By Mike Hutchens, UC Schools Communications Director
Union City, Tenn.–Kelsey Arnold’s students are learning some life lessons and good habits through books.
Miss Arnold’s fifth-grade honors reading class at Union City Middle School recently completed a project in which they read “Wonder,” by R.J. Palacio.
The teacher said the book – which was made into a movie recently ‑- is about a boy who has a facial deformity and looks very different from the “normal” fifth-grade student. The story details how the boy was treated by other students when school began.
Among the issues addressed and lessons learned by the UCMS students from their reading were ones of bullying and kindness.
For their project -‑ after reading the book on their own -‑ students were required by their teacher to perform random acts of kindness and write about those actions. Also part of the assignment was to detail how those actions related to the theme of the book.
Upon completion of their work, students shared details of their random kindness acts. The class also had a book discussion during which they shared their ideas and interpretations.
Students were certainly creative when choosing what they did for others.
Some volunteered to serve dinner at nursing homes, while another entertained residents there by playing the piano. One student cleaned monuments at a local cemetery.
Still others wrote nice notes and gave goody bags to neighbors, while others baked cookies for nurses. Another couple of students took food to their church’s new pastor.
“Every fifth-grader in our school will read ‘Wonder’ this year, but only the honors class will be required to write a paper and perform the random kindness acts,” said Miss Arnold, who has taught fifth grade in seven of her eight years in the Union City School System. “I always like to start the year with a project and I think the students did a great job with their understanding of the book and with the thought they put into their acts of kindness.
“This is the first year the fifth grade has been at the middle school at Union City, and the fact that the boy in the book was a fifth-grader in middle school really helped them to relate, I believe.”
Photo by Mike Hutchens.
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