As teachers we get the privilege of being an important role model who can spread positive messages. One of the ways we can do this is through the books we choose to read aloud. I am a HUGE fan of Maria Dismondy’s books because they are truly written to make a difference. Did you know she has a new one? Read on to hear about it and enter a giveaway!
Maria’s latest book, The Jelly Donut Difference, came at the perfect time in our school year. The main themes in the book include traditions, helping others, random acts of kindness, and spreading love into the world.
Spring fever has officially hit in our classroom and we needed some redirecting to turn our energy into positive actions. The book was the PERFECT mentor text for this!
Maria was sweet enough to send me the book to review with my students. Along with the book came a second for me to pass on to another teacher (how kind!)
One of the many fabulous things about each of Maria’s books is that she includes a readers guide and activities to go along with them. I downloaded the readers guide for the book here. I used that to help me plan to use the book to its fullest.
I started our week with the book by reading it to my students. You can check out a trailer of the book below.
We used the comprehension questions in the readers guide to talk before, during, and after reading the book. Some of the questions that my students had strong feelings towards included; “Do you know someone like Ms. Marvis?”, “Has anything like this ever happened to you? Does it remind you of something?”, and “If you could talk to Dexter and Leah, what would you say to them? What questions would you ask them?”
I just happened to be teaching character change in our readers workshop. There was a page in the readers guide about how Dexter and Leah change in the story which was perfect! It was great to reinforce the skill and for me to check their progress.
On another day during our week, we revisited the book and talked about making a difference and random acts of kindness. My kids were hooked on this topic. We made a chart with random acts of kindness that we could perform at school. We decided to hang it up and put a checkmark next to each activity once we completed them. We made the choice not to cross them out because we thought it was important to complete the various acts multiple times.
One of the last activities we did included writing book recommendations. This fit perfectly with our opinion writing unit. We loved reviewing the book. I am happy to say that each student gave it 5 out of 5 stars!
