Multiple Perspectives-Life of an Ugly Christmas Sweater

I LOVE using Multiple Perspectives with my students because I think it helps develop empathy. If you do these activities throughout the year you will hear them talk about how they feel badly for the dinosaurs-because how scary it must have been. Or feel for the homeless because it's so cold. Seeing things from another's perspective is an important part of being human and in my opinion something missing from our society today.

So one of our Spirit Days was (as is probably the same on many campuses)-Ugly Sweater Day. I showed the students pics of ugly sweaters and asked them to close their eyes and pretend they were an ugly sweater. How would they feel, what would they see, what would they wish?

Some of them really got it!

I see the person wearing me.

I would feel very happy.

That I would be pretty very much.

Changing the Details-Gingerbread Book Study

Some of my favorite Gingerbread stories:

The Classic.

Spoilers: she survives. Girl power baby!

Such a cute character. The kids love the surprise ending.

Perfect for us Texans. 

Gingerbread Baby looks for some friends. 

Follows the same pattern as the other story with a bit of a twist.

We read them an compare the details What patterns do we find across all the versions of the runaway cookie stories? 

Then the students write their own version. What is their Gingerbread character? How would changing that character change other details in the story?

I asked if the teacher ran away and my student said "yeah, from her students!" :)

                                            Gingerbread Pilot

Comparing Grinch and Scrooge

Can you believe A Christmas Carol was written 180 years ago and is still a plot staple for tv shows and movies today. Just incredible.

We watch Mickey's Christmas Carol to introduce it to my 1st graders and then we compare the character of Scrooge to the Grinch. They have a lot in common. We did a double bubble map to compare and then the students write about what a conversation between the 2 characters over dinner would look like.

A Gift to Our Class

Creating a positive classroom culture is very important to me. One of my favorite writing activities is to have students write how their classmates are a gift to our class. I print out the pages and then each student writes a message and passes them along. 

The Water Protectors

I have definitely changed the way I teach Thanksgiving over the years. I cringe at some of the art projects I had my students make. They were not culturally aware at all. Now I try to make sure my students know the real story of what happened and all the fascinating, amazing parts of Native American culture.

I LOVE this book! I'm sure it's on book banning lists somewhere but I think it's a truly beautiful, inspiring story about standing up for what you believe in and protecting your heritage. The illustrations alone are so intricate and tranquil. 

We read it together and discussed the imagery and the metaphor of the snake as the oil pipeline. Students then illustrated the Big Idea of the story with watercolors. To justify an objective, they wrote a sentence about how they will become "water protectors". 

I was so impressed with how the students captured the essence of this meaningful book.