Entry 3- Bullying

Category: Bullying
Title: Each Kindness
Written by: Jaqueline Woodson
Illustrated by: E.B. Lewis
Publisher: The Penguin Group
Year: 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-24652-4
Reading Level: 4th grade
Number of Pages: 32
Genre: Children's Picture Book

Summary:  There is a new girl at school named Maya.  She is trying to make friends, but no one will talk to her.  Chloe and her friends are being nothing but mean to her.  Maya just decided to play by herself and then stopped showing up to school.  The teacher gave a lesson on kindness and Chloe realizes that she missed a friendship opportunity and wishes that she could've gotten Maya back.

Critical Review:
Strengths: (Author's Perspective) Jaqueline Woods is an American author who didn't always think that she was going to be a writer.  She would draw on sidewalks with chalk and sometimes even graffiti things on walls.  She knew she was born to be a writer.  Her fifth grade year she wrote a story in which her teacher said was really good.  She knew from then on out that she was meant to do this.  (Illustrator) E.B. Lewis has illustrated over 70 children's books and has won numerous awards for his watercolor creations.  The illustrations in this book are nothing short of amazing.  They feature watercolor paintings and have a variety of diversity among them.  (Awards) She has won 16 awards for this book alone.  Some of the other medals that her books have been awarded include: The Newbery Award, The Caldecott Medal, The Correta Scott King Award, National Book Award, Parent's Choice Award.  She is a renowned author who's books are exceptionally incredible.  (Multidimensionality and interconnections) The characters in this book were all represented exceptionally well.  They each had their part and the characters were diverse in many ways.  The story shows why the characters didn't "come together" until the very end when Chloe realized that she hadn't been kind to Maya.

Weaknesses: In my opinion there are no real weaknesses in this book.

Classroom Connections:

Main Themes: A big theme in this book is kindness.  When Chloe is mean to Maya, she decides that she is going to play by herself.  Then when she doesn't show up for school the next couple of weeks and the teacher gives a lesson on kindness, Chloe starts to feel guilty and wishes she would've been kind to Maya.

Activities:  I would have my students a "Take a Stand Together" chain.  Each student will be given a piece of paper.  On this they will write their very own anti-bullying statement on this.  Then we will connect each students' to each other and hang it either in the classroom or outside our door.  It would be ideal to have every classroom in the school do this and then connect our chains so that they go on throughout the entire school.

Resources:

Educators- The BULLY Project
This is the official website of The BULLY project.  They have resources and tools for educators, victims, students, parents, and advocators.  It also has bullying laws on their websites
http://www.thebullyproject.com/tools_educators

Ditch the Label | Anti-Bullying Organization
This is a website that has tools and lesson plans for teachers to use during anti-bullying week or whenever they would like.
https://us.ditchthelabel.org/?_ga=2.55493737.336808327.1556560170-1203322711.1556560170

Bullying Prevention Guide for Educators: 150+ Practices to Combat Bully Behavior 
This website contains practices for teachers that show their students how to combat bully's and behaviors.
https://www.teacher.org/resource/bullying/









Category: Bullying
Title: Lion vs. Rabbit
Written by: Alex Latimer
Illustrated by: Alex Latimer
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
Year: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-56145-709-0
Reading Level: 
Number of Pages: 32
Genre: Children's Picture Books


Summary:  This book is about a lion who bullies all of the animals in the town.  All of the animals are tired of his mean games and they just want it to stop.  So each of them try to contest against him and if they win, then the lion will stop bullying them.  None of them win, but then a rabbit shows up. The rabbit beat the lion at four different contests and the lion finally said that he would stop bullying the animals.

Critical Review:
Strengths: (Author's Perspective)(Illustrator) Alex Latimer is a South African writer and illustrator.  He likes to spend his time doing this.  He has written four children's picture books and all have a deep rooted meaning behind them.  He is a world renowned illustrator and sells his paintings for a living as well as writing books. (Awards) Latimer has won many awards for this book alone.  He won the Parent's Choice Award, Alabama Camellia Award, Black-eyed Susan Award, Washington Children's Choice Award, and Virginia's readers choice award.


Weaknesses: (Stereotyping)  While this book has many good lessons throughout it, I noticed that it only has male animal characters.  This could be considered a weakness, especially in today's day in age.  Also it doesn't exactly address the root of the bullying and the rabbit ends up beating the lion with trickery.  So I think that with that, there needs to be more of a reason behind why the lion needed to stop bullying.

Classroom Connections:

Main Themes: Treating others how you want to be treated is a big theme in this book.  The lion picks on weaker animals and bullies them to make himself feel better.  Then along comes a rabbit to try and defeat him.  The lion thinks that this small animal won't be able to defeat him, but the rabbit does time and time again.  Each time the rabbit beats him, the lion finds and excuse as to why he lost. At the end, he finally realizes how the other animals have been feeling and vows to treat them in a better way.

Activities:  Students could do two different things.  They could create skits about bullying.  We would watch them and then come up with ways that we could deal with that situation and how we could prevent it next time.  Student's could also create a song or rap about how to stop bullying.

Resources:

Stop Bullying.gov
This is the official website of Stop Bullying.gov.  It provides resources for teachers as well as students and parents.  It focuses on prevention and how students can identify and stand against bullying.
https://www.stopbullying.gov

NEA- Teaching Students to Prevent Bullying
This is the official website of the National Education Association and it gives a variety of resources for teachers on teaching students how to prevent bullying.
http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/teaching-students-to-prevent-bullying.html

Bullying Help: Resources and Partners | Teaching Tolerance
This is the official website of Teaching Tolerance.  There is a list of resources for teachers that they can use to implement anti-bullying lessons.  There are websites and books.
https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/bullying-help-resources-and-partners

Entry 2- Military Connected Students

Category: Military Connected Students
Title:  My Red Balloon
Written by: Eve Bunting
Illustrated by: Kay Life
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Year: 2005
ISBN:1590782631
Reading Level: 2nd-3rd
Number of Pages: 32
Genre: Children's Pictures Book

Summary:  A little boy named Bobby's dad is coming home today.  He is so excited and puts on his best outfit and looks his best for his dad.  He has a red balloon that says welcome home and ties it around his wrist so that his dad will be able to pick him and his mom out of the crowd.  When they get to the place where his dad is coming his balloon ends up getting loose.  He is now worried that his dad won't be able to find him.

Critical Review:
Strengths: (Author's Perspective). Anne Evelyn Bunting, is a Northwen Ireland-born American writer of more than 250 books.  Her work covers a broad majority of subjects and includes fiction and non-fiction books.  Her books are more aimed towards children and young adults, but she has written the text for picture books as well. (Illustrator) Kay Life received her degree in elementary education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and her B.F.A. in illustration at The Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.  (Awards) Eve Bunting has received six awards.  She won the Regina Medal in 1997, The Golden Kite Award for Fiction in 1977, The Golden Kite Award for Picture Book in 1998, The Edgar Award for Best Juvenile in 1993, and The Storyteller Award in 1995.

Weaknesses: (Multidimensionality and interconnections) While this book has some examples of diverse individuals regarding color, it doesn't included many females.  I think that is one stereotype about those in the military is that they are all males.  In reality there are many females that are apart of our armed forces.

Classroom Connections:

Main Themes: A main theme could be that even though something bad happens you should always think of a positive in regard to that negative.  I think that this is important to teach children that life has many positives and we need to be aware of those more than we are the negatives.

Activities:  An activity that I would have my students do would be to create a mailable hug.  These would be colored and drawn to resemble a student themselves.  Students would then write a note or a poem about being away to include with the hug.  Then we would mail these out to deployed soldiers so that they always had a "hug."

Resources:

Military Families: Child Care Support During Deployments
This is the official website of The American Academy of Pediatrics and has resources and things that you can do as a classroom teacher to help your students cope during a parent's deployment.
https://healthychildren.org/English/family-life/work-play/Pages/Military-Families-Child-Care-Support-During-Deployments.aspx

Military Impacted Schools Association- Providing the Needs for Military Children
This is the official website of Champions for Children and is a site that gathers all school superintendents of schools with a high military population and comes up with ways to better serve their military connected students.
https://militaryimpactedschoolsassociation.org

Military Child Education Coalition- MCEC
This is the official website of the MCEC and is a service for educators on different trainings that they can get to ensure they are providing the best learning possible to their military connected students.
https://www.militarychild.org

Category: Military Connected Students
Title: Come Home Soon a First Look at When a Parent Goes to War
Written by: Pat Thomas
Illustrated by: Lesley Harker
Publisher: Barron's Education Series, Inc.
Year: 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4380-0189-0
Reading Level: K-2nd
Number of Pages: 22
Genre: Children's Picture Book

Summary:  This book goes through the process of what happens when a parent goes to war.  It examines what happens before they leave, while they are gone, and what happens when they come home.  It has sidebar questions within the book that ask the reader different questions that are similar to what those with a deployed parent have to go through on an every day basis.

Critical Review:
Strengths: (Authors Perspective) Pat Thomas was born in California but lived in London for 30 years as an author and a journalist.  She has spent most of her life in health and environment and has written many books for adults to help them to take action on social issues.  Her First Look at Series has 30 titles in it now.  Many of these books came from conversations that she had with her son about disabilities and tough issues in our world. (Illustrations) The illustrations in this book are very diverse and show many different types of characters and families. This book shows depictions of things that would actually happen in a military family. (Stereotyping) This book did not have a whole lot of stereotyping in it.  There were service members of all colors and genders.  It also accurately depicted what service members go through when they are over seas.  It especially hits it on the nose with when they go to the Middle East.

Weaknesses:  (Awards) Pat Thomas is an American psychotherapist  who specializes in healthcare and environmental issues.  She was appointed editor of The Ecologist magazine in 2007. Her journalism has been widely published in the national press and she regularly appears on radio programs as well as on BBC News, Sky News, Sky News, Carlton Granada Talk TV, LBC and The World Service.  She doesn't have any big awards though which could be counted as a weakness.


Classroom Connections:

Main Themes:  I think that a main theme with this book would be the fact that everyone leaves at some point for many different kinds of jobs.  People who are in the military often times leave for longer periods of times than those that are not.  So just explaining to your students that many people have to go away for their jobs and it is normal.

Activities:  Something that you could do as a classroom teacher would be to create letters or care packages for deployed soldiers.  Each student could hand make a letter and then the school could ship it off to wherever the soldiers are.

Resources:

Military K-12 Partnership
This is the official website of the DODEA and is a partnership between the Department of Defense and the DoD Education Activity and has all services working with educators and administrators across the nation to provide quality education for all children of military families.
https://www.dodea.edu/Partnership/index.cfm

Purdue University- Military Family Research Institute- How to Help Series
This is a series of publications that offer valuable information to various audiences to help them assist and support members of the military, veterans, and their families.  Each issue provides evidence-based guidance on how a particular group can help, with short, practical suggestions and links that point to additional resources.
https://www.mfri.purdue.edu/resources-and-research/how-to-help-series/

Penn State- Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness School Resources about Military Families
This is the official website of Penn State University.  Includes high quality, evidence based resources are publicly available online from many organizations.  The Clearinghouse for Military family Readiness at Penn State identified some of the most relevant, useful, and accessible resources across multiple topics, such as military culture, deployments, parental injury, student tried, and reintegration.
https://schoolresources.militaryfamilies.psu.edu

Entry 1- Special Education

Category: Special Education
Title: "Don't Call Me Special" A First Look at Disability
Written by: Pat Thomas
Illustrated by: Lesley Harker
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
Year: 2002
ISBN: 0-7641-2118-9
Reading Level: Preschool-2nd grade
Number of pages: 22
Genre: Non-fiction

Summary:
Don't Call Me Special is a book that explores physically disabilities as well as some learning disabilities.  It shows that children with special needs don't like to be called "special" because it makes them feel different from everyone else.  This book is interactive as it asks questions throughout the book if you have ever met someone with a disability and things such as that.  It talks about making the world a more inclusive place by having them in the classroom with everyone else.  It is a great introductory book to dip kids' toes into the thought of disabilities.

Critical Review:

Strengths: (Authors Perspective) Pat Thomas was born in California but lived in London for 30 years as an author and a journalist.  She has spent most of her life in health and environment and has written many books for adults to help them to take action on social issues.  Her First Look at Series has 30 titles in it now.  Many of these books came from conversations that she had with her son about disabilities and tough issues in our world. (Illustrations) The illustrations in this book are by Lesley Harker.  They provide a wide variety of diversity among the children drawn in the book.  There are also many depictions of children with physical disabilities, whether it be in a wheelchair or having crutches.  They are very realistic for the time period. (Multidimensionality and interconnections) There is a variety of diversity in this book.  All races and cultures are accurately represented in this book and each race is represented with a disability so it isn't just one single race representing them.

Weaknesses:  (Awards) Pat Thomas is an American psychotherapist  who specializes in healthcare and environmental issues.  She was appointed editor of The Ecologist magazine in 2007. Her journalism has been widely published in the national press and she regularly appears on radio programs as well as on BBC News, Sky News, Sky News, Carlton Granada Talk TV, LBC and The World Service.  She doesn't have any big awards though which could be counted as a weakness.


Classroom Connections:

Main Themes: The main theme of this book is that you should treat everyone equally because deep down we are all the same.  It shows that everyone has something unique about them and even if that uniqueness is a disability, it is no reason to be mean to them or judge them.  It teaches young children about disabilities and what they are so that they are aware of them when they come into contact with them in the real world.  This book promotes positive interactions among individuals and encourage children to ask questions.  

Activities: An activity that could be completed in class would be having the students create some sort of identity web in class that tells all about them.  Then put the students in small groups and have them discuss some of their things that are on their identity webs that they are proud of.  With this the students can compare similarities and differences that will show them that we are not all the same and we should be proud of our differences.

Resources:

NEA- Special Education & IDEA Resources- Official Website
This is the official website of the National Education Association and shows different books, websites lesson plans, and reports regarding special education.
http://www.nea.org/tools/special-education-IDEA-resources.html

KSDE- Special Education Resources for Families and Educators- Official Website
This is the official website of the Kansas Department of Education and it offers a wide list of resources for all disabilities as well as national resources.
https://www.ksde.org/Agency/Division-of-Learning-Services/Special-Education-and-Title-Services/Special-Education/Special-Education-Resources-for-Families-and-Educators

Special Needs- Teacher Resources (Grades K-12)- Teacher Vision- Official Website
This is the official website of Teacher Vision and provides educators with resources that will help them teach students with disabilities effectively.
https://www.teachervision.com/teaching-strategies/special-needs




Category: Special Education
Title: "I See Things Differently" A first Look at Autism
Written by: Pat Thomas
Illustrated by: Wayland
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
Year: 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4380-0479-2
Reading Level: Preschool-2nd grade
Number of pages: 28
Genre: Non-fiction

Summary:
This book is a tool to help children understand what autism may sound and look like.  It shows the various ways of how it can affect an individual and things that these individuals may do.  It explains that children with autism may act differently because their brains are made up differently.  It tells students that autism isn't a bad thing or something that we should be scared of; rather it is a disability that some people have to live with.

Critical Review:

Strengths: (Authors Perspective) Pat Thomas was born in California but lived in London for 30 years as an author and a journalist.  She has spent most of her life in health and environment and has written many books for adults to help them to take action on social issues.  Her First Look at Series has 30 titles in it now.  Many of these books came from conversations that she had with her son about disabilities and tough issues in our world. (Illustrations) The illustrations in this book are very diverse and show many different types of characters and families.  It also shows depictions of different things that a person with autism might do. (Multidimensionality and interconnections) There is a variety of diversity in this book.  All races and cultures are accurately represented in this book and each race is represented with a disability so it isn't just one single race representing them.

Weaknesses: (Stereotyping) This book kind of over exaggerates things that an individual with autism might do.  It shows many of them lying on the floor laying with a toy, which is true in some aspects.  Not everyone with autism has fits to where they lay on the floor.  They also show them being scared and alone while not playing with anybody.  This is kind of false as well depending on the severity of the autism.  Many individuals with autism are social butterflies.

Classroom Connections:

Main Themes: This story explores the personal feelings are social issues and show that it is a first step in teaching our children and students about social issues and how to deal with them.  It shows that even though an individual might have autism, that doesn't mean that we should treat them any different than how we would treat someone who is just like us.

Activities:  Something that you could do in the classroom is use those identity webs that were made previously and build off of it.  You could group the students into sections where they all have one thing in common.  This could be something very generic, but then go into detail asking them to talk about some of their difference that they have.  The moral of this activity would be that we are all the same because of this certain thing, but we are all different because we have unique things that make us, us!

Resources:

Home | Autism Speaks- Official Website
This website contains the home of autism awareness and tells about what autism is, ways you can help, and different resources that are available.
https://www.autismspeaks.org

Lesson Planning in the Autism Classroom: How to Make it a Success
This is a website of a teacher who is highly trained in the area of autism.  She has created a blog on how to effectively write lesson plans for a classroom that would have students with autism in it.
https://www.autismclassroomresources.com/lesson-planning-autism-classroom/

Autism Resource Center- Official Website
This is the official website of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and has a wide variety of resources including, clinical resources, videos from top rated professionals, frequently asked questions, facts for families, and research conducted on autism.
https://www.aacap.org/aacap/families_and_youth/resource_centers/autism_resource_center/home.aspx