What does it mean to be normal

Outstanding, Informative
Simple
Effective, One of a kind

Rules

By: Cynthia Lord

Hello everyone, the last book I've read is one that  honestly never would've picked up had I not been given it by the 5th grade teacher in my clinical experience.  The book is a Newbery winner and won the Schneider Family Book award as well as well as the Sunshine State Young Readers book award.  Rules is about a girl named Catherine who has a brother with autism.  Her way of dealing with his strange behaviors s to give him a list of rules to follow like not taking his pants off in public.  Catherine's goal from the beginning of the book is to become friends with the new girl next door but along the way ends up meeting a boy named David at the rehab center where her brother goes, David suffers from being confined to a wheelchair and unable to talk on his own without pointing to one of the word cards in his binder.  One of the biggest reasons I enjoy and highly recommend this book is because it gives a clear indication of some of the huge challenges and pains children with any type of disability go through.  Between having people look away  from them and acting lke they're invisible and being judged and treated unfairly by people who don't understand you people with disabilities truly suffer from a lot more than just their disability

This is without a doubt a perfect read for every classroom because of the message it sends to the students and because of how it builds awareness for the students of the lives of people with disabilities.  If our goal in teaching is to prepare children for life after school and to be valuable members of the community then we need to introduce this book to them because they need to have an understanding otherwise they risk becoming one of those people who looks away or insults people with disabilities which is not an option.

Lexile Score: 720

Recommended Grade Level: 4-5

Before the Reading

When going over the book with the class ask them what they know about disabilities and for examples of disabilities.  Write their answers in a spider web graphic organizer which should include mental and physical disabilities.  Should the students struggle to come up with examples try using guided questions to help get them to the answers and when they're done pull up a dictionary definition of autism and go over ways in which autism can affect a person.

During the Reading
Because this story really focuses on a variety of different concepts it would heavily benefit the students if you had them go about making concept maps as they read.  I really recommend having them meet up in groups regularly while developing this concept map at which point you should be checking over their work and ensuring that they aren't getting off-track with their maps.  The benefit of this concept map in this book's case is that it helps them organize the big elements of this story like her rules and her images for Davids words and friendship.  By organizing this information the students will be better able to analyze the text and even develop their ability to analyze the variety of concepts in other texts.

After the Reading
Once the students finish reading the book have them write an opinion paper where they discuss the effects disabilities can have on people and the kinds of ways it can affect the people around the person with disabilities.

Great Electronic Resources

http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/autism.html

This is a perfect website for educating students on the role of autism in a child's life and is perfect for young children to interpret.  The source even includes an audio version students can listen to.

http://www.cynthialord.com/

This is a good website to learn more about the author of the books and to have students find other books by Cynthia if they enjoyed reading this book.

Vocabulary to go over

• Occupational Therapy = A place where people with disabilities go to learn how to go through life
• Wharf = A place where ships and boats land
• Mimicked = to make fun of someone by doing what they're doing in a mean or insulting way
• Perspective = when you draw something to make it look like it's 3D and not just a flat image
• Wobbling = shaking, moving
• Lingering = remaining, staying