Another winter break has come to an end, and like always, I am both excited and anxious! Setting that VERY EARLY alarm is never any fun, but I am really happy at the thought of seeing all the kids again and catching up with them! Plus January also means it’s time to start thinking about setting New Year’s Reading Goals for 2021!  This is actually something I look forward to doing with my students every year!

I originally posted about setting New Year’s Reading Goals with students on my blog post here.  I usually combine this lesson with our New Year New Book Tasting Event!  While I still plan on doing these activities with my students, I have decided to start with something a little different due to a book I read over winter break.

The book is I Promise by LeBron James.  If you haven’t read it yet, I highly suggest you do so.  LeBron James has become my new hero, and I have a huge amount of  respect for him after researching his life for the last week.  His book spoke to my heart, and I immediately knew I needed to share his message with my students.

If you would like your own copy of this book, you can click my Affiliate link here.

The Choice Board

Since we are still about 50% in person and 50% virtual, I knew I needed to create a Choice Board so that I could share the I Promise lesson with all my students.

I decided to start off with the I Promise book trailer that you can find here.  I figured many of my students would know about LeBron James. However, just in case, I thought we could use our databases to do some quick research on his life and talk about biographies. I included links to both Pebble Go for my younger students and Brittanica for my older students. (You can link to the databases that you subscribe to at your school.) Unfortunately, both of those biographies did not mention any details that led LeBron James to writing his book, I Promise.

Research:

So I started doing my own research and came across two articles that I knew I needed to share with my students. The first one was the article, “LeBron James is Now A Children’s Book Author” by Mark Chalifoux.  I liked this article because it spoke about the I Promise School that LeBron James created for kids in Akron, Ohio, the same city where he was born.  The article links the promises that students at the “I Promise School” make each day, with the promises written in the book. 

The second article I came across was “I Promise: This is a Message Book that Your Kids Will Love” by Juanita Giles from NPR.  I love the part in the article where she describes LeBron James talking about his dreams growing up and how the promises you make aren’t always easy and do require HARD WORK.  This message, I feel, is really important for all kids, especially these days!

Finally, the book’s illustrations by Nina Mata are absolutely wonderful. The graffiti murals on the front cover and throughout the book are mesmerizing!  I found myself staring at them as I read the book, and immediately knew I wanted to combine some sort of graffiti art activity with the choice board.

You can see my finished I Promise Choice Board here.  If you would like to edit this choice board to fit your school, you can download an editable copy with this link here.

Activities:

One of the first activities I will have my students work on is their own “I Promise” bookmark.  I created a paper with 4 sections labeled already with the words “I Promise”.  I will have my students think about 4 important promises that they want to make (2 academic or school related, and 2 personal…or leave it up to them to decide). I’ll show them how to fold it like an accordion to create their “bookmark”.  I’m pretty sure that will take up our 50 minute class time, so I plan on collecting their bookmarks until their next visit.

On their next visit, I will have them finish writing their 4 promises if they didn’t finish last time, and then show them the videos on how to create their own graffiti name. Then I will give them the rest of the time to create 4 different graffiti versions of their name, one for each promise they wrote.  If you’d like a copy of the I Promise bookmark, you can find it here.

I did add links to a Padlet where my virtual students can post their promises (if they want to share) and their graffiti name art. I will also post pictures of my in-person kids if they want to share on the Padlet as well.  As a final project, I will have kids work on their graffiti mural and remind them to post pictures of that as well so that we can all enjoy each other’s creativity.

I’m super excited to share the I Promise book with my students!  What plans do you have for the first week back from winter break?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

Happy Reading!