8 Books to Teach Empathy & Acceptance While Helping Students Gain an Understanding of the World

We are so excited to be working together for our new unit. Since I am back in ELA this year, Robyn and I brainstorm constantly about how we can make the units more effective, engaging, and fun. We want the students to understand WHY they are learning what we are teaching and we want to teach the WHOLE CHILD, while teaching the standards. This year we have a high focus of social/emotional students and because of that we are very excited for this unit.

Our focus question is, "How can literature teach us about empathy and acceptance while helping us gain an understanding of the world?"

Not only are we teaching the students about empathy, but we wanted a highly engaging unit. There is nothing worse than listening to the same book every year for a lesson. Some great books are read every year from K-4, but we wanted something new for the surprise factor. We looked for new books and books that aren't hugely popular and this is what we found.

We are going to read Wonder as a class and constantly refer back to the novel. Stay tuned for more information on our plans for this book! I was able to get a whole class set for $36 through bookshare.org, so be sure to check that website out for book deals.

We found the best prices on Amazon and ordered them all with Prime! :) The other books we are using in this unit are (affiliate links provided):

 
Check back tomorrow for our first lesson inferring using The Invisible Boy!