Sideways Stories from Wayside School

Sideways Stories from Wayside School
By: Louis Sachar
Morrow Junior Books 1998
Bluestem Master List 2012

This book was absolutely amazing! This was a great way to start out the beginning of ED 204. I have heard of this book being popular, but I had never actually read it when I was in grade school. Now that I have more of a perspective of what teaching is like I feel like this would be an awesome book to do with a class since there are plenty of chapters that are not very long. I think Sachar's writing is brilliant, and he has done a great job of creating a hilarious story with some clever elements to it. I was almost surprised however at some of the chapters though. I feel like it may have been a difference from older authors to authors now-a-days. There were moments when some children would have punched each other in the stomachs and other times when they would call a kid fatso and it would be completely fine. I felt like some of the chapters seemed like they were going somewhere along the lines of teaching the children a lesson and then it would end up with one of them getting punched in the stomach which kind of worried me.

One of my favorite chapters was the one with the girl Dana that had 100+ mosquito bites and was complaining about being itchy. However, her teacher Mrs. Jewl's distracted her with math. It was a clever way of putting math in while also telling a story about the student. Another one of my favorites was during the story with the child that read upside down. I thought it was super clever of him to place the text upside down in the middle of a paragraph to relate to the student. I really liked the repetition of phrases throughout the chapters and I feel like this book would be extremely helpful for students that are just starting to read more complex chapter books.  Most of all I loved the lesson that was taught in the book through the character of Kathy. Kathy was a girl that liked no one and assumed no one would like her. She would assume everything and the way Sachar wrote you could tell he was trying to show just how silly she was acting with her assumptions while also showing that Kathy though she was right in what she was thinking.  I feel like this is an especially helpful lesson to grade school kids since they usually do assume a lot and this lesson could really improve their social interactions, along with their own self image and willingness to interact with others.

I could definitely see my self doing a really cool writing lesson with this book. I would love to have each of my students write their own little wacky story about the selves and make up a wacky illustration to go along with it and have them all come together to make a book. I would even add in my own chapter and have the students along with me make up some wacky situation that could happen on the first day of school. I feel like it would be a super fun artistic opportunity and a fun writing activity.