Six-graders analyze Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Pleasant View School sixth-graders are diving deep into the world of author R. J. Palacio with a choice board activity.

The students recently read R. J. Palacio’s book Wonder for Maysa Safi’s six-grade class, a book that covers issues like bullying and intolerance. And now they are preparing projects about the book.

The choice board activity gives students the opportunity to choose from 12 different options for projects. The main skills the students work on are inferencing, theme, character, events analysis and interpreting meaning.

Students take each of these skills and pair it with a project option. For example, a student could do a song or write a poem on the book's theme. Another idea would be a timeline of events for the story.

“What's nice about these kinds of activities is that the students have the flexibility to choose whether they want to do images or write, for example,” Safi said. “So with that flexibility they can pick and choose what they prefer to do and they're more motivated to do it.”

Safi has done this activity style before but this time she said she’s interested to see what they do with this new character.

Traditionally, students are asked to write up a literary analysis on the novel. So this assignment makes it more creative for them, allowing them to decide what they want to do.

“It's more like they're in charge,” Safi said. “They're the ones that are essentially deciding what project they want to do, but it still achieves the task of doing a literary analysis just in a more creative way.”