How Far You've Come: now & then lesson idea

 As the school year comes to a close, I always want students to reflect back on their progress academically, but also in other ways.  When looking for activities to encourage students to look at their whole selves, I came across this Now & Then lesson idea from the late literacy specialist, Dr. Rozlyn Linder's book, The Big Book of Details: 46 Moves for Teaching Writers to Elaborate.  

First, we read a picture book where the author was one way when he was younger, but now he was different.  The book for this lesson was Malcolm Mitchell's My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World.  But any biography or story where the character makes a change would do fine as a mentor text.

After listening to the story we discussed how he changed from when he was little. That led the students to share how they connected to his struggles.  Next, I passed out scrap paper and modeled how to brainstorm the ways that I was when I was little compared to now. Some things have changed and some have stayed the same.  Ask students to do the same. I turned on a song that was 3 minutes 30 seconds long so that was the timer that was up.  

After the timer goes off, ask students to share with their classmates some of the ones that stood out to them.  

Finally, the publication part. Since I did this with 5th graders, I wanted to have something to project and print off for the hallway before their recognition ceremony.  So I told them to use the PIC COLLAGE EDU app on their iPads to publish their final lists.  They could also have written a poem, a story, or a visual collage of their ideas, too.

Here are some examples of their final pieces: 

Although I did this with students to reflect about themselves, you can also do this about characters in a book, a real person's biography, or a place for geography and Social Studies lessons.  What I appreciate about this is the open-ended topic, while still being within the confines of time and change or stagnation.