Reflection for #2

I wanted the students to understand how to choose good books that fit their interest so I decided to teach them a lesson on how to do this. When I first asked the students their favorite genre most of the students said "fiction, because it's fake and interesting". They named off books like Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Goosebumps. I have never seen the students reading any of those books besides from Goosebumps, which they absolutely adore. We talked about why they like these kinds of books and what makes them interesting. It was difficult for the students to explain why they liked Goosebumps, and I thought someone would mention the suspense, but they didn't. The hard part of my lesson was getting the students to talk about what they're interested in. The girls were embarassed to say what they liked in front of the boys (of course, fourth graders). I don't know why it was hard for them to open up and talk about what they like because I feel as if they do this every day in class. I had this problem with the first literacy lesson I taught to this class; they don't know/enjoy having discussions. After numerous attempts to get the students to open up and talk about what they like I finally had a discussion going with the boys. They were talking about dragons and caves at one point, and they were also talking about some things that have happened in the Goosebumps series. I took this and built off of it by asking the boys about some authors who interest them, and then I sent them off to the classroom library to find books about what we just talked about. While they were doing this the girls finally started talking because the boys were gone. They enjoy fiction but they also enjoy books about girl drama which seems "real" to them. During our discussion they told me about other things that interest them, so I sent them off to look for books too. After this we all sat back down at our table and had a short discussion of why we chose that specific book. Overall in the beginning of the lesson I encountered some difficulty because the students were too shy to have a discussion. After finally breaking this barrier down I was able to help the students think about their interests and how to use this to find books.