of things to write about but if I am given ideas or examples, it is alot easier for me.  All the poetry books flowed very nicely and I will probably use them in my future classroom.

You can tell by reading this book that the author thinks names are very important. The author thinks name have special meaning for each person. He also believes names tell a story. The main Character is Bud and his mother tells him to never let anyone call him Buddy because Bud mean so much more. She told him that a bud is a flower to-be. He is okay with his name but he says he will never tell anyone the meaning his mom told him. The part of the book that I read in class was in a child’s voice look back in time. The author gave other meanings for the name buddy to fully explain his views. I think this would be a good book to have upper elementary students read.

Well my name is Angela Nicole Sain.  I have kind of a heartwarming story of how I got my name.  Let’s go back to 1987! My mother already had a son but she really wanted a little girl.  She tried for a long time without any luck.  That is when she starting going to doctors to try harder.  Since she was an older woman, 36, the doctors told my mother, after all the money she spent, that she could not have anymore children.  My mom was heartbroken after hearing the news.  My parents decided to take a trip to Virginia in October 1997.  In December 1997, my mother starting getting sick and gaining weight. She got a surprise when she found out she was pregnant, with me of course!  She was so excited she started buying everything for a girl, not knowing the sex for sure because I had my legs crossed.  I was always the first one on the carpet cris-cross applesauce in school, now I know why!  Well I popped out July 17, 1988 and my mom named me Angela so she could call me Angel because she said I was her miracle baby!  Go ahead and say it….AWWWW!!!

That was sweet and all but my parents didn’t put good enough thought to my middle name.  I know your thinking, Nicole is a good name.  Well think of it this way, Angela N….here it comes…Sain!  So now you laugh….Angela NSain…haha.  I love my parents but dang they could have bared me the embarrassment.  I got picked on so much in school for this and I hated it.  I got used to it after a while but I promised myself I would think very very hard before naming my child because I do not want him or her to get picked on like I did.

Another name I hated being called in school was Angelica.  I grew up in the rug rats days so everyone called me Angelica and I would get so mad.  I would come home complaining about it and my mom would just tell me to ignore it.  Well I be if it didn’t work. I ignored being called that and people then stopped calling me Angelica.

I went by Angel in elementary school then Angela in middle and high school.  My family still calls me Angel but I like everyone else to call me Angela because it’s more grownup. Ever since I came to college, my new name has became Ang.  I like it because it is short and sweet.  I don’t really care what my friends call me but I don’t really like being called Angie unless a little kid calls me that because they can’t say Angela.

I think this book is really neat.  I feel like children would like this book alot because the poems are short but they get the point across.  I really like that there are individual drawings for each poem.  This book would be really easy to integrate poetry into a lesson plan.  Out of all the poems I have read so far, my favorite is “Haunted House”.  I loved the imagery in this poem and I could imagine a picture in my head while reading it.  I really enjoy this book and I plan on using it in my future classroom.

I thought this was a very good article to learn about blogging.  I did not completely understand what blogging was and how to use it until I read this article.  It explained blogging and HOTT blogging very clearly and broke things down nicely to help readers better understand.  I thought it was very interesting how the article explained how blogging can be used to promote higher level thinking.  I think using a blog in the classroom is a great idea because not only does it help students be creative and progress in their writing, it also lets them interact with the teacher and technology.  I plan on my future class creating a blog for these certain reasons.  This article will be a very useful resource to me as I create my classroom blog in the future.