Getting Our Thoughts Together: Instructional Manual to Accompany Elfie

This manual aims to help children confront, recognize and explore the problematic aspects of their experience. It helps them formulate the questions that guide such exploration and, at the same time, it helps them question the seemingly unproblematic aspects of the world and the language they use to talk about it. Various exercises provide students with opportunities to organize their experiences into story form, as a skill building tool for learning to write well. There are also exercises designed to help children see statements as the beginning not the end point of inquiry, as any statement can be understood as a tentative answer to an implicit question. The discussion plans aim to support teachers in promoting classroom dialogue around issues such as: friendship, love, self-esteem, respect for others, teasing, choosing, and parent-child relationships.