All About Me: Outside Stories
One of the over-arching themes or Big Ideas from the BC Curriculum is about self. It is an inquiry that carries on throughout the year in my classroom. There are so many fabulous picture books to support the concept of self that covers many of the curricular competencies of English Language Arts, Career Education, Social Studies, Physical Education and Creative Arts.
Inspired by the idea of Inside and Outside stories by Opal School, here are a list of books and outlines of lessons that support the idea of self, the story we see on the outside, that can be used throughout the year. Students love to explore who they are, where they come from, what are their likes and dislikes, what they are proud of, their name, their family, and what they look like. The ideas are endless.
Introduction to Self: Self Portraits:
This book is all about celebrating the outward appearance differences we all have. The book comes with a mirror at the end of to have students look at themselves.
The teacher begins by reading the book, What I Like About Me written by Allia Zobel Nolan and illustrated by Miki Sakamoto, to introduce the idea of an outside story, how we or others see us from the outside. The teacher poses the question, "What do we look like?" and sets up a self-portrait provocation with mirrors, pencils, sharpies and paper to have students draw themselves.
Lesson 2: What do I like about myself?
This story, written by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by David Catrow, follows a spunky little girl who embraces all that she is inside and out, messy hair, bad bread, or crazy antics.
Lesson 3: Celebrating Skin Colour
Written with colourful illustrations that celebrate the differences of children from around the world who are depicted as enjoying childhood activities such as swimming, enjoying a birthday cake, playing with a friend all while embracing the skin they are in!
After reading the Skin You Are In, written by Michael Tyler and illustrated by David Lee Csicsko, the teacher sets up an art provocation to have students explore paint and colour mixing to match their skin tones. A follow-up activity can be the students re-drawing their self portraits and painting in the skin colour they matched to their skin colour.
Lesson #4: The Best Part of Me
Reading this beautifully illustrated book, by Wendy Ewald, is a collection of photographs and writings from children sharing their favourite parts of their bodies and why.
Using this book as a starting off point for students to think about their body and which parts they like and why. List their responses and later take photos of the body part they are proud of. Using an collage app like PicCollage, create a class book using their photos and their responses. Print the photos up in black and white and collate to create a class book.
Lesson #5: Perspective - How Do Others See Us?
A fun book written by Brendan Wenzel, a cat walks around the neighbourhood, and encounters various creatures. The illustrator draws the cat as it's seen from the various characters' perspectives.
With the focus on our outside story, how we see ourselves, this book is a great introduction in looking at how others see us as this book focusses on perspective. After the teacher reads the book, she/he gets the students to draw the teacher's portrait. After that activity, the teacher assigns and invites the students to draw each other. An extension would be to have the same students write (or teacher scribes) about how they see their friend they had to draw.
The portraits can be added to the student's portfolio and any writing that accompany them.
There are various extensions to the idea of an inside story and outside story where you can focus in on feelings, story behind my name, personal timeline, and family.
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