Lessons in the Library

October

Wonder by: R.J. Palacio

Students are reading and listening to this amazing story.

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school - until now.  He's about to enter fifth grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid, then you know how hard that can be.  the thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face.  But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?

We are exploring the concepts of bullying and also, is beauty really only skin deep.  The theme of the book is courage and each character faced with situations that require courage to see them through.

September

Coping Skills

• we looked at information that explained how coping skills fall under 3 categories (positive, negative and neutral).   Students sorted a list of possible coping strategies and decided if they were positive, negative or neutral.  Then we talked about how the strategies we currently use are effective in solving the problem or not.

          Learning Styles

• We looked at research that explained each of the three learning styles (visual, auditory and kinesthetic)  Students took a survey and then scored their results to discover which learning style was their strongest.  With that information, the next step was to learn about strategies for work and study that were tailored for each learning style.  The class ended with a discussion about learning how to use all three styles, despite having one strong one.

     Psycho Geometrics

•        Students were asked to choose one of 5 shapes that they felt attracted to. Choices:  square, rectangle, triangle, circle and squiggly line.  Each shape is connected to personality traits. square - hard worker and sequential thinker, rectangle - easily moveable and flexible, endless supply of ideas, triangle - the leader, rather egocentric and loves to control the working group, circle - the smoother of conflicts, squiggly line- the artistic and creative thinker and is easily distracted.  The objective of the lesson was to realize that ALL shapes are necessary in a cooperative working group in order to get the job done well. Each personality trait has value to the project.  And also, a group with only one homogeneous shape can get nothing done.  Much like people!

    Broken Chain

• We read a story about a character (Alphonso) who was a developing relationships within his own family and out in the community.  The students looked for evidence within the text that supported their opinions about the relationships he was making.  We ended class with a discussion about how someone can have a different relationship with different members of their family and the same is true of friends.