It’s Your World; If You Don’t Like It, Change It

Element 6: Taking Social Action- students explore their own context and develop tools to work for change

Author: Mikki Halpin

Grade: 6^th   

Buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Your-World--If-Dont-Like-Change/dp/0689874480/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396382237&sr=1-1&keywords=Its+your+world%2C+if+you+don%27t+like+it+change+it

Summary: Mikki Halpin’s, “It’s Your World; If You Don’t Like It, Change It”, is geared toward the teenage population in hopes of promoting activism.  Within the book, a reader will find information in relation to the following topics: Rights for animals, fighting against racism, the environment, freedom of speech, ending war, fighting the HIV/AIDS Spread, stopping bullying, defending women's rights, protecting civil rights, and promoting tolerance for LGBTQ. Throughout the book, Halpin offers a variety of suggestions in order to support the world and community.

Element 6: This powerful book would be used to apply Element 6 especially in a 6^th grade classroom because it allows young students to realize the significance of their “voice”. Students will learn ways to make positive actions and the importance of getting involved in their community. These particular skills will be helpful for their future as well as currently as they are able to promote these new ideas with those around them. The challenge of this book is to get students to brainstorm various ways to “get involved” and “create change”, which directly correlates with Element 6. 

Activity: A follow-up activity to do with a classroom after reading this book would be to assign each student with a classmate to choose a particular area of focus within the community that they can get involved with. For example, students may want to get involved with would be to clean local parks. Students will be responsible for creating a list of objectives there would be when cleaning up their local parks. What “difference” would they like to make and how would it impact their community around them? Students would be asked how exactly would they get others involved and what would be some of their advertising strategies? The motivation that students will get will promote them to gather others to join in on this exciting, impactful activity. Students could plan one day to actually try their activity and clean a local park in their home area. As a closing, students would be asked to take pictures and show them to their class as well as write a short synopsis of what they got out of doing this activity.

Vanessa Campo

The Juice Box Bully

Authors: Bob Sornson and Maria Dismondy

Illustrator: Kim Shaw

Grade Level: Second Grade

Buy it here!

Resources

Summary:

The Juice Box Bully is a great powerful book written by Bob Sornson and Maria Dismondy, for children to become motivated and encouraged to make a difference. It shows readers’ that standing up for others is very empowering and by working together they can make a difference. This book is about a young boy named Pete who is new to a school. Pete had a bad attitude and did not want to interact with his peers. Instead Pete called them names and acted very unpleasant towards them. Despite his actions a young girl named Ruby approached Pete and explained how their class made a promise. The promise was to take care of themselves, each other, and their classroom, and to solve problems peacefully. They promised that in their class no one would stand by and accept bad behavior, instead they would speak up when someone acts hurtfully. Unfortunately Pete did not like the promise and continued acting very mean. The next day Pete complimented Ruby on her shirt, which was followed with a squirt from his juice box.  Ruby was upset and demanded everyone to break the promise but Ralph put a stop and said he would not let her do that. Pete was surprised with his reaction, and learned that Ralph was once a bully but was not a bystander and did not agree with Pete ruining Ruby’s shirt. Pete finally opens up and explains the reason why he started teasing others. Pete assumed that everyone would hate him for what he did, but shortly after, Ruby apologized and no one really hated him. Pete decided to make the promise as well and eventually apologized to Ruby.

Element 6: Taking Social Action

This book fits into Element 6 because it delivers a powerful message to readers, which is, empowering kids to stand up for others. This book is great for teachers to use within their classrooms because it provides them with an opportunity on how to handle a difficult challenging issue going on in most schools today, bullying. This book will help readers gain skills on how to create change first hand, which is primarily Element 6.

Activity:

Integrating The Juice Box Bully into a classroom is a must. Not only will I encourage my students to make the same promise as the children in The Juice Box Bully did but I would also have the class complete an activity to help them as readers retain the valuable message from this book. This activity would be to have the class create a box, imitating a juice box, and allow students to anonymously leave anything they would like to address that they felt was not right that another student did or said. As a class we can go through the box once a week and discuss these messages and come together to create a solution. This will help all students gain those skills needed to create a change and help comfort those that felt afraid to perhaps approach their peers.