Candace Poovey

I thought there were a lot of great ideas in this article for incorporating Social Studies trade books into the curriculum for those struggling readers.  One idea I really liked was when students are silently reading, they must take notes on what they’ve read, then get with a small group and discuss it.  I believe this will help struggling readers work on their comprehension skills.  It also keeps them from just saying they read the book and moving on to other activities.  I’m glad this article included a list of books that can be used in teaching Social Studies content.  This makes a teacher’s job much easier to know she can look at this list and pick something based on the topic to be covered and her student’s reading levels.

My favorite poem in this book was “Jeannie Had a Giggle.”  It reminded me of when I was younger in church with my cousins and how hard it was to try and stifle the giggles.  I enjoyed reading this book, because most of the stories were interesting.  I also liked looking at the pictures throughout the book.  Another poem I liked in this book was “Love That Boy”.   It made me think of Jack’s poem in Love That Dog, and how Myers had inspired him.

This book had a lot of cute poems in it.  One of the ones I liked was called “Frog.”  I especially liked this poem because it reminded me of my childhood.  When my brother and I went fishing with my dad we would always catch tadpoles in a drink bottle and bring them home to watch them grow.  I just thought about how we loved to observe them each and every day even those this poem wasn’t really about  the tadpole.  I thought the poems would be really great for children because they are so short and simple, yet some can have a greater meaning behind them, and some are very informative.

To begin this assignment,  I visited the website www.behindthename.com.  This website told me information I already knew about my name.  My name is found in the New Testament of the Bible in Acts Chapter 8, verse 27.  In this chapter, Candace is the queen of the Ethiopians.  It is said to mean “queen mother”.  Candace was made popular after the 1942 release of the Meet the Stewarts.  I also found that Candace means fire white, pure, and glowing.

On the website ww2.howmanyofme.com/search, I found out that there are 78,657 people in the United States with the first name Candace.  There are 794 people in the USA with my last name, Poovey.  There are one or fewer people in the US named Candace Poovey, so I would assume that means I am the only Candace Poovey in the United States.

My mom had always liked the name Candace and she hadn’t really heard a lot of people with that name.  My grandmother was afraid that I would be called Candy instead of Candace.  My mom told her that I probably wouldn’t be called Candy if no one around me called me that as I was growing up and she was right.  For the first twenty years of my life no one every called me Candy, until a friend’s handsome little boy Caleb started talking and he couldn’t pronounce Candace.  He is the only one who I have ever and will ever let call me Candy (except maybe his baby sister).  For my middle name, mom wanted me to have the same initials as her, CRP, minus her maiden name.  So she gave me the same middle name she has,  Renee.  I love my name because there are not very many people who have it.

I enjoyed this book, because it was a very easy read.  It was also very entertaining.   I loved how Jack was extremely concerned that no one would like his poems, so he never wanted his name on it.  It was interesting to see him progress throughout the book.  He went from a child who didn’t think he could write poetry (because poetry is for girls) to a child who was very well rehearsed in writing poems.  None of the poems that Jack wrote really rhymed any, and I think students need to know that a poem does not always have to rhyme.  They need to be shown examples of rhyming poems and some that don’t rhyme.  They also need to be shown simple poems that are just written about something interesting to the author.  Just like Jack’s poem about his dog, Sky, if a student can write about something that’s important to them the writing process will be much easier.

This article was very informative about the different types of blogs out there and how teachers may use them in their classrooms.  I love the idea of using a blog to keep parents informed of what is going on in the classroom.  I also think that students would enjoy having their own blog that family members and classmates can read.  I believe that students would love the fact that they had published works on the internet, and they could show that information off to their loved ones.  By using the blog to post assignments, students may get the opportunity to do more research on the internet of topics they are blogging about.  Like the article says if they are discussing a book, have the students find resources that could aid in the understanding of the book.  Blogging is something that I would like to have my students do in my future classroom.

~What are your overall impressions of the book?

• I have really enjoyed reading this book.  I love how the author tells ways she has used the Writer’s Notebook in her classroom.  This has made me very excited to incorporate the notebook into my future classroom.  In my elementary years I do not remember being given the opportunity to write about topics that interests me.  We usually were just given prompts to follow.  I especially like the writing from a list strategy.  I believe kids will enjoy creating their own lists, and always knowing there is a topic to fall back on when you have a day when you can’t think of anything else to write.

~What is the purpose of the Writer’s Notebook?

• The purpose of the Writer’s Notebook is to get students actively engaged in writing.  This gives them the opportunity to write creatively, while they are getting practice with sentence structure and the conventions of writing.  They also become better readers, because good writers constantly re-read what they have written.

~What might be your goals as a teacher of writing?

• My goal as a teacher of writing is to get my students to enjoy writing.  I always dreaded writing as a child, but we were seldom given the opportunity to express ourselves and our own creativity.  I would like my students to be excited when the time comes for them to pull out their notebooks and begin writing.

~Launching the Notebook?

• I like the idea of introducing the notebook at the precise moment students began to talk about their ideas on a topic.  This way the students already have the gears turning in their head and don’t feel like it is such a chore to start writing in their notebooks.

~Organization of the Notebook?

• While I was reading these chapters, I couldn’t decide if I would use composition notebooks in my classroom or binders.  I think that I would like there to be a little more organization than the author had in her classroom notebooks.  I believe the working back to front for the notes would be confusing to me, and possibly to the students.  If they used binders, they could then have dividers with a section for writing and a section for notes.  This would help my thought process as I was checking the notebooks by keeping these topics separate.