The Spartan Librarian

This is my favorite read-aloud of the year!!  I love the message Ashley Spire's portrays in her book The Most Magnificent Thing! It is a great book to teach children about having a growth mindset, and that mistakes are part of the process, and sometimes you have to try, try, and try again to be successful. After reading the book, I share this wonderful stop-motion animation of the book by students at Elmwood School.  That gives the students a second chance to hear the message. We then watch this video about  Ormie  and his attempt at getting a treat! We then compare and contrast the two main characters in the films!  (Tie in those reading skills) We talk about what message (moral/lesson ) the two stories were trying to teach us, and how we can use what we learned at school and in real life! Then using postermywall.com , I have students create posters with inspirational messages and ideas to show the growth mindset!

I fell in love with Auggie in R.J. Palacio's Wonder !  Several of my teachers plan to share the novel with their classes this year as a read aloud!  I loved the message it sends to treat everyone with kindness! If you have the choice to choose between being right or being kind, choose kind! As soon as I saw the picture book We're all Wonders , by R.J. Palacio, I knew it was one I would share with my library classes!  The message was right on point,  that each one of us has something about us that makes us special and unique, that makes us a wonder! I used the book to talk about being ordinary, perceptions, and how we need to look at the inside of people before we jump to assumptions. We discussed how R.J. make the character exaggerated (hyperbole-tied some figurative language in there), and how boring life would be if we were all exactly the same! As a follow-up, I had kids think about what it was about them that make them unique.  We used Flipgri...