Children's Books as Movies: Where is the imagination going?

One of the big reasons why I want to work with older elementary students is because they read and interact with many different types of literature. I am especially excited about working with novels with my students. The ability to read a longer story and get to know the characters and the setting in such a deeper way makes the reading experience that much more exciting. I spend most of my free reading time these days reading novels suitable for this age group. Percy Jackson and the Olympians was the most recent of these books that I have completed. I honestly feel like I learned more about the Greek Gods and Goddesses through this book than I did during high school! The book was engaging and made my imagination run wild!
When I sit in my fourth grade placement class during reading time and watch students delves into The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Tale of Despereaux, Harry Potter and Tuck Everlasting, it makes me excited to see them enthralled by great literature that can span generations. I think that these books are great opportunities for parents and children to love literature together!
But here in lies the problem. More and more of these books are being turned into major motion picture events. I just saw the preview for The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Movie. One of the greatest things about reading is that you can tell the story in your imagination. Based on the authors descriptions, you can make the characters look like anyone you want, the locations are your own and you can create a movie in your mind that is all your own. Now, with more of these books actually being made into movies, children have a cast designated for them. They can see someone's vision of Hogwarts castle or Depereaux's dungeon and are shown a casting director's image of Winnie Foster and Greg Heffley.
Does this kill the imagination for these young readers? Are they still able to make their own movies or has that thrilled been taken away from them? I know that for myself, after watching a movie I see the movie characters as I read. Edward Cullen will forever take the form of Robert Pattinson no matter how hard I try to revert back to my image of the breath taking vampire from the Twilight Saga. Don't get me wrong, I have seen all of the Twilight movies and I am very excited to see the final installment of Harry Potter, but I had already completed all of the books before ever seeing these imposed images in my personal movies.
I worry that by taking so many books that are intended for young readers and making them into movies we are taking away a great experience from students. Will the Wimpy Kid series hold the same fascination for the next generation of young reader when they are able to get the movies from NetFlix? Will they have the same enjoyment I see my fourth grade boys get right now reading the series? I never think that the movie is ever as good as the book. The experience is just not the same. I worry that future generations will not experience laying in bed with a flashlight trying to read the last few chapters of a great book because they know they can just rent it this weekend.
I am all for a good movie, but I wish that some things were left to my own imagination.

Creating Social Scientists

On the first day of my last six weeks summer session I entered my class on integrating social studies and the arts and I was really excited. I loved social studies as a kid! I had a great teacher convince me that history was like a mystery and that anyone who wanted to be an archeologist could be just by asking questions and looking for answers. I was never very good with names and dates, but I loved the idea of uncovering history. I was shocked to find out during that first class how many people had bad experiences during social studies! So many people in class said that they either had no real memories of their social studies classes or they thought it was boring and uneventful. This discussion made my realize that it was going to be very important for me to pass my love for social studies onto my students.
Throughout the six weeks session I have learned the importance of creating relevance during social studies instruction by integrating the content strands including geography, history, civics and economics into other subjects like language arts, science, math and the arts. For some students, this makes the topics more relevant and, in our day of EOGs, gives more time for these important topics.
I have also learned the importance of making these subjects come to life for students like my teacher did for me. This takes planning and creativity that moves students out of their textbooks and outdated videos and into a place where they can find relevance between social studies and their lives. I think this means that teachers need to take the time to get to know their students' interests and hobbies and find ways to help students see that people in the past and in other areas of the world had similar interests and hobbies.
Since I decided that I wanted to become a teacher, teaching social studies is one of the things that I have been the most excited about. It is also one of the main reasons that I want to teach fourth grade. The history of North Carolina is really interesting to me and I look forward to sharing that interest with my students. These past six weeks have done nothing but strengthen my excitement about teaching social studies and I am looking forward to incorporating some of the new ideas that I have gained from this class and from my textbooks and research.

Adventures in the Blogging World

I started a personal blog a few years to talk about what was going on in my life. It was my own little piece of the world where I could share anything I wanted. It was an extension of the journals that I kept as a teenager and the personal conversations and monologues that I have in my car. When I was given the assignment to create an education blog during summer school I thought that it would be much more difficult than my personal blog. This blog should sound more "professional" was my first thought. How could I take my personal writing style and make it sound like a graduate student? I was worried that I would not be able to get the same thoughts and emotions through if I knew that it was part of an assignment. (I never even thought that anyone was actually reading my personal blog). Once I created my first post I realized that I was being given the opportunity to show myself that my own personal feelings and experiences are "professional" enough. My thoughts and ideas about education are being molded through each of my assignments and experiences. Blogging is just another extension to these learning experiences. I have been given the opportunity to practice expressing these ideas through my blog. It has been a great experience and I will definitely continue using this blog as a forum for my educational experiences, opinions and ideas. I have learned that even if I am only writing for my eyes that the process helps me think about what I have learned and a great place just to vent.
I would love to use blogging as an assignment option for my students one day. I know that it would have some complications that needed to be worked out involving privacy issues, but it would be an interesting learning experience for my students.
The only part of this assignment that in any way hindered my learning was the fact that I did not have time to read everyone's blogs regularly. I hope to be able catch up on some of that reading during my break. I don't think that is much of a hindrance, more like a lost opportunity.

I still have one question to answer for my final blog post assignment, but I think it deserves its own post, so you can find that info in the other post from today.