Character Mindmap Book Review Project (& "When Stars Are Scattered" Activity)

This amazing lesson came from a book given to me by a co-worker called "100% Engagement" (Grades 6-12) by Brian Sztabnik and Susan Barber. This project is called a "character mindmap", where students chose a character from our class book ("When Stars Are Scattered" by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed), draw them, then identify and label the following to show they truly read the book and understood the character: 

-A thought bubble. What would this character be thinking about?

-A belief under their feet. What beliefs do they hold?

-Something in their hands to represent what they give, their responsibilities, and/or burdens they carry. 

-A challenge they overcame or way they grew in the story written by their leg to represent the difficulties they walked through. 

-A heart labeled with their deepest desires. What do they most want?

Below is a checklist I used as the rubric from the book mentioned above. This assignment aligns with the high school ESOL WIDA standards, though I did not include the standards it meets. 

I loved the result of this assignment. I was so proud of my students' creativity and hard work! I hope if you are an educator you find this helpful to implement in some form in your classroom. I also highly recommend both of those books. Thank you for visiting! 

Blessings,

Lauryn

Seaside & Stories Birthday Party Theme

 Hello! I'd like to share Seaside & Stories birthday party from three years ago. 

The balloons came from Dollar Tree (I think), and I painted the ocean-themed pictures with watercolors, then used a Sharpie or gel ink pen to add details on top. I did the same for the food labels as well. The treats included "Sea Snails" for cinnamon buns and "Sand Dollars" for Nilla cookies. The poster was made with that same pen and recycled book pages. This theme was actually inspired by a book I found at a thrift store and love, titled "A Child of Books" by Oliver Jeffers. The vases, plants, and dishes were all things I had on hand. For the book page ocean, I hot glued the pages together into the ocean shape onto brown wrapping paper, then attached it with hot glue or staples to the tablecloth. I started by writing quotes about reading onto the brown paper, but that was taking way too long, so there is a random-looking strip with quotes, and that is why. The favors were $0.25 notebooks (bought in packs) from Walmart. I hot glued recycled book pages onto the covers.

I hope you enjoyed this theme, thanks for visiting!

-Lauryn 

Halloween English Lessons & Classroom Halloween Party, 2025

 Hello, here is yet another class party I would like to share from last semester. Halloween fell on a school day, so I celebrated with a class Halloween party that incorporated their class projects from the week. 

One project, which I saw on TPT, is making synonym/antonym gravestones and ghosts. I found some free gravestones to print. They had to write their choice word with five synonyms on the front, followed by five antonyms on the back. They could research synonyms and antonyms on Google. That was completed after an introduction to synonyms and antonyms on the Monday prior, so I drew grass and made a graveyard/ghost display.

The other assignment that ended up taking all week or longer was a symbolism mask assignment. Students were to draw ten images on one side of their mask designs that each symbolized something about them (what they believe, love, the hobbies they do, their personality, anything). On the other side, they were to write out ten "I am..." statements to describe themselves, applying repetition and more specifically, anaphora. On Halloween day they all got to 'dress up' and we did a class photo in each class featuring everyone in their masks. 

I planned several Halloween-inspired English games as well. One was to design a pumpkin on paper that clearly included symbolism and was themed around a particular book, character, or movie. Another used charts and involved rolling die to prompt a scary creative story. My favorite was where they worked in pairs with whiteboards. One partner had to describe a monster with as many adjectives as possible while the other partner had to draw it. They had five minutes and had to face away from each other until the drawing was done, then everyone revealed their masterpieces and partners swapped roles. Examples of some of these activities are shown below.

As far as the decorations go, I got the spiderwebs, spider dish, and balloons from Dollar Tree. I cut some paper plates into hexagons to look more web-like, too. The treats came from Aldi and a dollar store. 

Thank you for visiting, I hope you find this helpful! 

-Lauryn