Exploring Thoughts, Feelings, Ideas

Resource Ideas

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Major Integrated Resource (MIR)

• Sightlines 7 Series available from Pearson Education Canada

Web Resource

• The Friendship Race - Students work together to explore qualities and attitudes that help make lasting friendships.
• What If - Students have the chance to change one aspect of their lives and then imagine how things might have been different in this creative writing assignment.

Related Novel Sets Available from the Curriculum Materials Centre

• Holes by Louis Sacher - As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.
• Phoenix Rising by Karen Hesse - Thirteen-year-old Nyle learns about relationships and death when fifteen-year-old Ezra, who was exposed to radiation leaked from a nearby nuclear plant, comes to stay at her grandmother's Vermont farmhouse.
• Buddy Love, Now on Video by Ilene Cooper - Thirteen-year-old Buddy has always thought of himself as an average member of an average family. However, when he gets a camcorder to use in a class project, Buddy sees his family differently. Buddy also realizes that he is important too and should not agree with every scheme thought up by his friend. This is a light-hearted look at a boy’s growing self-confidence and identity.
• Oliver's Wars by Budge Wilson - While 12-year-old Oliver's father is stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, his family moves to Nova Scotia to live with Oliver’s grandparents. There, he fights his own personal war over fear for his father's safety and the struggle to fit into a new school. Oliver learns that communication is important in dealing with fear and in making friends.
• The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson - An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.
• Cowboys Don't Quit by Marilyn Halvorson - Written in the first person, this high-interest novel relates the personal growth and maturity of a grade eight boy who blames his alcoholic father for the accident that caused his mother's death. Shane and his father leave the rodeo circuit to settle on a ranch, but they are unable to establish the communication necessary for healing and forgiveness. This is a realistic portrayal of a lonely, defensive teen and a guilt-ridden father who reach out tentatively to each other and acknowledge that showing emotions is essential to communication among friends. The story also explores the growing friendship between Shane and Casey, a neighbouring girl.
• The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars - A teenage girl gains new insight into herself and her family when her mentally handicapped brother gets lost.
• Nobody Said It Would Be Easy by Marilyn Halvorson - Lance and Red share the adventures with Kat, Lance's cousin. She arrives with Uncle Joe just when Lance has to deal with the difficult news that his hand, injured in an earlier accident, might never heal completely. To make matters worse, it is his drawing hand and Lance has considerable talent and definite ambitions to become an artist. Then the invitation comes from his Uncle Joe, a bush pilot, to help him move horses eighty miles across country. Lance, Kat, and Red fly with him in the battered Falcon to northern British Columbia but crash in a freak September snowstorm. Uncle Joe is killed on impact and his three passengers find themselves totally lost, miles off course, and unable to call for help. Against all these odds, the three must fight together for survival.
• Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson - Sarah Louise, who lives with her family on a Chesapeake Bay island, grows up feeling less important than her twin sister, until she finally begins to find her own identity.
• Dogsong by Gary Paulsen - Russell, a 14-year-old Eskimo boy, longs for the old ways and traditions of his forefathers, and begins a journey of self-discovery across the tundra.

Do you have a lesson plan, resource or web site you would like to contribute to this page? Contact us at: Online Learning Centre

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