Great video

I appreciate the teacher's honesty with literature. It is important to have our students challenge what they read and create critical ideas for meanings within a story. Using children's book as a way to engage discussion really challenges students and may even surprise some. At that age, students aren't expecting to read a book about putting dinosaurs to sleep. Much less finding a meaning behind this. So when the teacher asks them to create two stories from reading these books, it forces students to pull information from all parts of their mind. 

I really like that the teacher dives deep into the meaning of censorship and the influence that it has on a reader at the very beginning of the lesson. The most essential thing I believe anybody can take out of this is that a story can have a positive or negative outlook in retrospect. They can either come to really resonate with the story that they have just completed, or the story itself just doesn't work for them. The lesson also provides a great method to increase a student's critical thinking skills, and to see if they were able to make a connection to the story they had read. 

This classroom setting is truly engaged and great attribute to the teacher focus on topic. The students are gaining knowledge and are enaged on topic. This environment would want me to participate and partake with my peers

Ms. Wessling has given her students a very interesting and effective lesson on the topic “Challenge the Book: What’s your Perspective.” She started her lesson in an open way with the questions about the censorship and the influence of a book on readers to lead the students to the purpose or objectives of the lesson. By illustrating the picture of people waiting outside a bookstore for a new Harry Potter book to come out and the picture of John Lenon, she took the students step-by-step closer to the truth that books can influence people differently, both in positive and negative ways.

Using authentic situations, she got the students’ engagement and successfully encouraged them to actively participate and elaborate in the discussion so that they could understand the reason why people reacted differently when reading a book. She emphasized that it did not mean because of the book, but because of the readers’ perspective and their reaction to the book.

Another good way that she applied in her teaching was that she used a quote for her students to think and express their thoughts. Moreover, she read aloud a very meaningful story to them, raised questions about the characters’ behavior in the story, and also mentioned the different reactions that people might have when reading that story.

It is necessary and important to have students challenge books because it will help students understand not only the surface story but get the theme and perceive the point or the real story. They need to ask themselves questions whether they agree or disagree with the characters, and to bring the meaning of the book. In this way, teachers can help improve the students’ critical thinking and support their making a connection with what they are reading.

The real practice with children’s books is a great class activity. The students choose the book to read in pairs or groups of three and exchange their thoughts. It is an excellent way to prepare the students for their perspective and thinking along with the book they choose to read at home. At the end of the lesson, Ms. Wessling posed the question of how to determine the worth of a book, which also could assist her students to think more about the different reactions that readers could have and different influences that books could make on the readers.