Walking In Their Shoes

Inside Out and Back Again was a book that I relate to quite well. The idea of this book correlates to family and how they survived as a group. A community can get through hardships as long as everyone puts in the effort to carry the weight. An individual is more likely to give in and submit because they feel like they are all alone. On the other hand, a group can cheer the individual up or talk them out of it and motivate them to get back up on their feet again. Just like in a classroom, everyone feels like they are all alone. The kids come from different backgrounds and stories. For the lesson plan that I chose to do, I wanted to involve them to get to know each other and allow one another to share.

The lesson plan starts with the kids writing a poem about who they are. This lesson plan would be ideal for 4th-6th graders. It would be executed the first week of school, if not the first day of class. For example, they could write where they are from, what ethnicity they fall in, how many siblings they have, favorite colors/TV shows, etc.  When they are done with their poems, I would have them get in a group to share their poems with each other. This would cover the Common Core of Language Arts by having them write and combine words into a sentence to create a poem. It would also make up the speaking and listening engagement portion of the Common Core by doing the group/one-on-one discussion by sharing their poems. Afterward, I would have them find a commonality with each other and explain why they like it. After giving some time, I would assign them a project of doing a paragraph or two about an interesting fact they learned about each other. This covers the Common Core of Language by being able to demonstrate their writing ability in grammar usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

I imagine this taking place in a classroom where the kids feel safe since they would be spending the year with the peers they shared their poems with. As far as materials, only a piece of paper and a pencil. The goal I have in mind for this lesson plan is to allow the kids to comprehend that they can play with words by combining them and adding them onto a sentence to create a poem. They can rhyme or they can take their time, but in the end, this allows the kids to engage with the tools they need to achieve in higher education by learning to improve their English writing skills such as grammar, spelling, punctuation, and/or capitalization.