Reagan Mittler

Lit Appreciation Project

Dr. Aiken

April 22nd, 2021

For my lit appreciation project, I did an author study on Jory John and Pete Oswald. The

books I used for the author study were The Good Egg, The Cool Bean, and The Couch Potato.

After reading each book to the students, I completed an activity with them. They especially

enjoyed The Cool Bean.

These books help develop a growth mindset in students. The storyline of each book

illustrates for the students how they should in act in school and in life. When I was looking up

biographical information on author Jory John, there was not a birthdate or much personal

information available. After I told the students about the authors and the illustrators, they told me

that they had learned about them previously and were familiar with them. However, they liked

the information I found on Jory John and Pete Oswald. These books clearly motivated the

students to want to learn more and to read more, as they asked me to buy more of these books to

read in the classroom. The activities I completed with the student were crafts. These crafts

encouraged and motivated them to read more books of this type when they are at home. The

students really enjoyed the crafts and the books that I read to them, and some had even read The

Bad Seed.

I believe that this met the pre-service teacher standards as it helped the students be able to

be honest with themselves when thinking about how they act and are in and out of school. After I

was done reading my three books, my cooperating teacher and I found the “The Bad Seed” on
epic and on the Friday, I read them that book just for fun because that is when they went to

virtual on Friday. I had the students make their own good egg because I wanted them to make it

themselves and how they see themselves in the book if they put themselves in the book.

Being able to see the students happy and laughing when reading the books made me feel

good! It showed me they were enjoying the books I bought to read to them. When I told them

that I was only reading one book a day, the students wanted me to keep on reading all the books

in one day. I said to them, “I have to space them out because I have to follow the directions my

teacher gave me just like you have to follow the directions given to you by Mrs. Parrish.”

My philosophy connection for the project is that God created all of us to be treated the

same. When I become a teacher, I will continue to use these books in my classroom and more

like them. They are great examples of how we should live our life and how we can have great

positivity in our lives. Psalm 32:8 says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should

go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.”  As a teacher, God will be working through

me to not only work on academics but to be an example of how life should be lived and how

people should be treated. It’s important that they learn to want to try new experiences and learn

new things, and that with them can come making mistakes. As a teacher we will always look at

the students as if they are our own. We want to know what they go though at home because we

want them to be able to be a trusted adult and it may even provide insight as to why they could

be acting out or misbehaving. If this is the case, they may need to be addressed in a manner that

is working to help them to express how they are feeling and react in different ways.