Wonder by Design: Building a Unit

While it is always a little sad to say goodbye to summer, I’m getting excited about teaching the unit I’ve been designing for my 6th and 7th grade ELA class on the novel Wonder. It’s a really delightful book, and if you haven’t read it yet, check out this minute-and-a-half book trailer, and you just might want to! 

The book relates Auggie’s 5th grade year—his inaugural year in regular school—from a variety of first person viewpoints, including his own. Auggie has been homeschooled until now because the facial anomalies he was born with required so many surgeries that school attendance would have been a problem. Now he needs to negotiate all the social complexities of pre-adolescence…

Here’s how I’ve approached my planning, using an Understanding by Design framework that starts with the purpose and big ideas. I find it helpful to reinforce purpose by even naming units by the main idea rather than the work of literature or genre studied. So this one is called "Choosing the Good: Wonder."

Big ideas/enduring understandings:

• I bear God’s image: I am significant, worthy of respect and protection, capable of learning, caring, creating, communicating, collaborating. That is the foundation of my significance, whatever other traits I have (race, gender, class, health, appearance, intelligence, physical capability…), however people treat me. 
• Every person around me also bears God’s image: they are significant, worthy of respect and protection, capable of learning, caring, creating, communicating, collaborating. That is the foundation of their significance, whatever other traits they have, and how I am to treat them.

Bible background:

• “So God created human beings in his own image…” Genesis 1:27 (NLT)
• “...to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8 (NASB)
• “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 19:19, 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8

Essential questions: As we read and discuss the novel Wonder, we will think about how our daily choices build character, how others also struggle with daily choices, and how we can make just, kind, courageous choices. The following questions will help us:

• Who am I? Who is my neighbor? Why does that matter?
• How do the parts of a novel (plot, character, style) communicate the themes?
• How can a book be a mirror, a map, and a window?
• How can I be an upstander rather than a bystander?

Content (literary terms): protagonist, antagonist, setting, plot, conflict, complication, climax, resolution, style, theme, allusion, character, dialogue, point of view.

Process: Students will keep a journal on each reading assignment: one significant plot event, character development, style (word/phrase), sketch, quote from the book with a personal response.

Assessment: At the end, students will demonstrate engagement with and understanding of the novel’s characters, plot, and theme by producing the following:

• 1-page poster (A4) on theme and character 
• New chapter: Auggie moves to Japan and joins our class.
• Mini research/report/project on how to be an upstander rather than a bystander. 

Looking forward to starting this adventure on Tuesday!