Teaching Tough Topics

Teaching Tough Topics

Larry Swartz

Teaching Tough Topics is a comprehensive guide to choosing and using the best children’s books to address sensitive but significant topics in the classroom.

This timely book shows teachers how to lead students to become caring citizens as they read and respond to quality children’s literature. It focuses on topics that can be challenging to teach, yet are key to building a better understanding of social justice, diversity and equity. Bullying, poverty, homophobia, gender issues, racism, death, Indigenous identities, the Holocaust and physical and mental challenges are just some of the themes explored.

Each chapter in this practical book deals with an important tough topic designed to help students consider their own identities and the identities of others. Detailed lessons throughout the book offer independent and interactive activities that support diversity, empathy and tolerance. The lessons incorporate key picture books, novels, poetry, scripts and nonfiction as sources for responding through talk, writing and the arts.

Teaching Tough Topics includes:

* insights from leading children’s authors including Deborah Ellis, Kathy Kacer, Joanne Robertson and Eric Walters

* thoughtful perspectives from guest voices who are experts in their field

* a thorough overview of tough topics and how to deal with them in a variety of classroom situations

* model lessons, using children’s literature as a source, with clear instructions on how to implement a range of instructional strategies at different grade levels

* comprehensive up-to-date booklists including picture books, novels, nonfiction and poetry titles that can be used to explore each topic

* provocative samples of student response that illustrate how children’s literature can nurture tolerance and foster kindness.

This highly readable book is rooted in the belief that teachers can enrich learning with compassion as students make connections to texts, to others and to the world.

168 Pages | Pbk | Published April 2020
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