First Grade: Why Might a Book Be a Treasure?

By Anonymous

Treasures can take on the form of many things...
by Stephanie Rotsky







For the first grade students - we launched our year of social justice learning by thinking about what makes something a treasure. I showed them a little treasure box that my son, Ilan, made for me and I invited students to guess what might be inside of it? Jewels, diamonds, gold...maybe shells someone wondered. Shells it was! Inside were tiny unusual looking shells that Ilan and I had collected on the beach in Florida a few years ago. 


Then I directed everyone's eyes to the large "treasure" box that I had wheeled into their classroom just a few minutes before. On the the cover of this treasure box is the sign TREASURES. I asked students what might be inside this treasure box? Well...some of them had peeked through the cracks and said enthusiastically - BOOKS! Then the more interesting question was posed to them:

Why might a book be a treasure? In seconds, students had many things to say...it could be a story you remember for a long time, a book can teach you something you never knew before, you can learn to read, a book might teach you about peace - to name just a few...



I opened the large treasure box and held up a huge pile of TREASURES that we would be reading this year. I explained that every treasure that I picked out for this year had been carefully chosen because I believed each of these stories can teach us something about how we can be our very best selves and make the world a better place and do Tikkun Olam - repair/fix the broken parts of our world.


We did a "Museum Tour" with some of the first graders to browse through some of the social justice TREASURES we would be spotlighting this year. As students went from table to table and looked at each story, there was great interest and excitement about when we would begin. I couldn't have been more excited and hopeful to start the year with the first grade and imagine where these TREASURES will take us and what ideas will stay with us. 



























Looking so forward to sharing these treasures with the first grade this year! If your family knows of a treasure (loves a particular treasure) that would teach us something valuable about how to do tikkun olam, please share! You never know...

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