LLED 400 Reading Response 5

In the article Bringing Children and Literature Together in the Elementary Classroom, Smith discusses the areas of her classroom.  Students can split into different areas doing different activities and feel confident and serious when doing their independent work.  She first helps the children learn these methods and techniques to be able to be independent in the beginning of the year.  One part that I like is that when she is guiding them into her reading areas they come back together and discuss any problems they had and want to fix.  It is good to fix all problems in the beginning of the year so no student suffers later on.  Since her strategy is very independent some children who do not like reading will find this difficult.  Smith states, "children who have a hard time keeping their mind on what they read often benefit from sketching interesting or important ideas as they read." (p.3).  This is a great idea to give the child a break so they do not have to read constantly but are responding to the reading.  As students grow throughout the year Smith added more complex books to get more complex responses and to have the students thinking more.  She also will add in literature discussion groups which allows her to see how well students are doing.  After reading this article I really enjoyed the way she worked the kids into reading. I like how she thought about those that would have difficulty and already had a strategy to help them.  Her progression of activities and reading styles makes a lot of sense and seems to be the best way to help guide children into independent reading and thinking.  I also liked the creative names she used for certain reading times.  This is an article I will refer back to when I am creating my own classroom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd5xLpGRvVo This is a song I found on YouTube that is a transitional activity to bring the students to the carpet. I really liked the idea of "Rug Reading" in this article, so I think this song could apply to bringing the students over and to prepare them for that activity.