I'm Bumabaloo

Today I had the pleasure of having a good friend of mine come in and teach a lesson for morning meeting.  She read a great book called I'm Bumabaloo by Rachel Vail.  In the story the little girl gets very angry or as she says Bumabaloo. The story tell what she does when she is Bumabaloo and how she calms down. 

To discuss the book students used different active learning strategies. To start with the students made a circle map to predict what they thought Bumabaloo meant.  Then they read the story and added to the circle map.  The main idea of the story is how to deal with anger.  So after giving students 5 seconds to think of something that makes them angry she had them stand up and put their hand in the air.  Their job was to walk around with their hand in the air until the music stopped.  When the music stopped they gave a silent high 5 to the person closets to them and shared something that made them angry.  When they were done sharing they would put their hands back up and the music would start again.  My kids loved sharing this way so much that I am currently brainstorming other ways to include this in my lessons.

After sharing what made them angry they discussed different ways that they could deal with their anger.  Not part of this lesson but a great social story to read is Tucker the Turtle.  Which can be found on CSEFEL. 

To make sure they understood how to clam down and solve their problem she sent everyone back to their seats to write how they could solve a problem that made them angry.  The key was that each student had a different shape on the top of their paper. When everyone was done writing all the hearts, circles, squares, and stars (the shape on their paper) got together and shared their solutions. This was a great way to mix kids up and get them talking to more classmates then those at their table. 

This was such a great lesson that when it was time for students to pick new books for their book boxes everyone wanted a copy of the I'm Bumabaloo story.