Most everyone can remember a book that has had an impact on his or her life. Often this book is connected to an experience. It could have been the first book you learned to read. It could have been a book that troubled you. An important book doesn't have to be well loved, but it has to have an impact. Think about your history as a reader. Recall a book that sticks out in your mind and complete the following:
Title:
Author:
Give two reasons why the book is important to you:
1.
2.
Past reading experiences influence our current reading and writing. List five positive or negative reading and/or writing events that affect the way you read and write today.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
*As always proofread before submitting.
This activity is from Cris Tovani's book I Read It, But I Don't Get It.
Title: Chip Hilton Series
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Clair Bee
1. It followed my interests in sports.
2. It followed teenager in high school with his academic life and athletic life.
1. Negative-AR in grade school made me hate reading for the rest of my life.
2. Negative-trying to read Seabiscuit made me discover I have no patience to read.
3. Positive-Reading a series of books made me realize I read better when I read a series because it usuall is all related.
4. Positive-reading the way sports journalists write has influenced my writing style, perfect for my career goal.
5. Positive-realizing what type of books I like by reading different styles which would be either sports, funny, and not serious.
Corduroy--Don Freeman
ReplyDelete1. This book is important to me because my parents used to read it to me when I was little before I would go to bed.
2. Another reason is that after having read this book I wanted a teddy bear, which I received. I still have it today and it became my friend just like corduroy.
Experiences:
1. I was in first grade and I was in the hummingbird reading group which was the really smart reading group which I felt was positive.
2. I was writing a story in 2nd grade and I didn't win the competition I entered it for so I thought I wrote badly.
3. I would always get picked to read in front of the class so I thought I was really good so that felt positive.
4. I was never asked to be in Gifted and Talented because my writing skills weren't high enough.
5. Freshman Year I was told that I had a very good vocabulary and a magnificent writing style and that was positive.
Title: can I be good
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Taylor Livingston
1. My mom made me read it in the corner when I got in trouble.
2. Made me love my dog even when she was bad.
1. My 1st grade teacher made me write a paper on what I would do with 100 dollars. I had no idea what to write so I went last with my list of everyone else in the classes ideas. Very embarrassing.
2. In 6th grade my teacher used my opening paragraph as an example for a descriptive essay for the whole class.
3. My 7th grade class voted my paper on euthanasia to be the best in the class.
4. I wrote an essay on my dog in 4th grade an used inpropper grammar and failed after working all night.
5. My freshman year I had to write a paper and failed after staying up all night working on it.
Title: Artemis Fowl books
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Eoin Colfer
1. first book I felt like I enjoyed reading
2. showed me that there are books out there that I can actually want to read
1. a teacher told me I was skilled at writing
2. I got a good score on my SAT writing portion
3. I have never received anything lower than an "A" on a research paper
4. I am a terrible speller and always memorized what words were on the spelling tests, therefore I do not enjoy writing by hand.
5. I literally have no other examples.
Title: Love You Forever
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Robert Munsch
1. The message instilled in me morals from when I was younger and I associate the memory with spending time with my grandmother.
2. This book is special because even though I am older I still want to pass on the type of family dynamic that the book potrayed.
Past Reading Experiences:
1. I had a teacher in the fifth grade the genuinely in love with reading. That year we started reading more in depth books and I greatly remember her enthuaism. This made me feel like I can be a strong reader one day.
2. In the sixth grade we had our first real reasearch paper. Many people did not do well, but my teacher said I got a 100% and wanted a copy of my work to show to her future classes. Is gave me confidence in my writing ability.
3. In my house reading has always been encouraged so ever since I was younger I have loved to read.
4. Both of my sisters struggled with reading. Watching them perservier through this hardship made me thankful for the simple capability to even read.
5. I have always had a very difficult time with spelling. The only "B" I have ever recieved was in 4th grade spelling. This really discouraged me because without spell check I am not a very good writer.
Title: To Kill A Mockingbird
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Harper Lee
Give two reasons why the book is important to you:
1. It was the first novel that was an impact on American history that I read on my own time and understood.
2. It helped me understand how to analyze stories and read between the lines.
1. I had a student teacher who graded my 8th grade research paper that gave me an F on the paper.
2. I did not read the Odyssey and had to write a paper on the novel. I waited until the night before it was due and used sparknotes to write the paper.
3. I failed every reading quiz we had on The Great Gatsby because I did not read the novel.
4. I was asked to be in GT in Elementary school.
5. I used sparknotes to write a research paper for sophomore year over a book that I did not read and aced the paper.
Title: The Great Gatsby
ReplyDeleteAuthor: F.J.Scott Fitzgerald
Give two reasons why the book is important to you:
1. The book is important to me because it stands out as one of the few realistic books I have ever read. I loved the way that it portrayed people accurately.
2. The book is also important to me because it is one of the only book that I have actually enjoyed reading in school. Most of the time I cannot appreciate a book that I am forced to read.
Past reading experiences influence our current reading and writing. List five positive or negative reading and/or writing events that affect the way you read and write today.
1. I received a good score on my ACT writing portion, which boosted my confidence in writing.
2. Any time I have to write a significant amount about a book I usually end up despising the book. (ex. Sophie's World)
3. During my freshman year my teacher told me she loved my writing style.'
4. I have never gotten lower than a B on a paper in high school.
Title: Harry Potter
ReplyDeleteAuthor: J.K. Rowling
1. The first series that I really loved.
2. My sister and I would read them at the same time.
1. I successfully read my first "chapter" book in first grade. This was huge for me at the time.
2. In sixth grade I wrote my first research paper and my teacher did it step by step with us and made it really easy for me to write one after that.
3. My mom used to make me read picture books when I was really young. Even if I couldn't understand them I had to read the words outloud.
4. My parents bought me a "teen" edition of the Bible when I was in elementary school. This inspired me to read challenging things.
Title: The Giving Tree
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Shel Silverstein
1. This is one of the first books I can remember being read to me.
2. A close friend of my family gave me the book when I was born and I have loved the book since.
1. When I was in 6th grade I had a teacher that was very critical of the way I wrote and would give me terrible grades on my writing assignments.
2. That same teacher also called my mom after the first reading quiz that I took, and told her that I did not study and basically that I was stupid.
3. That same teacher made us keep a reading log and I hated doing that more than anything, so I did not read for pleasure for like 2 years after that.
4. My sister was very good a writing, so sometimes she would help me write papers.
Title: Perks of Being a Wallflower
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Stephen Chbosky
Give two reasons why the book is important to you:
1. I read this book at a point when I didn't have very many friends, and neither did the main character, so I really realated to the book
2. It was one of the first books that I really loved and fully understood the metaphors and really loved the way the author wrote
Past reading experiences influence our current reading and writing. List five positive or negative reading and/or writing events that affect the way you read and write today.
1.In the fifth and sixth grade I had a really great Lit/Lang teacher and when we did a poetry unit she wrote me a note telling me that I was good and should continue writing poetry
2. In 7th grade my Lit/Lang teacher was also really great and encouraged the whole class to become more conficent in our writing
3. I read The Chronicles of Narnia and really started to love reading when I was in the 1st grade
4. My freshman year I had a good teacher, but she was really difficult and it made me hate writing papers because I never got good grades on them
5. Last year I got a really bad grade on an essay that I thought was good, that was discouraging
Title: The Hobbit
ReplyDeleteAuthor: J.R. Tolkien
1. This was one of the first upper level books that I read during middle-school, and it is still one of my favorite books.
2. Introduced me to one of my favorite trilogies of all time.
1. In middle school I received a "C" on a reasearch paper, which had never happened to me before. This motivated me to work harder on all of my school papers.
2. During my sophomore year of high school, I had a teacher circle and point out every mistake or extra piece of information that I had in a paper. This taught me how to organize and present my topics in a short and effective manner.
3. In middle school I had a teacher tell me to restart a paper that I had been working on for at least half-a-week. This taught me to really take my time and make sure my work is perfect before turning it in.
4. Im out of memories.
One book that greatly impacted me was the bible. It taught me the way I should live my life and taught me how I should treat others. One book that had a terrible impact on my reading and writing skills was this book called Sophie's World. It forced me to actually think and ponder about what I was reading. One book that did have a positive impact on me was a book named Hatchet. It was a good book with a good storyline and it helped me enjoy reading as a kid. Another book that had a positive influence on me was The Series of Unfortunate Events. It was one of the first books that I read that made me think while I had fun with it.
ReplyDeletetitle: Heaven Is For Real
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Todd Burpo, Sonja Burpo, Colton Burpo
Reasons why this book is important to me
1. Reflects on all of my beliefs religously
2. Took a meaningful real life experience and put it into words
Past experiences
1. A good reading experience for me was when I would be reading different books and might not understand a chapter or section of the book I would read sparknotes to give me a better understanding.
2. I usually don't mind writing research papers because all of my past experiences has had a positive outcome.
3. I didn't have a good experience with the summer project I had assigned the summer before my sophmore year. I had worked really hard and wrote this paper that in my opinion was a good paper and then the grade was not as good as I thought I deserved.
Title: Sold
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Patricia McCormick
Two reasons:
1) It changed my view of everyday life in other countries.
2) Made me realize that some people's basic life needs in other countries.
Past experiences:
1. I wanted to finish a really good book that my sister had given me and so I decided to read instead of go over math homework and got called out for not paying attention so I stopped reading for a while because I didn't want to start a really good book.
2. I wrote a creative paper and thought the story I chose and the ending was really cool and surprising, and I decided to tell my friend and the next day when we turned in the paper she let me read hers and she had copied my story but changed names.
3. I put off the writing portion of a summer reading project and had three days to write about something that I was completely confused about and now hate summer reading projects (even though they are not that bad).
Title: Harry Potter
ReplyDeleteAuthor: J.K. Rowling
These books are important to me because 1. they portray a wonderful alternate reality that I can escape into anytime I need to, and 2. they perfectly portray real world troubles that I have had to deal with.
Past experiences:
1. In elementary school, my teacher had my class write stories. She said that the good ones would be posted on the wall in the hallway for everyone to see. I was eager to have that honor, therefore I tried extremely hard to write a good story. Not only was my story put up, but my teacher encouraged me to write another one which was later placed on the wall in the principal's office. Because it was good. I think. Go Boonville?
2. Sometime in late elementary school, I was dared by a friend to read a series of books in a week. The total number of pages was 1101, which was a lot back then. I completed it all in four days.
3. In early elemtary school, perhaps second grade, I was extremely proficient in AR. AR was when a student would read a book and then take a quiz over it to review the basic plot points. I ended up having the second most amount of points in the entire school, losing to a sixth grader by less than 50 points.
4. In sophomore year, I was a bit late on getting the thesis of my research paper in, which caused most everything else to be late. Everyone, including my teacher, expected me to turn in the final copy of the paper late and for it not to be good. I ended up turning it in on time and getting a 98%.
5. I had a fifth one in mind but forgot it while writing the fourth one. So.... Yeah.
Title: With an everlasting love
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Kay Arthur
Two reasons the book was meaningful:
1. The novel uses a love story to show God's everlasting love towards us.
2. The book portrays the importance of relying on God in our daily life.
Reading Experiences:
1. My preschool teacher taught me how to read at an early age. She encouraged me to expand my knowledge and read more difficult books.
2. Seventh grade year was my first experience of having a summer reading project. I remember that the project took a large portion of the summer to complete.
3. My eighth grade English teacher taught
4. My freshman English teacher taught me how to analyze novels with a critical eye. She told me that I was skilled at writing.
5. My English teachers in general and my mother taught me how to proofread and critique my own writing.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTitle: The Outsider
ReplyDeleteAuthor: S.E. Hinton
1. My mother had previously read it and she suggested that I do the same, so when I did, it created a nice bond between myself and her.
2. It was also one of the first books I really got into. I really cared about everything that happened and the book just took control of my emotions and it really opened my eyes.
1. Both freshman and sophomore year, I essentially failed all my reading quizzes, even though I had read. I really put a damper on me, and put me in the mind set that I will never pass them.
2. Most every book I've read in school has been terrible and unbearable, which again put me in the mind set that every book will be that way.
3. This year I had a research paper, and I didn't do it until the night before it was due. I then learned to never procrastinate that much again.
4. Because I don't have great comprehension skills, I've always struggled a little bit, so I found out about Sparknotes, and now it basically saves my life.
Catcher in the Rye
ReplyDeleteJ. D. Salinger
The book taught me how to purchase the services of a prostitute.
The book also taught me about how bad life would be like if I ran away from home.
1. When I was in the seventh grade I wrote my first research paper and hated every single second of writting and researching for it. I still hate research papers.
2. In the fourth grade I got my hands on a scary stories book that scared me really bad and made me not able to sleep for a few nights.
3. In the fifth grade I was a really slow reader so I never finished reading articles until the teacher started talking about it.
4. During my freshman year I didn't feel like reading Night by Eli Wisel so I started using sparknotes.
Title: So B It
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Sarah Weeks
1. This book taught me how to create emotion into my writing and that it is not always bad to have your raw emotions in it.
2. This book also taught me that trying to relate to everybody is impossible, and to just stick to telling your own story and communicate effectively.
1. My freshman teacher told me that i was a fabulous writer and that i should continue a career in writing after writing a personal narrative. This gave me great motivation.
2. My sophomore year teacher gave us 10 point reading quizzes over a book, which i failed almost all of them. I learned to pay attention to detail and read thoroughly.
3. My junior year teacher did an excersize to where we had to make a 200 word paragraph to 150 words, then to 100 words, then to 50 words, then to 25 which taught me to get to the point and precisely say what i want to say without needless fluff.
4. My 6th grade teacher taught me that you need to spend time on papers and not do them last minute after getting a C on a paper i did the night before. I always should proofread it as well, because thats where most of my mistakes and points off were.
Polar Express
ReplyDeleteChris Van Allsburg
1. It helped me believe that no matter how old you got, you can still be a child at heart
2. this also changed my view of hope and beliving
1. One of my teachers publicly laughed in front of the classes at a poem that i had written, and said that none of the dreams that i had put in the poem would ever come true. Since then i have not liked poetry.
2. One teacher told and made me believe that truely do well and papers, when i believed i was bad at it.
3. All during elementary and middle school I aced every single spelling and vocabulary test.
Title: Heaven Is For Real
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Todd Burpo
Reasons:
1. My family is very religious based and this book is about a little boy who had a near death experience and tells a his story about how he went to heaven and then came back to life on earth.
2. I really like reading books about true stories like that.
1. In sixth grade my teacher hated me and gave me a 50% on every paper i wrote.
2. In first grade i got my first 100% on a paper i wrote about my mom.
3. In fourth grade my teacher told me i had a high reading level
4. In 5th grade, my teacher told me that I was a really good writer.
5. In 7th grade, my mom encouraged me to write about something i had never talked about before and i got 100% on the paper.
The Fault In Our Stars
ReplyDeleteJohn Green
1. The characters were so real and convincing and sympathetic and so sincere, and the story itself was so wonderfully written; it is one of the few books that I've read in my own spare time that has had me asking myself some really deep questions.
2. The other way the book influenced me is that it was so beautifully and cleverly written that it made me want to write and create a young adult novel with at least 1/10th of the heart and spirit of the novel.
1. Positive: My sixth grade English class, our teacher taught us how to properly write papers and narratives after leaving the boundaries of elementary school. She helped to form the way I write today.
2. Positive: Ms. Wright was probably one of my favorite teachers, especially for English and she made me genuinely interested in dissecting and asking questions about the material we were reading in class. Our discussions were interesting.
3. Positive: The first "mature" book I read was called "She's Come Undone" and it taught me that authors do not have to stick the conventional or norms expected or usually seen in novels (the author of the novel was a man writing very accurately from a woman's perspective)
4. Positive: The teachers I have had in the past have positively encouraged me and challenged me when it comes to my writings and my writing style.
Title: Thirteen Reasons Why
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Jay Asher
1. It was the first book that really had a major impact on me
2. It made me realize how your actions can affect people especially when you don't know their story or what they have gone through.
1. In eight grade a paper I wrote won a contest at my school.
2. My eight grade English teacher really helped me to learn how to write papers. She taught me how to communicate what I wanted to say to the reader through writing.
3. I once got a bad grade on a paper that I worked really hard on and it made me feel like I wasn't as good of a writer as I thought I was.
4. I had an English teacher that told me I was really good at writing when I didn't think I was.
Title: Stone Fox
ReplyDeleteAuthor:John Reynolds Gardiner
1. It was one of the first books I read entirely by myself. I finished it faster than I thought I would.
2. I cried a lot at the ending.
1. I enjoy reading challenging books that I don't always understand. The more words I have to look up the better. I reason that if I push myself to comprehend what's going on I'll know more the next time I come across something similar.
2. All of the papers I've had to write since middle school have helped me formulate a pattern for writing papers that usually gets me a high grade.
3. I love reading for fun, but I usually hate reading for school. So I'm usually behind on assigned readings and I procrastinate on homework.
4. I read Sophie's World and wrote all 16 papers in the week before school started. I know how to write papers in a hurry.
5. Research papers have helped me understand how to get information from different sources and back up my views of certain subjects in a cohesive piece.
Title: Madeline
ReplyDeleteAuthor:Ludwig Bemelmans
Give two reasons why the book is important to you:
1. I grew up reading all of them with my mom.
2. It was the first book that I loved and wanted to read over and over. I also learned to read and it was one of the first I read all by myself.
Experiences
1. When I was little I had some hooked on phonic books that were black and white and looked like coloring books. Whenever I would read one of the little books to my mom she would then let me color it. I've always been a creative person and I LOVED to color those little books so I read like crazy. I'm actually kind of sad that she gave them away because if I still had them I would keep a few. I suppose they were part of the reason I learned to love reading as a little kid.
2. In first grade, we read Polar Express. I always loved Christmas books, but we were able to watch the movie and even have our own 'Polar Express' in our cafeteria booths and we were served hot choclate. I think it was fun for me to read a book and then have real life experiences like people in the book did.
3. When I was in fifth grade I had a really cool teacher. She had a way of making every subject fun and exciting. One activity she had us do was read poetry. At first we weren't exactly excited, but then she told us we were going to have Poetry Parties. Throughout the year, every friday we would bring a drink and food to share every Friday. We would then go up and read poems that we had been looking over all week. At first we read them in big groups, but by the end of the year we read them solo in front of the whole class. It made poetry exciting and fun. I remember when we went to the library we all went straight to the poetry books and when we found a poem we would act as if it was the biggest secret in the world because we didn't want anyone to hear it until it was time for our party.
4. In sixth grade, we divided into groups and each group chose a novel off a list. I really liked my group and I wasn't sure about the book we chose at first, but I ended up loving it. It changed the books I decided to read because it was totally different than any book I would have picked out myself. I think this has given me a more open mind towards trying new books because I might actually like them. :)
Title: THe Hunger Games.
ReplyDeleteAuthor: Susan Collins
1. It is the first book that I really got into and enjoyed reading.
2. It was really well written and I liked it a lot.
1. I have always hated reading until I read the Hunger Games series.
2. I never thought I was a good reader because I was very slow at reading and I couldnt comprehend what I read so I just didnt like reading after that and I just dread doing it now.
3. I also think that I have learned not to like reading as much because we have to read at school and we have to do all the time and we dont get to choose what we read. I dont like being forced to read something if I am not interested in it.
4. FOr this summer reading, we read Sophie's World and I actually really liked it. I think I was one of very few people in the class to enjoy it.
5. My mom is a big reading person so I think that has had a negative and positive effect on my reading.