Lesson Plan: Standing Up for His Safety

Essential Questions

• How can we advocate for ourselves and for others?
• What can we do to make schools safe for everyone?

Literature Connection

• Novel: Stella by McCall Hoyle
• Novel: The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan

Watch a Video (5 minutes)

As a class, watch our video “Two Minutes With . . . Oliver Tineo.” Let students know that the video introduces them to Oliver, the teen who wrote the article they’re about to read. After viewing, ask students to briefly summarize the video aloud. Ask, “What do you think is the purpose of the video? Why are we watching it before we read the article?”

Preview Text Features (10 minutes)

Guide students to locate the article in their magazines or at Action Online. Then preview the text features by asking the following questions:

• Read the article’s title and subtitle (the text beneath the title). How do you think Oliver is fighting to make schools safer? Make a prediction.  Answers will vary. 
• Look at the photos included with the article and read their captions. What do they tell you about Oliver? The photos and their captions tell us that Oliver was in and out of the hospital for months after he started having seizures, that he is on a swim team, and that he has met with local government officials to talk about seizure-safe schools.

Preview Vocabulary (10 minutes)

• Point out the vocabulary box. Read the terms (seizures, surges, process, advocate, bill, elected officials) aloud and discuss their definitions.
• Play the Vocabulary Slideshow. 

Make a Plan for Reading

Before students start to read, walk them through a reading plan:

• Set a purpose for reading: Tell students that after reading, they’ll analyze cause-and-effect relationships in the story. Point out the activity at the end of the story. 
• Encourage students to pause at the end of each section so they can monitor their comprehension. Prompt them to take note of sentences they think tell them important ideas in each section, as well as any words or sentences they don’t understand.

Read the article. (Higher- and lower-Lexile versions are available on the Story page at Action Online. Click Presentation View to access an audio read-aloud.) Then discuss the following close-reading and critical-thinking questions.

Close-Reading Questions (15 minutes)

• How did epilepsy affect Oliver’s reading and speech, and what steps did he take to recover? (problem and solution) Oliver’s reading and speaking abilities were greatly affected by his epilepsy. The seizures damaged his brain, causing him to go from reading chapter books to having to relearn the alphabet. He took medicine to stop the seizures and, with a lot of hard work, relearned the basic skills he had forgotten. He was also in speech therapy for years.
• What are absence seizures? How are they different from other types of seizures? (compare and contrast) Absence seizures are a type of seizure that can be hard to notice. They are different from other seizures that people often think about, which usually involve noticeable body movements or jerking. Absence seizures might look like the person is just staring off into space, and the person might not even be aware they are having a seizure.
• What changes in schools does Oliver want to see, and why does he believe these changes are important? (key details) Oliver wants to see more epilepsy awareness and training in schools. He believes that educating teachers and students about seizures and how to respond to them can prevent the kind of challenges and dangers he faced. His efforts are aimed at creating safer and more supportive school environments for students with epilepsy.

Critical-Thinking Questions (10 minutes)

• Oliver says that speaking up has been scary at times but is worth it. Why do you think speaking up might be scary for Oliver? What might make it worthwhile? (inference) Oliver might find speaking up scary because it involves sharing his personal experiences with epilepsy, which might be hard to talk about. Also, talking to powerful people like school board members and local elected officials might make him nervous. Despite the fear, it’s worth it for him because he’s making a difference. By speaking up, he's helping to make schools safer for kids with epilepsy.
• Oliver says that he was bullied because he spoke slowly. How might a seizure-safe school have kept this from happening? (critical thinking) In a seizure-safe school, students are taught about epilepsy. If Oliver’s fellow students had understood what he was dealing with and why he spoke slowly, they might have been kinder to him.

• Assign students to work in small groups to complete the Spotlight Skill Workout:  Cause and Effect activity.
• Go further: Use our Central Idea and Details Skill Builder, available in higher and lower level versions.  (Click here to view all your Skill Builders.)
• Writing prompt: Imagine that you’re a leader at a school that has become seizure-safe thanks to Oliver’s hard work. Write a short speech explaining what it means for a school to be seizure-safe and thanking Oliver for the work he did to make the change happen.