Gr 5 Shares Lessons from Wonder

Grade 5 teacher, Ms. Smackey, writes about their literary investigation into R.J. Palacio’s novel, Wonder, and the shift to virtual learning.

“We recently completed our literary investigation of R.J. Palacio’s novel Wonder. Initially, we didn’t know how we would connect to this story about a 5th grade boy who faced challenges that many of us will never experience. However, we soon realized that the author had created characters, emotions, and events that mirrored our own life experiences as 10–11 year olds on the verge of transitioning to middle school.

When we began to explore this novel, we were in our on-campus classrooms and able to hold discussions in real-time as we read the text aloud. Half-way through Wonder, the school building was closed and we were in our own homes practicing social distancing. However, even with the restrictions put in place as a result of the spread of COVID-19, we continued to read.

The manner in which we presented assignments and held discussions transitioned to reflect our new virtual learning environment. Using Google classrooms, Mr. Lindsay and I posted the upcoming reading response for students to reflect on what they had read that day. The reading responses to this novel highlighted relevant topics such as when to choose to act with kindness, how to be a courageous friend, why we might lie to others, and how to talk to parents when we’ve done something wrong. Students shared their responses electronically so Mr. Lindsay and I were able to provide feedback through email or comments in Google docs. We use Google Meet to connect as a class each day, continuing our conversations around this powerful book from our homes.

An aspect of our final project was to select a quote from the text that carried a special meaning for the reader. Each student then designed a poster to convey the message of the selected quote. We wanted to share some of our posters with you in the hopes that you might also benefit from this novel’s lessons.”