I am currently in my first year of teaching. I graduated college with a degree in elementary education with a minor in literature and language arts. I never thought I would be teaching middle school and yet here I am, teaching literature, language arts, and socials studies in 7th grade. Through my first year of teaching I have realized a few things, middle school students are more similar to elementary students than high school students, textbooks are not best for everyone, differentiating is the most important thing, and middle school students are going through a lot they just need to know that you care. All of these ideas have been completely supported through this class. I truly did enjoy using the textbook What Matters for Middle School Readers. I used the elementary version while in college and I found it extremely useful, that text was one of the few that I kept after college. I think sometimes this textbook has a little too much research and statistics for my liking, but overall the information and set up is easy to follow. From this class I have also taken away a better understanding of the common core standards and how they work together from grade level to grade level. I …show more content…
I hope to create a better array of books in my own library for my students. According to Allingtons research textbooks are not as well set for our students as we might think they are. I think as teachers we are prone to think that textbooks are meant to be followed to the t and they are fit for all students. Especially in middle school we do not see the struggle that our students may go through reading and using our textbooks that are given. I hope to see textbooks that are differentiated for our students, along with a good array of books for our students in each