I need to share this book with you because it just has soooo many great lessons, including teaching growth mindset! Don’t you just love a good read-aloud you can use for many skills and strategies? I do!
I read this book to my former students a couple of weeks ago. Here is a picture of me and some of the cuties!
BOOK SUMMARY
The book is called Rosie’s Glasses and it’s a wordless picture book by Dave Whamond. It’s about a little girl who is just having a bad day. Nothing is going right: her room is a mess, she doesn’t know what to wear, it’s raining, a car splashes her with dirty water, even school is boring. . . we’ve all had those days, right?
After school, she finds a pair of glasses and when she puts them on, her world becomes colorful (the book was in black and white before this). Look at this beautiful illustration of the transformation.
With her new glasses, everything seems much happier and livelier, including things that were just dull before. All is magnificent, until. . .
She drops her glasses in a river. Gasp! Her world turns black & white again and she’s unhappy, until her little dog comes over and her world slowly starts to fill with color again!
The book ends with a boy who’s walking in a black & white world, similar to how Rosie was, finding the glasses!
How awesome is this message to children?? There is so much you can do with this book and I will share just one that I did, then list some more ideas!
THE LESSON
We read the book twice. The first time, I gave them a brief book intro, then opened the book. Right away, they noticed the book had no words. I told them when books have no words, the author wants us to be especially careful with the pictures and note all the details to help us understand the story and come up with our own words. I turned the pages and let them just think about what was happening, then share their thinking with a partner at the end.
The second time we read the book, we had discussions throughout the book. Most kids mentioned that Rosie was able to see everything better and in color because she needed glasses. But sure enough, one student said it couldn’t have been the glasses because she saw in color after she lost the glasses!
That led to a discussion on how we can change the way we look at things and be more positive! We used things around our classroom to practice this change of mindset.
To help them do this, I bought some plastic glasses (I had some leftover from my daughter’s Harry Potter birthday party, so only needed a few). I modeled thinking negatively, then putting on my glasses and really made a big deal of how amazing something could be:
“Ugh, our rug is just plain blue. Last year, we had a nice colorful rug with squares for everyone.” (Then, with glasses) “Oh my goodness, look at this rug! It’s so soft and big enough for everyone to sit on!” Then, I asked them to do the same. Find something in the classroom, then put on their “magic” glasses and say something positive about it!
I ended by asking them if they really need the glasses to do this. Of course not! We applied it to thinking negatively about anything in general- waiting in line, not being first, homework (hehe), and even the struggle of learning the new language in their Dual Language classroom! So from that moment on, when things get tough and they’re feeling negative, they should think of Rosie’s glasses (and pretend to put them on) and change their mindset because they have the power to do that!
MORE LESSON IDEAS
With this book, you could also reread and compare and contrast Rosie’s mindset before and after the glasses, make predictions when she loses her glasses or at the end to continue the story, make connections throughout the book, infer how the characters are feeling, discuss character change and cause & effect. . . so many skills!
You can also make your own class book for the pictures! Write some pages whole group using interactive writing, then have partners work on different pages of the story (multiple copies needed for this).
Wordless picture books are just a great way to engage young readers! You can model being descriptive and using story language, which is especially great in a Dual Language classroom or a class with many English language learners.
Here are links to the book and glasses I got from Amazon (affiliate links):
MORE READ-ALOUDS
If you want more book ideas, I have blog posts for some of my favorite read-alouds, and they all have FREEBIES to go with them in my resource library! Click below to read them and feel free to reply with any other books you love to read aloud to your students!
The Hungry Thing (funny book with phonemic awareness practice)
No, No, Titus (blog post about using this to teach decoding strategies)
Manana Iguana (a Mexican version of The Little Red Hen)
The 3 Billy Goats Gruff (STEM freebie in resource library)
