Talking Points 2

"Why can't she remember that?" by Terry Meier                                                   Kayla Brown

Quotes:
1) "Book knowledge becomes, in essence, part of these children's sense of identity in the world."
         -Basically saying that if the children are read to and are familiar with books, they will be more likely to succeed in the classroom and on.
2) "Even children as verbally sophisticated as Lem are in danger of eventual school failure if their teachers are unable to help them extend their love of the spoken word to an equally passionate engagement with the written word."
        -Writing is an essential asset in life and if a child starts out from a young age not being able to connect a verbal story to paper and create a written story, then that child is at a great disadvantage with his/her education.
3) "It is difficult to overstate the importance of choosing books that connect to children's lives."
        -At such a young age, it is very important for the teacher to choose material that the kids can connect to so they develop a deeper understanding and connection to the literature.

Comments:

This reading really opened my eyes to something that I hadn't really thought of before, but Meier makes lots of great points.  I think it is really important for the teacher to choose stories that reflect the students in the class.  If there are mostly African American kids in the class, obviously the teacher should read books that contain African American families for the majority, and vise versa.  Little kids like what they can relate to and if they cannot relate to a story because the people in it are not "like them" then they are not going to enjoy the story.  I also liked Meier's point that if the class is diverse, then the teacher should also try to pick out books that contain parts of two languages, to let the bilingual students see that both of their languages are important and should be heard about.  It was also interesting to see the different ways kids of different ethnicities got out of trouble.  I thought it was funny how one little boy made up a poem, that rhymed, right on the spot.  It just goes to show that children are all being raised differently and that the teachers need to try to incorporate as much diversity into their lessons, especially those dealing with literacy.