“The 133 helped me this year helped me become less shy and actually come to school and helped me pass my classes and work up to get out. The 133 helped me to speak my opinion, ask questions. The 133 not just helped me with my attendance and grades but it helped me find close friends that are like a family.” (Kayla)
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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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As our learning expands, so too shall our Prezi! It's a blank canvas now, ready to be filled with our future learning.
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Discussion 1: The Beginning!
Pages xi -24"But that 'look at me looking at you,' digital craze is spilling into the real world, altering our kids' offline attitudes, and creating the most entitled, competitive, self-centered, and individualistic breed on record." -Borba
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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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Close Read! Dialectic Annotations:
Four our second activity, we'll use one of my very favorite close-read methods: dialectic annotations! Each group will be assigned a small portion of pages, and will group up to make some annotations on index cards to capture their learning. Then, we'll present the annotations to delve deeply into the methods of UnSelfie!
Here are the dialectic annotations we'll use to demonstrate our understanding during the close read portion of our lesson.
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Here is the Jamboard we'll use to capture our dialectic annotations. Make sure you're on the correct page, because we could easily destroy each other's work!
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Reading Passages:
Introduction: pages xi-xxi
Teaching Emotional Literacy, Learning to Tune Into our Feelings, and Why is Tuning into Feelings so Hard for All of Us: pages 3-10
What Science Says: How We Recognize Emotion in Others, How to Teach Children to Recognize Emotions, and Empathy Builder - Tuning into Feelings: pages 11-18
How to Help Kids Adopt this Habit, Age by Age Strategies, The Top Five Things to Know about Turning into Feelings. and One Last Thing, pages 18-24
Closing Circle Transcript: ReflectionAs we close up shop for the day, well run one final circle to reflect on our own, and our teammates' work. Our goal should be to engage meaningfully and reflect deeply before moving forward into our study of UnSelfie.
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Building Empathy through Ethics and Perspective
“I had to help,” one rescuer explained. “It is who I am,” said another.” (31)
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Opening Circle Transcript: Empathetic Children Have a Moral Identity (Ch. 2)
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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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Close Read! Four Lines, Two Circles, No Limits to the Creativity!
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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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Closing Circle!We're doing a deep dive for our final circle today! Thinking about our own perspective, and reflecting on today's work before signing off, and enjoying some well-earned snow shoveling.
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Reading as an Avenue of Empathy
"In fact, it turns out that reading - and specifically, enjoying reading - has profound implications for every part of our children's success, both now and in the future." (Borba, 76)
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Opening Circle Transcript: The Importance of Reading for Morality
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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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Chapter 5: Learning how Empathetic Children Keep their Cool
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For chapter five, we'll use PEARECK to enhance our circle. This should be awesome.
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Wrapup! Chapters 8&9: Living Empathy
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For our final meeting, we'll examine how to create kids who LIVE empathetic lives naturally. This discussion will cover chapter's 8 and 9, and because of all the stress everyone is under, we won't practice a new educational technology today. You're welcome, Helena.
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