Kieu's Graves CH 6 & 7

Anyone can publish their work. And it isn't that difficult or complicated. Well, I didn't know that! Back in grade school, a bibliography was always required, stapled at the very end of a paper. (Now, this doesn't mean that it is no longer required. It just doesn't seem to be as big a deal.) I remember looking on the inside of the front cover to find the copyright date, the company who published the book, and also where the company was located. I had no idea who these people were, but I knew where London and New York were. Books that I have read were never published inside a first or third or fifth grade classroom, so I never even considered that there was such a thing. Each time I heard or read about authors preparing to publish their work, it was an elaborate and quite fancy process. I am beginning to see, though, that anyone can publish a story and it does not need to be sent to a big company and it most definitely does not need to cost thousands.

I liked how the three teachers mentioned in this chapter went about surrounding their students with literature. It's so important for students to feel that their work is "good enough". They need to know that their work is just as signficant as the work of authors who make millions for their books. Otherwise, the effort that they put into their writing would be limited. Mrs. Anderson's method of choral speaking may be something that I would like to try in my own classrooms. My teachers used to always pass out papers and ask us to memorize whatever was on the paper, and I would always have trouble. I, too, found that reciting these passages out loud (without any paper before) was most effective for me in my attempts to memorize the material. Even to this day, I tend to chose this same type of learning.