Skip to main content

Blog #3 Dear Mr. Henshaw

Writing- some of us love it, while some of us hate it. Whether we are writing for work, stress relief, school, we all have taken part & shared a feeling about writing thus far in life. Personally, I have always love writing. I think I have a pretty neat handwriting, no calligraphy script or anything, but nice, neat, & legible. I also enjoy writing with colorful ink pens. It just makes writing more fun and engaging. 

Our friend Leigh, the main character in the story, Dear Mr. Henshaw shares a passion for writing like me. He write letters frequently to one of his favorite authors, Mr. Henshaw. He would share personal experiences such his feelings towards his dad, being the new kid at school, and challenges he faced with his mom after his father left. Leigh would write a letter almost yearly, sometimes twice a year. To Leigh's surprise, sometimes he got responses back, other times he did not. 

Once Leigh learned of Mr. Henshaw's busy schedule, he stopped writing direct letters & created a personal diary, advice given to him by Mr. Henshaw himself. This is where Leigh's passion for writing truly started to show. To Leigh, writing was his escape. From the journal entries, I can definitely infer Leigh took writing seriously. 

Reading this Newbery award winning book allowed me to reflect on the importance of journaling. I stopped making journaling a part of my daily routine, and I can tell the difference in my thought processes. Journaling is a great stress relief outlet. It helps to get thoughts out of your head & on to paper. When we write, we are more like to process our thoughts in a better manner. 

My key takeaway from this particular book was to find ways to encourage writing along with reading in the classroom. Giving students the option to choose who they write to would also enhance classroom participation in what can sometimes seem like a daunting task. I also want to encourage journaling for many different reasons. One reason is so they feel heard. Our students sometimes fight silent battles, and journaling would be a way to combat those ill thoughts.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog #7: Poetry

     My poetry anthology of choice was The Rose Who Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur. This book consists of 72 poem written by the lyrical genius before his untimely death. He shared stories of life's hardships such as experiencing miscarriages. living in poverty, growing up fatherless, etc. Tupac's original handwritten poems are on the left of the book while the typed version is on the right. The book allows us to take a closer look at who Tupac was and the deep sense of compassion he felt through his first 19 years old life. One of my favorites from the book is "I Cry:. In this poem, Tupac shares with us how he cry sometimes and wish his feelings can be heard/understand, but at the same time feels no one has time to listen to your problem. I think this is very important because it touches on an emotion many men are afraid to deal with. The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander/Illustrated by Kadir Nelson was a pleasure reading. It was one of those books that make me wish I ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog #2: The Adventues of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend

      For this week's blog post, I chose to read The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat. It won the Caldecott Medal in 2015. I chose this book on a library trip with my students. I read the book aloud to them, and the seemingly took interest. I also took it home and read it to my daughter. She was amazed with the pictures. Each page, she felt like she had touch or make her own version of what was happening.  The book was about an imaginary friend waiting to be chosen by an owner so they can have that sense of belonging.     The illustrations in this book were extremely colorful and full of life. The pictures complimented the words in the book. The quality of the pictures matched the quality of the words in the book, which makes this the perfect candidate for the Caldecott Medal, according to our textbook. One difference with this book is the pictures were not drawn by hand. There were instead produced by digital images. This mea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog #4- Picture Books

Flotsam by David Weisner- This week, I chose to read Flotsam, a completely wordless book that depends on the pictures to tell the story. I chose this book based on a listing from our text. For starters, I had to define what flotsam was to understand the book. If I were to read this book (or "show" in this case), it would be imperative that students understood the definition of the title to help build the context of the images in the book. Because this book has no text, the meaning of the pictures would be left up to the reader. The photos in the book does make the book easily to follow and decode; therefore, I would definitely qualify this book as a good picture book because it gets no "picturey" than this! The pictures and the setting help establish a mood, as suggested in our text. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown; Pictures by Clement Hurd- Contrary to what many may believe, this was my first time reading Goodnight Moon. I have seen the book plenty of times t...
Post a Comment
Read more