So Much

I would love to read the book So Much by Trish Cooke to my students. I found the dialect that the book was written in very reflective of the family it represented. Even though this is not the way we tend to speak here, it is a good way to expose students to the way that other people speak.

I feel like this book has many different things that students can learn from it. Since Greeley has such a low concentration of African-American people this would be a good way to introduce the African-American culture to students around here. Students can also learn that no matter what culture you are from, families are still pretty much the same.

This book would be good to use in a lesson around Thanksgiving when we seem to focus a lot on families. It could also be used to introduce the African-American culture when learning about Kwanzaa, or even in January when learning about Martin Luther King Jr. In using it for a lesson about families, you could begin to talk with the students about family members, traditions, and get togethers that their own families may have. Then introduce the book about a family and their get together. After reading the book, as a class, create a Vin diagram to include similarities and differences between this family and their own families. Be prepared that the Vin diagram will probably need more space in the center than on the different sides. Point out to the students that even though this family may look and talk very different than their own that families are usually very much the same. As a follow up activity you could have students write or draw, depending on their age and level, their own favorite family tradition.