Celebrating Diversity with Amazing Grace

It is very important to children that they are represented in the classroom curriculum.  It's also important to represent quality diverse books in class.  These reasons are why Amazing Grace is so perfect for your classroom.  Every year my students fall in love with Grace, she's resilient, smart, creative and relatable.  One of my favorite parts of Amazing Grace is that it is a series that has at least another picture book and chapter book.  This is just perfect for 2nd and 3rd graders! Once the kids are hooked with Amazing Grace they love to read on their own during independent reading.  I love to teach this book with the standard -finding the story's lesson or central message.  Make sure to watch the video below for more information!

Integrating Social Studies and Bibliotherapy (Character Education) into ELA

Recently I was blessed to present a PD with two wonderful women. One of which is a school counselor and the other is a general education teacher like myself.  We collaborated together to bring our expertise in curriculum to one place so that teachers can integrate their curriculum through a meaningful yet simple way.  I'm including some of the slides from the presentation here along with our explanations so that teachers all over can benefit from our work.

The following slide was written to fit in with our district's guidelines.  If it doesn't work for yours, feel free to disregard.

The above professional development book is awesome for integrating bibliotherapy into the classroom.  Mrs. Gruener has a ton of examples and suggestions for books and lessons in the classroom.

The slides below are different books that we discussed integrating into shared reading for bibliotherapy.

Social Studies is near and dear to my heart.  We didn't include book slides because we had numerous examples in the room.  Below are some of the suggestions that we gave.

Citizenship

ELECTRONICS:  But It’s Just A Game, By Julia Cook

WORRYING AND ANXIETY:  Wilma Jean The Worry Machine, By Julia Cook, Wendell the Worrier, by Jill Donahue

MAKING MISTAKES: The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, by Mark Pett, Oops! My Bad…A Kids Guide to Making Mistakes, by Tracy Bryan, Beautiful Oops!, Barney Saltzberg

ATTITUDE:  Battitude by Julia Cook

LYING:  Lying Up A Storm by Julia Cook, Superman: Fighting for the Truth, by Donald Lemke and Ethen Beavers

CONFLICT RESOLUTION:  The Recess Queen by Alexis O’Neill

SERVICE: Crash! By Mayra Calvani, Loving Marley by Donald and Sara Hassler and Good News Nelson by Jodi Moore

Clara Barton

Native Americans and their love for the Earth

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

Colonial America

PERSERVANCE: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison

Immigration

EMPATHY:Harvesting Hope: The story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull, The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren

John Howard Griffin, Patricia Moore, Jane Adams

DIVERSITY, CULTURE AND DIFFERENCES:  Spaghetti In A Hot Dog Bun, by Kimberly Shaw-Peterson, Don’t Laugh At Me, by Steve Sesking, Chocolate Milk Por Favor by Maria Desmandy

Citizenship, American Symbols

RESPECT: Hey Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose, One by Kathryn Otoshi and Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage to Be Who You Are by Maria Dismondy

Jane Goodall, Rosa Parks

HONESTY: Sarah’s Little Ghosts by Thiery Robberecht, Ruthie and the (Not So) Teeny, Tiny Lie by Laura Rankin,

Abraham Lincoln

ENTHUSIASM: Incredible You! and Unstoppable Me! By Dr. Wayne Dryer

Bessie Coleman, Mae Jemison

Economics

RESPONSIBILITY: Squawking Matilda by Lisa Horstman

Community Helpers

Government

OBEDIENCE: What if Everybody Did That? By Ellen Javernick

Service Dogs

ENCOURAGEMENT: Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes and Go Away Worries! by Michelle White.

Nelson Mandela

SELF-DISCIPLINE: Verdi by Janell Cannon, Big Anthony and the Magic Ring by Tomie dePaola, The Stonecutter by Gerald McDermott, Yertle the Turtle, Bartholomew and the Oobleck and Gertrude McFuzz by Dr. Seuss

Frederick Douglas, Helen Keller, Temple Grandin

What's Under Your Cape? A Character Book Study Chapter 5- R Is ForRespect

What's Under Your Cape?

Earlier in the summer I stumbled upon an author by the name of Barbara Gruener.  She had recently written a book titled, ""What's Under Your Cape?"  Every teacher that spoke about the book had nothing but wonderful things to say. So I decided to order the book directly from her website.  When it arrived I was delighted to find that she had autographed it for me. How nice was that?  I was immediately drawn in by her first hand accounts of how different character building worked for her children, students and community. I could relate to her book because she wrote from the perspective of a mom and educator (counselor).  The bonus was that the book is a quick read which means that you can implement it in your class immediately.

Shortly after reading the book I was lucky enough to join a book study.  Today I'll be referencing chapter 5 along with Tiffani from Time 4 Kindergarten.  One of my favorite topics, R-E-S-P-E-C-T! My favorite mantra that Ms. Gruener quotes is, "May I be treated tomorrow how I treated people today." This is a concept that seems integral to a society that works well together.  She is quick to point out that we can't expect children to understand the abstract view of respect without showing them concrete behaviors that go along with respect.  The book also details a picture book, song and activities to accompany teaching children about respect. It then goes into how bullying goes hand in hand with disrespect.  Respecting others means that children will not turn into bullies.  In a perfect world everyone would live this concept.  So you will have to read the book to get her suggestions, but I am going to offer some resources from youtube to accompany the book.

Video On Respect

Song About Respect

Defining Respect

I recently blogged about using character education bracelets to help turn the abstract learning of character traits into concrete tangible learning.  Click the picture for the post.

If you missed the beginning of the book study, you can click here:

To get to the next chapter click here:

Be sure to check out Tiffani's post on Chapter 5 here: