Brenda

Currently I've been teaching a novel-Helen Keller. During this unit of study I front loaded many activities to help them understand people that have challenges. By providing these experiences they seemed to relate to the text and could share outside experiences too. The visualization activity we did was to imagine you couldn't see. I actually blind folded them and had them draw a picture. We talked about what it was like and how it felt. Many said how glad they were to take off the blind fold and come out of the dark. This took us down another road by saying Helen couldn't take it off....They had a picture in their mind of what to draw, which made it easier then what Helen went through because she had no prior experience. Throughout this novel we've been talking about various parts of the book and what it means. Behaviors were a big topic and understanding why Helen was acting out. They seemed to understand how frustrating it would be to not be able to talk or hear and showed empathy for her. This also led to many questions about our own behaviors and why we do the things we do. The students were really engaged about talking about anger and sadness. I literally just let them go back and forth, while seeing where the conversation would lead.