Teacher as Student

In my first grade class, I would read a story to the students and ask them to write about what they felt while reading the book and after reading it. We would do this activity with two books during the week and compare to see how the reactions where different. I would ask a variety of questions for discussion. Where you able to relate with a character? Did you find yourself totally into the story? With the second activity, I would tell the children what multicultural literature is by displaying several books. We would read the book and have a question/answer time with partners with me guiding them. I would ask if they felt any similarities of differences with the culture and did something bother you that happened in the story. For the final activity, I would read two books by the same author just like the book said. Instead of having a discussion, I would allow the students to take a Venn-diagram to their seats and complete it with similarities and differences in the books. This is more of an open-ended type assignment.