This year, my whole class is full of tattletales.  The constant tattling on each other is driving me crazy.  A presentation in class discussed the book, How to Lose All Your Friends by Nancy Carlson, I thought would be perfect for this problem.  I started the lesson by asking the students what makes a good friend.  After I heard all their ideas, I told them what being a good friend means to me.  I asked the students to listen to the book and decide if they had the qualities of a good friend.  The whole class loved the book.  They participated in the reading and laughed at the story and pictures.

 After the read aloud, we discussed the book.  I asked the students if they ever did what the main character does to lose all her friends.  I geared the discussion towards the characteristics I thought were important including tattling.  For the first time this year, every student participated in the conversation.  The students gave examples from school and from home.  Once the discussion was finished, we did two activities.  First, we wrote/drew how we might do instead of tattling or one of the other characteristics the students identified with.  The students could choose one of the alternatives we discussed as group or an idea they thought of on their own.  We did the second activity, a follow up activity the next day.  We reread the book and briefly discussed it.  Then, the students took out their stories.  We picked five stories and performed role-plays based on those stories.  My para and I modeled the first role-play based on one of the students’ stories.  The students had a blast although their role-plays were not very good.

 In this case, bibliotherapy worked well.  The students still talk about the book when situations arise in class.  The book was written on their level and they all really identified with it.  I think the most challenging part of using bibliotherapy is finding the appropriate book.  If the wrong book is chosen, the process will not work. The activity of writing possible alternatives for different situations worked well, but the role-plays were mostly chaotic.  The students probably need much more practice for role-plays to be an effective teaching strategy with my students.  They did have fun and every student participate.  Since my students have speech and language difficulties, I was very impressed and proud of all of them.

Thanks Amy!