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Lessons From the Middle
Lessons, Activities and Ideas For You Amazing Middle School Teachers
On with the book club: What makes a person admirable?
Continuing on with our book club in Language Arts today, we
discussed what personality traits make someone admirable. Again, the
theme of our book club is “This is who I am” and all of the novels have
main characters who display “admirable traits” and strength of character
in some way.
I had students write what they thought were admirable traits on the board and here is what they had to say:
-Thoughtful
-Really cute
-Good singer
-High self esteem
-Selfless
-Make sacrifices for others
-Good personality
-Loyal
-trustworthy
-An awesome actor
-Helps me with my basketball playing
-Hardworking
-Funny
-Sets a goal and works toward it
-Kind
-Positive
-Patient… and a few others…
We had an excellent discussion on the traits that they came up with, and then worked on trying to narrow our list down to 5 main traits.
Can someone be admirable and also be a horrible singer? Yes, of course – so we took “good singer” off of the board. Can you be admirable without a good sense of humor? Yep! So that “funny” was gone.
We worked our way through the list and finally decided on a few key characteristics that would make someone admirable:
They are kind, set a goal and work toward it, and make sacrifices for others.
The best part is that the class basically hit the nail on the head! The traits that they decided on are ones that the main characters in the novels display. Score! I love it when that happens – everything coming together the way it’s supposed to. They are already making connections all over the place and we’re only two days in. They’re connecting our read aloud, Firegirl, to the anticipation guide that we did on Friday and to the main character that we read about in our last read aloud, Shot at Dawn: World War I. Love it! Super pumped for when they actually get into their book club groups with their own independent novels which will be Session 5… and we’re entering Session 3 tomorrow.
Wish me luck! We’re on to a shared reading piece tomorrow about Myers-Briggs and personality inventories – should be interesting!
I had students write what they thought were admirable traits on the board and here is what they had to say:
-Thoughtful
-Really cute
-Good singer
-High self esteem
-Selfless
-Make sacrifices for others
-Good personality
-Loyal
-trustworthy
-An awesome actor
-Helps me with my basketball playing
-Hardworking
-Funny
-Sets a goal and works toward it
-Kind
-Positive
-Patient… and a few others…
We had an excellent discussion on the traits that they came up with, and then worked on trying to narrow our list down to 5 main traits.
Can someone be admirable and also be a horrible singer? Yes, of course – so we took “good singer” off of the board. Can you be admirable without a good sense of humor? Yep! So that “funny” was gone.
We worked our way through the list and finally decided on a few key characteristics that would make someone admirable:
They are kind, set a goal and work toward it, and make sacrifices for others.
The best part is that the class basically hit the nail on the head! The traits that they decided on are ones that the main characters in the novels display. Score! I love it when that happens – everything coming together the way it’s supposed to. They are already making connections all over the place and we’re only two days in. They’re connecting our read aloud, Firegirl, to the anticipation guide that we did on Friday and to the main character that we read about in our last read aloud, Shot at Dawn: World War I. Love it! Super pumped for when they actually get into their book club groups with their own independent novels which will be Session 5… and we’re entering Session 3 tomorrow.
Wish me luck! We’re on to a shared reading piece tomorrow about Myers-Briggs and personality inventories – should be interesting!
Posted on January 7, 2013, in Book Club, Education, General Teaching, Literacy, Middle School, Read Aloud and tagged book club, firegirl, middle school, personality inventories, read aloud, what makes someone admirable. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a Comment.
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