#WONDERSchools Blog Tour Part 2

So clearly I am a HUGE advocate for Wonder by R.J. Palacio...and here are two more reasons why:
(FYI: I got a little Natalie Merchant happy...but the song has a major tie-in to the book, so oh well!)

#1
David Etkin (@DavidAEtkin), Sherry Gick (@LibraryFanatic), and I all cooked up a little scheme to further spread the power of this amazing novel. We called it "1-2-3 Wonder." Basically, we asked our students to answer some questions about the book using only one, two, or three words. We met via a Google Doc (which was a completely new and fascinating experience for me) to brainstorm some possible questions. As a group, we also decided to put all of our students' answers together in one final video. The next day, we met with our kids and told them about the idea. My students were stoked, especially when I told them that R.J. Palacio herself might see it! I had them write their answers on dry erase boards, and I photographed them with their responses. It was really cool to see them tailor their words to be more precise so that they could fit their ideas into the limited space they were given. Here is my group's finished product:

Isn't that cool???

Please check out Sherry's finished product here. 

See David's video here. 

Here is the compilation of all of our classes together:

I really enjoyed collaborating with both David and Sherry. Good things always result from passionate teachers putting their heads together to come up with something fantastic for their students to do. 

#2
I love Wonder is because I believe it has the power to bring kids together and set aside their differences. As part of the #WONDERSchools blog tour, I read a post written by the mother of a little boy with a craniofacial condition. What really touched me was how many similarities he had to Auggie. One difference, though, was this little boy (Peter) had never been given a standing ovation. I knew once I shared Peter's story with my kids, they'd want to do something about that! Here was their response to Peter's mom's blog post:

As son as the school day ended, I hopped on Twitter and sent our video to Peter's mom so that she could share it with him. I heard back from her not long after I "tweeted" her the link to our video. She said that Peter was "speechless," and she had been moved to tears...all from one simple act of kindness inspired by Wonder. 

I implore you, share this book with as many children as you can. Just imagine: if every child in the world read this book and felt its impact, what kind of tomorrow they would work together to create?