What more could we ask for from a book study about empathy, than to start with a student quote as a mission statement? A kid who felt left out and stranded on an island finds a family in school. UnSelfie is a book that can help us apply some systematic decisions to help more students share Kayla's experience!
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Circle Transcript: Introduction and Chapter 1This original circle is intended to build confidence and comfort. As an ELA teacher, books and discussions are my bread and butter. Besides, bread and butter, of which I also partake... This first circle will utilize the interconnectedness of a restorative justice circle format with the comfort of analyzing text through Reader Response theory. We'll react to the book through our personal experiences, and get into closely reading the text later!
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Now that we've built confidence with our first week of reader-response theory, we're going to delve into a little bit of metacognition. Chapter two is all about identifying the setbacks to our student's developing a moral identity, and articulating some simple solutions for helping our students to build a strong, moral identity.
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Read, Think, Pair, Share:Pages 52-53 share some strategies that don't work to help build empathy, widen perspective, or change behavior. One of them is a given, one is the cause for RJ principles being applied in our schools, and one will be incredibly counter-intuitive for most people involved in RJ teams. Follow along the Sides to the right to perform a read, think, pair, share with our brilliant group of colleagues.
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According to UnSelfie, the cure to students lacking perspective is practicing inductive discipline. One of the reasons I like this book is because in all my reading, I had never heard that term before. While we all use many of the techniques, the C.A.R.E acronym was the most suited to our practices at Dunkirk Middle school, and as such, it will be the fodder for today's close read!
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Our opening circle today will delve into the depths of our favorite stories, and how having students read, specifically for pleasure, will help them build empathy and morality. We'll apply that knowledge to the school as a whole, because not everyone is as lucky as me to be an ELA teacher for whom this knowledge innately applies to all my practice.
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