It is great to be assigned a Multiple Exceptionality course, such as the current Grade 11/12 English class that I teach. The challenges in this classroom are different from those that I face the rest of the day. The classes are small enough, though, that I can better tailor lessons to meet students’ independent learning plans and cater to their interests.

I thought that it would be fun to focus our semester’s reading and writing on one Canadian region at a time, beginning with Northern Canada. Having a number of boys in the room who would rather be snowmobiling or moose-hunting, I selected Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf as our first text.

We focused on making connections as readers, and students collected and created images of Northern Canada, shared experiences, and researched northern animals.

What Worked Well

• Introducing the novel with Aesop’s fable, “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf.” This was familiar enough to ease students’ anxiety, yet fresh enough to draw laughter and spark discussion.
• Farely Mowat is a great storyteller whose tales read well aloud. For a class where reading together is essential, his books are enjoyable.
• Splitting the already small class into two smaller circles gave the students enough confidence to read some passages aloud with their peers.
• Students especially enjoyed relating experiences and stories that the text brought to mind for them. They were making a lot of connections.

What Needs Work

• Though Never Cry Wolf is not a long book, it certainly was long enough for this group. There was little time for comprehension check-ups and questions.
• Mowat’s vocabulary is advanced. I should have either tried to find a different (shorter) book of his or else focused our unit on learning new words instead of making connections. It just felt like overload sometimes.
• The researching of northern animals needed more focused instructions and fewer expectations.

_____

Image by dobak