July Book Club - Wonder

So Ramona, over at Ramona Recommends has a monthly book club.

Every month she asks a different blog to host.  The blogger gets to pick the book.  Sydney, over at Lessons Learned, is this month's book club host.  And she picked...

That's right! Wonder.

Questions to Wonder About:

1. What did you think of this book? Did you love it as much as I did?

I'm gonna be honest...the book was a mixed bag for me.  It was a great read.  And the way R.J. Palacio told the story through multiple narrators was wonderful.  I could feel the voices of each narrator and thought they fit their character perfectly.

But I think I was expecting too much.  I have this issue where I get my expectations go sky-high when I hear a lot of positive things...and then they never get met.  (I was just like this with Lord of the Flies and The Great Gatsby [both of which I hated].  I also did this with The Hunger Games...which I did enjoy, just not as much as everyone else did.)

I think this book would be amazing as a literature circle book.  Where we, as a class, can really delve into the topics and precepts and everything about it.  As a read aloud, I just don't know.  I think to get everything out of it that teachers, and parents, see in it you would have to really study it.  And when I do a read aloud it's just that...we read it.  We might make some predictions, and we might talk about it later (compare other stories to it and such), but we don't get into the nitty gritty...that's our literature circle time.

2. Did it make you think about things and your actions differently?

What I especially loved about this book was that all of the main characters, except for one, got to have their say.  Instead of just hearing one side of the story, we heard every side.  And I think that is something I needed to be reminded of.  Sometimes we hear things and just assume it's fact.  We need to remember that there is a reason that something is said or done...we need to figure it out instead of jumping to conclusions.

3. I have provided lesson ideas below, but how might you teach this to your students? I'm thinking that Choose Kind could really be a mantra all year long for a class. What do you think?

I do love the precepts idea.  I think that would be an easy way to introduce something to your class for them to work on.  And call it a monthly mantra or motto.  Since I have a Disney classroom, we could talk about Hakuna Matata (it's a motto...what's a motto...nothing, what's the matter with you? hahaha)

Since I am a PBS school, Choose Kind would definitely fit into our Bucket Filling school.

4. I would love to know what your precept would be - I have created an editable postcard template. Please share your precept either in a blogpost or share it with me via e-mail. I would love to compile all of them and create a teacher collection of precepts.

Honestly I think Hakuna Matata would be my first precept.  It means no worries.  And for a lot of my kids, that's hard.  I am the 3-5 ESE teacher.  My kids know they're low.  They know they can't read.  And if I can get them to relax, and trust that I am going to teach them how to read, then the learning comes faster.  

No worries.