Last year around October I read aloud the book Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. It was a book that none of my students had read before (which is always a plus), and they were captivated by the story. Ghost Boys is a powerful story about a black boy being shot and killed by a white police officer. Read more about the book and many of its awards here. The main character who The author twists in connections to historical events prevalent to the topics being discussed in the book (Emmit Till for example).
This is a great read-aloud if you like the storylines in Dear Martin, The Hate U Give, and All American Boys, but you need the language and some of the scenes to be toned down for your school appropriateness. The message and writing are not toned down, but this is definitely more middle-grade appropriate.
To get the students ready to read the book, I gave them some statements and I had the students write down their opinions to get them thinking about what they believe about issues around poverty, guns, police, drugs, neighborhoods, money, etc… To give you a sense of my pre-reading questions, a few of them are:
- All children are safe as long as they are in school.
- If you are being bullied or victimized, it is best to be able to physically defend yourself.
- More money buys a better neighborhood to live in.
- Drug dealers frequent poor neighborhoods.
I then had each student do a mini-research project on a different person or topic that is mentioned in the book I had to add a few extra events that relate to the people or topics so that everyone researched something different. The students had to be prepared to give a 1-2 minute presentation about their person/topic. A few included pictures, a quick video clip, or they just spoke about their person/ topic.
Here are the people and topics I had my students research:
As I read the book aloud I would make sure that when the topic or person was mentioned, the person who researched them, reminded us who/ what they were.
Throughout the entire story, we had a lot of journaling, sharing, discussing and looking up facts on the Internet all related to the book.
I had the students answer some reflection questions and then I had them create a one-pager on the book.
Here are some examples of the one-pagers my students created:
This was a powerful story to read and work through with my students. My students were researching, questioning, debating, disagreeing respectfully, being mindful of each other’s opinions and thoughts and expressing their ideas as we read this book. I found my students became comfortable with working through tough topics, and with learning how to be respectful to all as we learn about new situations and experiences in the world.
If you haven’t read Ghost Boys, you need to check it out!
Read... Write... Talk... 