Blog #5
Brave Irene
by
William Steig
A young girl understands the
importance of what a promise is and continues
against forces of nature to keep her promise. The story taught a simple lesson
of doing what is right, helping others in need and when you set
out to do something, fight the odds and don’t give up until you have success.
I would classify this story
under the genre of Contemporary Realistic Fiction because this easily could
happen in the real world.
Activites:
- Have children give your their answer for what a 'promise' is. Discuss the different views and what the importance of that word is and what it means when you give it.
- Put each students name in a hat, have each child draw a name from the hat. The student who draws the name must make a promise to the students who's name was drawn. The promise has to be something that can be fullfilled in the classroom timeframe and can be as simple as holding the door open for them all week, or making a positive comment each day, doing something helpful or ask the children for their suggestions. Write down the promise and have the students check off when they have kept their promise. This teaches not only how to keep their promises but at a early age the begining steps to accountability.
I enjoyed this book and it actually has a lot of different subjects you can pull from to help children understand not only what a promise is but things like honesty, integrity, persistance and determination.
Connie,
ReplyDeleteThis was a cute story with a great message. In addition to your activities I would also have the children a story about how and when they were brave and what did they do.
For the second exercise I would coordinate with the gym teacher and have the children do a obstacle course, some events would be easy for some and challenging for others, some will require team work but all will require logical thinking. This will requiring helping others and courage to take on new challenges.