SLIS 5960.005
May 2002 Minimester
Young adult Activity
Grades 5-8
Can
You Feel the Thunder?
written by Lynn McElfresh.
About the book:
The life of thirteen-year-old Mic Parsons is complicated. He’s in middle school, he’s flunking fractions in math class, tryouts for the new baseball season are coming up, his friends are changing into people he doesn’t really know and isn’t sure he likes anymore, girls are starting to find him interesting but he’s not interested in them, and then a new nerdy neighbor moves in across the street and wants to be his friend. A part of Mic’s life that he doesn’t like to talk about to anyone is his older sister, Stephanie. When Mic and Stephanie were small they got along great, even though she is deaf and blind, and does not speak clearly. Now he doesn’t want anyone to come over to his house because they might see her. He feels embarrassed by her appearance and behavior (she touches people’s faces when she meets them, and their throats when they speak), and then feels guilty because he feels that way. She is nearly sixteen and her parents are trying to decide if it is in her best interest for her to move halfway across the country to go to a special school. The title comes from placing their hands on a large window during a thunderstorm so they can “feel the thunder”.
Reviews: Booklist 06/15/99
Horn Book 09/01/99
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/99
Publishers Weekly 07/26/99
School Library Journal 07/01/99
Voice of Youth Advocates 08/01/99
About the author:
Lynn McElfresh was born and lives in Illinois. She is a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts. When she was in high school, she helped with a troop of Girl Scouts that had fourteen deaf girls and two girls who were deaf and blind.
http://www.millikin.edu/decaturwritersfair/mcelfresh.html (May 22, 2002)
Before reading activity:
Teachers may choose from among these ideas to find activities most suitable for the students in their classrooms.
Have students journal about the things they like the most and least about middle school.
Have students journal about the things they like the most and least about their families.
Have students journal about the things they would most like to change in their lives.
After reading activity:
Teachers may choose from among these ideas to find activities most suitable for the students in their classrooms.
Discussion questions:
What are your favorite things to do?
How many of them could you still do if you could not hear?
How many of them could you still do if you could not see?
Have students put on a large flannel shirt that buttons down the front, and button it with their eyes closed. Have them tie their shoes with their eyes closed. What other things can student try?
Have students try to measure water, salt, and other substances when blindfolded. You may try to have them make simple recipes, like Kool Aid. Have them pour water into a glass, and drink it.
Read Moses goes to School written and illustrated by Isaac Millman. (See above.)
Have the students lightly place their fingers on their throat and feel the vibration of their voices when they whisper, talk, or sing. Talk about voiced and unvoiced sounds, and how that makes a difference in the vibrations.
Arrange a tour of the South Dakota School for the Deaf.
Study the history of Braille and Louis Braille. Have them do activities like writing their names using Braille, trying to decipher a paragraph in a Braille magazine, writing a note in Braille.
Arrange for email pals with some students who are deaf. This should be for an extended length of
time during the school year, so they have a chance to get to know each other,
and find things in common.
Schedule a classroom visit with student CK’s mother, who is deaf. She cannot speak with her voice, but uses sign language. Ask her to demonstrate some of her special equipment she uses in her everyday life. She may explain how she uses the telephone, and what it means when the TV schedule and screen say “close captioned for hard of hearing”. Ahead of time, have the students come up with thoughtful questions to ask her. Allow time for a question and answer period: How does she take care of her family? What is the hardest thing she does?
Complete a Venn diagram in class comparing Helen Keller and
Anne Sullivan or other personalities who have connection to the blind and/or
deaf world.
In library/media class, search the school library catalog
for Can You Feel the Thunder.
Then learn how to find similar books by clicking on the subject
headings, find more books the same author by clicking on the author’s name, and
how to find the book on the shelf.
Additional readings:
Using the automated card catalog, search the school’s collection for more titles found in our school collection: (Also see selections above in previous section.)
A Deaf Child Listened : Thomas Gallaudet, pioneer in American education by Anne E. Neimark. Morrow, 1983.
The biography of a man whose pioneering efforts in educating deaf children in the early part of the nineteenth century are still being felt today. Gaullaudet University is named after him.
A Sudden Silence by Eve Bunting. Fawcett/Juniper, 1988.
Jesse Harmon and his deaf younger brother Bry are walking home from a party one night when a drunk driver swings to the side of the road and kills Bry.
Alexander Graham Bell by Leonard Everett Fisher. Atheneum Books, 1999.
A biography of the prolific inventor who had a keen interest in voice and sound and who worked tirelessly on behalf of deaf people.
Belonging by Virginia M. Scott. Kendall Green 1986
After contracting meningitis, a 15-year-old girl becomes deaf and must struggle with accepting her hearing loss.
Chelsea, the story of a signal dog by Paul Ogden. Little, Brown, 1992.
This is the biography of a canine companion dog. She does many more things for her owner than a seeing eye dog would.
Out of Darkness: the Story of Louis Braille by Russell Freedman, illustrated by Kate Kiesler. Clarion Books,1997.
Louis Braille could not accept that he, as a blind boy,
could not read. At night, in the dark,
he experimented until he invented a method of punching holes in paper to form
words. As a teenager, he invented a
system that has helped millions of people since 1820’s.
Additional resources:
Search the site of the Sioux Falls Public Library for additional resources available in the city.
http://www.siouxland.lib.sd.us/