Reflection Jessica Ussher

I have never been to a book tasting before and I wasn’t sure what to expect other than

learning about books. I didn’t realize there would be so many different reading material

such as Canadian authors or poetry. In fact, I would say that the biggest strength of the

book talk was there were so many different types,genres and grade levels presented.

One reason I believe this was a big strength is that by having a variety of books to

choose from caused me to get more excited about choosing my own books to talk about

and also got me wanting to read more. It reminded me of the story I wrote for my

literacy journal about the time I first fell in love with reading.

Talking about variety, I believe you should give a student reading choices

because there is diversity everywhere and we should learn to accept that so what better

way than to embrace a variety of reading material. Also variety is also a great way to get

students interested/motivated in reading period. It also introduces new material to them

that could help them in life. For example, a book on how to survive highschool can help

them survive it or at least give them a few ideas.

One of the types of literacy talked about was poetry, which was something I

never really would have considered great reading material. I have always believed

poetry was just a subject you learned in English class but instead it could be a great

tool/practice for getting introduced to symbolism or a more challenging way (in my

opinion) of discovering the deeper meaning of a topic. It’s also great to practice trying to

find themes that we sometimes find hard to find, because it breaks it down into

sections/stanzas rather than having a full novel to contend with.

 Thinking back to my secondary school life I believe I would be more literate

developed if I had a book tasting done for my class. This is because book tasting

experiences support student literacy development by introducing recent published

authors that students probably have not heard of before. New authors can teach us new

vocabulary or different views on a subject or develop a new interest that later on

becomes a big part of a student’s life. Another was book tasting supports literacy

development is it expands a students literature repertoire. They could also help

students/teachers come up with new material to dive in and more specifically to

education, teachers could potentially find material they want to use in their classrooms

to teach their students. If anyone becomes stuck on what to read book tasting are a

great way to solve this problem. For example, Kari Tanaka (I believe that’s the name)

talked about a book called Guts that most teachers have/use in their classrooms.

As teachers we have to somehow integrate FNMI perspectives into our teaching

and one way we can is through book tasting. For example, during the book tasting some

of the presenters talked about the books that were either centred on FNMI or had

characters who were part of this society that talked about their life experiences. This

was really interesting for me because it was a creative but simple way to integrate FNMI

perspectives into the classroom. This was something I was trying to figure out how to do

especially in a theatre classroom setting, and now I have something under my belt.
 Something that stuck out to me during the book tasting is how each presenter got

us to be more active participation rather than audience members while they were

presenting. They did this by asking questions like “have any of you read…?” or even

getting us to actually try reading the books at our table and having conversations with

us. When I do a book tasting I will make sure to do this and perhaps even get them to

present one book that is their favorite, kinda like what we have to do for our book talks.

In general I believe book tasting activities would support life-long reading

because they would give students a taste of what’s out in the world that might be

interesting to them.This in turn would peak their curiosity and students will have to

satisfy that curiosity by reading those books. For example, I found a lot of

mystery/adventure books that sounded so amazing that it made me want to buy and

read them all. If teachers provided book tastings at least once a year I believe I would

never stop reading. They are a great way to open the doors on literature for any age

This Book tasting experience has once again ignited my interest in reading.