Excellent Ed, by Stacy McAnulty, tells the story of the Ellis family, where all of the children are
excellent—at all kinds of things! Poor
Ed, the family dog, feels a bit left out.
Ed wants to be excellent too.
In
the classroom, Excellent Ed makes a
great writing prompt. Here are a few
ideas for using the book in your classroom.
1.
Ask
students to make a list of their own excellent qualities—and remind them to
think outside of the box. Some students may be excellent at math, or
gymnastics, or soccer. But they can
think of more unusual excellent traits as well.
Perhaps one student is excellent at putting off cleaning her room or
making realistic fake vomit sounds whenever she sees chopped liver. Perhaps another student is excellent at tying
his shoes in knots so tight that his dad can’t get them out.
2.
Ask
students to make a list of another person’s excellent qualities. This could be a parent, friend, or teacher,
for example.
3.
Just
like Ed the family dog, every kid (and adult) sometimes feels…less than
excellent. Ask your students to make a
list of excellent qualities they WISH they had.
Do they wish they could jump higher than the Empire State Building? Turn
Brussels sprouts into chocolate? See through walls? Or, maybe students wish they could make sad a
friend feel better, shoot a goal at the next hockey game, or learn how to ride
a bike. You could even encourage
students to make two wish lists—one of realistic qualities, and one of crazy,
over-the-top, not-gonna-happen-but-fun-to-think-about qualities.
4.
Make
an “Excellent Sheet” for each student in the room, with the student’s name at
the top. Ask students to write on each
other’s Excellent Sheets, writing at least one excellent quality of the student
on his or her sheet. When students get
to take home their Excellent Sheets, they will have a concrete reminder of
their own excellent qualities, as seen through the eyes of their peers.
Excellent Ed is a wonderful
book for reminding students how excellent they all are, in their own
unique ways!
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