Week Five:  I continue to appreciate the Challenge to Survive series. Books three and four were more difficult reading for me, but I love the background knowledge these books provide. I find myself constantly consulting these books, even after just reading them. I hope I can obtain copies of my own as I can see myself using them a lot.

Other than the background knowledge, I really like the layout of these books and think they are perfect for teaching the structure of text books with kids. They are unique and show how texts are set up to be helpful with features that are special to the subject matter being taught. I know students (third graders for sure), often skip charts, graphs, picture captions, etc. when they are reading books. These books perfectly illustrate the importance of a text's unique features. I especially love the glossary with Salish pronunciation, the Gallery of Faces, and all of the primary sources included in the series.

The blogging articles were interesting to me. I have many co-workers and friends who make wonderful use of blogs with students. All of them teach older students and I sometimes find myself being a little jealous of all they can do. I need to make a blog useful to me. My goal is to set up a classroom blog to communicate important happenings, homework, etc. Perhaps from there I can find a way to use it with third graders. We just lack the technology needed, both in our elementary school and our community.