A circular story is a story that starts with one scenario and also ends with the same scenario. A circular story may start with one thing which then leads to another things. A circular story circles around to end up with the same thing as it started off with. "An example of a circular story is "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" (Numeroff, 1985). In this story a child starts off by giving a mouse a cookie, the mouse then wants a glass of milk, followed by a straw and a napkin as well as other items. This continues on until the mouse finally gets another cookie. Today in class we read "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" (Numeroff, 1998). This book is another example of a circular story. The pig starts off getting a pancake and then wants some syrup, the pig keeps asking for things till he eventually ends up right where he started and has a pancake.
Before we read this book in class we got to use some bubbles, that we later found out tied in with the story. There were also some pancakes and syrup available for anyone who wanted some. I think that doing this would also be a good way to use a circular story in the classroom. For example if you were to read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" to a class you could take some cookies and milk for the students. Something I liked from our textbook was how Mrs. Kirkpatrick used the circular story in her classroom. First of all she kept regular and irregular sized copies of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" for her classroom, also before she read the story to her students she let them sample cookies and talk about their favorite cookies. This is something that I would want to try in my future classroom. Another thing I think you could use for a circular story is the activity that we did in class today. I really think that having the students write their own circular story would help them truly understand what it is.
Some ways that you can make reading fun in the classroom is to do things like role playing, or putting on plays about the book you are currently reading. When I was in elementary and middle school many of my teachers had the students do activities on the books we were currently reading as well as our favorite books. One thing that we did was to write our own version of our favorite book, or an assigned book. Other things that were done were presentations or story boards. In one class I remember that we had to read a book and make a short presentation on it but in addition to that we would have to take items to that related to the book we were doing the presentation.Other times we would have to make something that related to the book like a puppet, clay model, or whatever else we could think of. Many of these things did make reading fun and I think that they still would, because even if a student doesn't like to read if they do something like this they get to express their creativity.
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Marisa- Great job on providing alot of examples! I enjoyed class on Wednesday as well. I was kinda confused what the bubbles were for; I certainly had fun blowing them in the meantime though! hehe! I, too, think that is important to give the child a chance to be creative..not everyone does things the same way much less in learning and reading. By getting to know our children, we can hopefully provide them with an atmosphere that they will find inviting and that willingness to pick up a book without being told to do so.
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