Would you like to engage in discussions and exchange ideas with fellow educators about incorporating children’s literature into your classroom? I’m assembling a community of teachers and homeschoolers who work with students in grades 3-8 and utilize novels in their teaching. I invite you to join us for an opportunity to learn, collaborate, and progress together!
Click hereor on the image below to become a part of my Facebook group, Book Talk with The Teaching Bank!
Therapy animals are increasingly recognized for their immense contribution to healing and learning across all age groups. Click here to explore recent news stories showcasing the remarkable impact these animals bring into our lives.
I adore animals and have had several pets over time. When my son turned three, we started worrying about his speech development. He wasn’t very vocal, but he had a knack for communicating his needs through other means. His non-verbal cues reminded me of the rabbit in the Frosty the Snowman special—he found different ways to express himself and didn’t feel the urge to speak. Around that period, we introduced a new golden retriever puppy named Katy. To Katy, Sam seemed like another playful puppy. As Katy grew, she could get a bit rowdy with Sam, occasionally causing him to tumble over.
Naturally, we dedicated time to training Katy, and she became a certified graduate of the Canine Good Citizenship program. However, a crucial aspect was teaching Sam to assertively use commands like sit, off, and down. Sam swiftly grasped that vocalizing served a significant purpose, and he began using his voice more frequently—not just with Katy but with everyone around. Many mornings, I’d wake up to find Sam beside Katy’s bed, engaged in animated conversations, sharing his adventures, hopes, and dreams. It was truly heartwarming to witness.
Katy was incredibly patient and adored everyone she met! We believed she had the perfect temperament to become a therapy dog, so we started training her with that goal in mind. Sadly, the program we were involved in discontinued their classes. Later on, Katy faced a series of knee surgeries to address joint problems in both legs and battled osteosarcoma, ultimately leading to the amputation of one of her front legs. As a result, her dream of becoming a therapy dog never came to fruition.
At home, Katy offered us endless unconditional love and her own form of “therapy.” One of her greatest joys was curling up with us and listening to stories! She patiently listened through the entire Harry Potter series not just once, but twice!
The impact of a pet’s love and care on the mental well-being of those around them is truly remarkable. They work wonders! I’m a strong advocate for expanding the presence of reading dogs in schools.
Within my Wonder Novel Study, I developed an informational reading activity centered around therapy dogs. I provide it as a free download in my store, separate from the novel study. It’s a fantastic resource to delve into the significance and advantages of therapy animals. This activity serves as a wonderful tribute to all the animal heroes in our lives, especially fitting for National Therapy Animal Day!
Sadly, Katy’s osteosarcoma resurfaced, spreading to her lungs and spine. Regrettably, we had to say goodbye to relieve her from pain. Katy held a special place in our family, becoming an integral part of my children’s childhood. Her absence leaves a profound void, and she will always be cherished and dearly missed.
Katy 1/24/08-2/5/19
In honor of Katy, and all the wonderful therapy animals out there, Happy National Therapy Animal Day!
Looking for a meaningful novel study for upper elementary or middle school students? Out of My Dreams by Sharon M. Draper is an excellent choice for engaging students in conversations about empathy, resilience, disability, independence, perseverance, and the importance of pursuing your dreams.
The third book in Melody’s story, Out of My Dreams, continues the journey that began in Out of My Mind and continued in Out of My Heart. This time, Melody has the opportunity to travel to London, opening the door to new experiences, new challenges, and new opportunities for growth.
For teachers, Out of My Dreams provides much more than an engaging story. It offers rich opportunities for reading comprehension, vocabulary development, literary analysis, writing, critical thinking, social-emotional learning, and meaningful classroom discussion.
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Why Teach Out of My Dreams?
Sharon M. Draper’s Out of My Dreams gives students the opportunity to see the world through Melody’s experiences while encouraging them to think more deeply about how we understand ourselves and others.
The novel is especially valuable for classroom discussions about:
Empathy and understanding
Resilience and perseverance
Disability and accessibility
Inclusion and acceptance
Independence and self-advocacy
Friendship and relationships
Family and support systems
Personal growth
Dreams and goals
Overcoming challenges
These themes make Out of My Dreams an excellent addition to an ELA novel study, reading unit, literature circle, or whole-class novel unit.
1. Build Empathy Through Literature
One of the greatest strengths of Out of My Dreams is its ability to encourage students to consider experiences that may be different from their own.
Melody’s cerebral palsy affects how she communicates and interacts with the world, but her disability does not define her thoughts, personality, dreams, or abilities.
Reading about Melody can help students consider important questions:
How do we make assumptions about other people?
What does it mean to truly understand someone else’s experience?
How can we make our classrooms more inclusive?
Why is it important to look beyond what we see on the surface?
How can our words and actions make other people feel included?
These questions can lead to thoughtful classroom discussions about empathy, kindness, accessibility, and inclusion.
2. Explore Resilience and Perseverance
Melody’s journey provides countless opportunities to discuss resilience and overcoming obstacles.
Rather than presenting challenges as something that simply disappears, the novel allows students to explore how people adapt, advocate for themselves, accept support, and continue working toward their goals.
This makes Out of My Dreams a natural fit for discussions about:
Perseverance
Growth
Self-confidence
Overcoming obstacles
Setting goals
Taking risks
Learning from difficult experiences
Ask students to consider:
What does resilience really look like?
Students can compare Melody’s experiences with challenges they have faced themselves, while recognizing that everyone’s circumstances and obstacles are different.
3. Discuss Disability, Accessibility, and Inclusion
Out of My Dreams also creates an authentic opportunity to discuss disability and accessibility in an age-appropriate way.
Students can explore the difference between a person’s abilities and the barriers created by their environment.
Consider questions such as:
What makes a place accessible?
What barriers might someone with a disability encounter?
How can schools and communities become more inclusive?
Why shouldn’t we make assumptions about what someone can or cannot do?
What does true inclusion look like?
These conversations can help students move beyond simply identifying differences and instead think about how communities can remove barriers and create opportunities for everyone.
4. Develop Critical Thinking and Literary Analysis
Out of My Dreams is also a strong choice for teaching core reading comprehension and literary analysis skills.
As students read, they can analyze:
Character development
Setting
Plot
Conflict
Theme
Symbolism
Author’s word choice
Character relationships
Text evidence
Cause and effect
Making inferences
Encourage students to support their thinking with evidence from the text.
For example:
How does Melody change throughout the story?
What experiences contribute to Melody’s growing independence?
How does the setting of London affect Melody’s experiences?
What does the novel suggest about pursuing your dreams?
These types of questions take students beyond simple recall and encourage them to think critically about the author’s message and the development of the story.
5. Use Out of My Dreams for Writing Activities
The novel also provides plenty of inspiration for reading response and creative writing activities.
Students might:
Write about a personal goal or dream.
Describe a time they faced a difficult challenge.
Write a response to an important event in the novel.
Explain how Melody demonstrates resilience.
Analyze an important character.
Write about the importance of accessibility.
Use text evidence to explain a theme.
Write from a character’s perspective.
Create a new scene that fits naturally into the story.
You can also use the novel as a springboard for argumentative and opinion writing, asking students to support their ideas with evidence from the text.
6. Make Cross-Curricular Connections
One of the benefits of choosing a rich novel like Out of My Dreams is that the learning doesn’t have to stop with ELA.
The story provides opportunities for connections to:
Social-Emotional Learning
Discuss empathy, self-awareness, relationships, perseverance, independence, and respecting differences.
Social Studies
Explore London, cultural differences, travel, and how societies approach accessibility and inclusion.
Informational Reading
Have students research topics related to cerebral palsy, accessibility, disability, or London and compare informational texts with what they learn through the novel.
Geography
Use the novel’s London setting as an opportunity to explore maps, landmarks, geography, and cultural traditions.
These connections can turn a novel study into a rich, interdisciplinary learning experience.
Ready-to-Teach Out of My Dreams Novel Study
If you want to teach Out of My Dreams without spending hours creating comprehension questions, vocabulary activities, assessments, and lesson plans, I’ve created a complete Out of My Dreams Novel Study to make your planning easier.
This no-prep novel study for grades 4-6 includes 240+ pages of printable materials along with digital resources for Google Drive™, giving you everything you need to guide students through the novel.
Vocabulary and grammar activities for 62 vocabulary words
Printable vocabulary word wall cards
Answer keys
Parent letter
Informational reading activities about cerebral palsy
Informational reading activities about London
Three reading assessments
Essay questions
Google Forms™ digital assessments
Story Elements activities
Interactive notebook activities
Printable and digital versions
The resource is designed to work for whole-class instruction, small groups, literature circles, independent reading, homeschool, or a paperless classroom.
Save Time on Your Next Novel Unit
A good novel study should allow you to focus on teaching, discussing, and connecting with your students—not spending your evenings creating worksheets.
This Out of My Dreams book unit gives you ready-to-use materials for teaching reading comprehension, vocabulary, literary analysis, writing, and deeper thinking while your students experience Melody’s inspiring journey.
Try a Free Sample
Want to see what’s included before you buy? Download the free sample of the Out of My Dreams novel study and take a look at the activities, lesson materials, and student resources.
Out of My Dreams by Sharon M. Draper is a powerful choice for teachers looking for a novel that combines engaging storytelling with meaningful learning opportunities.
Through Melody’s experiences, students can explore empathy, resilience, independence, accessibility, inclusion, and the courage it takes to pursue a dream.
Whether you’re planning a 4th, 5th, or 6th grade novel study, this book gives you countless opportunities to help students strengthen their reading skills while having important conversations about how we understand and support one another.
If you’re ready to bring Out of My Dreams into your classroom, make your planning easier with this complete, no-prep Out of My Dreams novel study.
You can also buy Out of My Mind, Out of My Heart, and Out of My Dreams bundled together at a discount!
💬 Connect with Fellow Educators!
Are you teaching Out of My Dreams this school year? How do you celebrate kindness in your classroom?
Join our free community, Book Talk with The Teaching Bank, to share ideas, grab freebies, and connect with 3rd–8th grade teachers using novels in the classroom!
*The Teaching Bank participates in the Amazon Associate Program and earns a fee from qualifying purchases made on the Amazon.com site.
Looking for a high-interest novel for your upper elementary or middle school ELA classroom? The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis is a classic for a reason.
This beloved fantasy novel takes students into the magical world of Narnia while providing countless opportunities to teach reading comprehension, vocabulary, literary analysis, character development, theme, symbolism, writing, and critical thinking.
If you’re looking for a book that will keep students reading while giving you plenty to discuss and teach, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is an excellent choice for a 4th, 5th, or 6th grade novel study.
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Why Teach The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?
There is a lot more to this novel than a magical wardrobe and a talking lion. C. S. Lewis’s story gives students a rich text to explore while introducing them to complex characters, meaningful themes, and classic fantasy storytelling.
1. Students Love the Magic and Adventure
One of the biggest advantages of using The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a classroom novel is its ability to capture students’ attention.
Four siblings discover a mysterious wardrobe that leads to the magical land of Narnia, where they encounter talking animals, mythical creatures, an evil queen, and Aslan, the powerful lion.
The adventure keeps students turning the pages—and that’s exactly what you want when you’re trying to build a classroom culture around reading.
A high-interest novel can make it easier to engage reluctant readers and encourage students to participate in discussions about what they’re reading.
2. The Novel Is Filled With Important Themes
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe provides natural opportunities for meaningful classroom conversations about:
Good vs. evil
Courage
Friendship
Loyalty
Betrayal
Forgiveness
Sacrifice
Redemption
Responsibility
The consequences of our choices
These themes give students opportunities to connect the story to their own experiences and think beyond simply remembering what happened in each chapter.
3. It’s Excellent for Teaching Character Development
The Pevensie children give students plenty to analyze as characters.
Edmund’s choices, in particular, provide an excellent opportunity to discuss character development, motivation, conflict, consequences, and redemption.
Students can examine how characters change throughout the novel and identify the events that influence those changes.
This makes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe a particularly useful book for teaching character analysis and supporting students as they learn to use evidence from a text to explain their thinking.
4. There’s Plenty of Literary Analysis to Explore
If you’re teaching literary elements, this novel gives you plenty to work with.
Students can identify and analyze:
Setting
Character
Conflict
Plot
Point of view
Foreshadowing
Symbolism
Theme
Imagery
Figurative language
The fantasy setting also allows students to examine how an author creates an imaginary world and makes it feel believable to the reader.
5. It Builds Reading Comprehension and Critical Thinking
A good novel study should do more than ask students to recall what happened.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe gives students opportunities to make predictions, draw inferences, identify important details, analyze characters, determine themes, and support their answers with evidence from the text.
As students move through the story, they can practice thinking critically about why characters make certain choices and how those choices affect the plot.
That’s what makes a novel like this so valuable as the foundation for a complete ELA unit.
6. Narnia Inspires Imagination and Creativity
The world of Narnia is one of the most memorable elements of the book.
Talking animals, mythical creatures, an enchanted wardrobe, a magical land, and an epic battle give students plenty of opportunities to use their imaginations.
You can extend the novel into creative writing activities, artwork, discussion, and projects that allow students to respond to the story in different ways.
For students who love fantasy, this can be a particularly engaging way to build a stronger connection with reading.
Turn The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Into a Complete Novel Study
While reading the novel together can be rewarding, creating all of the comprehension questions, vocabulary activities, writing assignments, assessments, and other lessons yourself can take a lot of time.
This complete ELA novel unit for grades 4–6 provides ready-to-use activities to help students dig deeper into the book while saving you hours of planning.
The novel study includes chapter-by-chapter comprehension questions, vocabulary and grammar activities, writing activities, assessments, literary analysis activities, teacher materials, answer keys, and more.
It’s available in printable and digital formats, so you can use the materials in whatever way works best for your classroom.
Try the free sample to see how you can use this Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe novel study with your students.
When you’re ready for the complete unit:
Teaching More Than One Narnia Book?
If The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is part of a larger Chronicles of Narnia reading unit, you can also save with the Chronicles of Narnia Novel Studies Bundle.
Make The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Your Next Classroom Novel
Whether you’re planning a whole-class novel study, literature circles, small-group reading, or an independent reading unit, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe offers an engaging combination of adventure, memorable characters, important themes, and rich literary elements.
It’s a classic that gives students plenty to enjoy—and gives teachers plenty to teach.
Ready to make your Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe unit easier?
Check out the complete no-prep novel study and spend less time creating materials and more time helping your students fall in love with reading.
Connect with Fellow Educators!
Are you teaching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this school year?
Join our free community, Book Talk with The Teaching Bank, to share ideas, grab freebies, and connect with 3rd–8th grade teachers using novels in the classroom!
*The Teaching Bank participates in the Amazon Associate Program and earns a fee from qualifying purchases made on the Amazon.com site.
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
C.S. Lewis’s beloved series, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” includes “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” often mistakenly assumed to be the first book, when in fact, it’s the second installment. The true opener is “The Magician’s Nephew,” followed by #3 “The Horse and His Boy,” #4 “Prince Caspian,” #5 “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” #6 “The Silver Chair,” and concluding with “The Last Battle.”
Within Narnia’s enchanting realm, brimming with magic, mythical creatures, and talking animals, each book centers on children and their pivotal roles in shaping Narnia’s history. These children are magically transported from the real world to Narnia, collaborating with the Narnian lion, Aslan, in safeguarding the land from malevolent forces.
C.S. Lewis artfully intertwines his childhood experiences during World War II and theological insights throughout the series. While a subtle Christian undertone runs through the narrative, it’s not overt, rendering the books suitable for Christian and public educational settings. The foundational theme of the eternal struggle between good and evil offers a compelling narrative ripe for analysis and interpretation across diverse audiences.
Try a free sample of the novel study for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Movies, including some high-budget releases by Disney, have been brought to life based on select books from the series. There’s buzz circulating that Netflix plans to develop a streaming series covering the entire Chronicles of Narnia collection.
For decades, enthusiasts of the fantasy genre have been captivated by the Chronicles of Narnia. Often serving as a gateway, these books ignite a passion for the genre, leading readers to explore more mature works like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. J.K. Rowling, renowned for the Harry Potter series, has acknowledged the profound impact the Chronicles had on her as a child, shaping her imaginative world and influencing her writing. Expect your students to join the ranks of countless others who have fallen in love with Narnia’s enchanting realm over the past seven decades.
I provide comprehensive novel studies tailored for each book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, designed for classroom or homeschool use. Each unit offers both printable and Google Drive™ formats, accommodating traditional and paperless classroom settings, including compatibility with Google Classroom. The structure of these units mirrors the format demonstrated in the video for The Magician’s Nephew.
You can purchase these novel studies at the following locations:
Are you teaching The Chronicles of Narnia this school year?
Join our free community, Book Talk with The Teaching Bank, to share ideas, grab freebies, and connect with 3rd–8th grade teachers using novels in the classroom!
*The Teaching Bank participates in the Amazon Associate Program and earns a fee from qualifying purchases made on the Amazon.com site.
Naturally, we dedicated time to training Katy, and she became a certified graduate of the Canine Good Citizenship program. However, a crucial aspect was teaching Sam to assertively use commands like sit, off, and down. Sam swiftly grasped that vocalizing served a significant purpose, and he began using his voice more frequently—not just with Katy but with everyone around. Many mornings, I’d wake up to find Sam beside Katy’s bed, engaged in animated conversations, sharing his adventures, hopes, and dreams. It was truly heartwarming to witness.
At home, Katy offered us endless unconditional love and her own form of “therapy.” One of her greatest joys was curling up with us and listening to stories! She patiently listened through the entire Harry Potter series not just once, but twice!
Connect with Fellow Educators!
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