Fish in a Tree

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Multi-Media Reflections”

In this activity, students will share with the class their single, largest takeaway from the book through a medium they are most comfortable expressing themselves in.

Ally’s “mind movies” and drawings in the Sketchbook of Impossible Things are coping techniques she uses to deal with everyday challenges. However, they also reveal the way she understands and processes the world, which is largely in visuals and color.

• Each of us learns about and makes sense of the world in different ways—some of us find it easier to read and remember things; some are able to grasp pictures more quickly; others work better when there is music or movement involved.
• Reflect on what your single, largest takeaway has been from the book and document it in the way that you best understand.
• You could write a poem or an essay, perform an original song, create posters or comic strips, put together a short film, write and perform a skit, or document your takeaway in another format.
• Share with the rest of the class.

Once everyone has shared their reflections, come together as a class to discuss some of the things that surprised you and some that you related most to in both the form and content of your classmates’ presentations.

Teaching Suggestion: Fish in a Tree celebrates The Advantages of Difference in the way it explores how Ally’s dyslexia allows her both to solve problems in a unique way and to understand the world from a different perspective. Having students share their unique reflections in the way they are most comfortable may help them appreciate this theme. Besides being able to see different perspectives, students may even find nuances between the same idea being processed or presented in different media. Consider encouraging students to highlight and further explore these nuances as they come up in conversation.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with executive function differences, students who struggle with abstraction, and English language learners may benefit from extra scaffolding to help them successfully arrive at a single takeaway from an entire novel. Consider providing these students with a graphic organizer for them to brainstorm, document, and organize their takeaways, using the completed graphic organizer to then identify one main or overarching takeaway. You may also consider offering these students some examples of takeaways from other works you have read as a class or commonly known texts or stories to serve as models.