El Deafo

El Deafo by Cece Bell
Publisher: Amulet Books
Copyright: 2014

Citation: Bell, C., & Lasky, D. (2014). El Deafo. Amulet Books. 

Literary Awards, Honors, and/or Nominations

1. 2015 John Newbery Award: Winner
2. 2015 Eisner Award for Best Publication for Kids (ages 8–12): Winner

Reading Level:
Lexile: 420L
Grade Level Equivalent: 3.4

-Original description of the book
Cece Bell did an amazing job transferring her experiences into a graphic novel that is appropriate and entertaining for students of all ages. She also used her experiences to help other students, who are struggling to adapt into a new community or culture, relate to the problems she had to be accepted, happy and maintain a good friendship. The graphics that were used in this book were also very “kid friendly”, and were sometimes explained with captions or notes. This book also shows that any child can be born with some type of disability or might not develop one until they grow older. El Deafo also helps students who were born ‘normal’ to look at life through someone else’s eyes while enjoying a good book at the same time.

-Corresponding Common Core State Standard
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7: Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)

-Suggested delivery
1) Independent Read

-2 electronic resources
1) Hearing Loss Simulator
2) Cece Bell talks about El Deafo
3) Tamara video

-3 teaching suggestions for grades 4-6
1) One way to use El Deafo in the classroom is to have students read this and teach them about different points of perspectives. Then the teachers will pick students at random to pretend to be deaf by covering their ears with earmuffs, etc. and talk to students how they could go about the school day being deaf. Although it may only be in the classroom, this activity will affect the students and help show them how they can help other students who may be deaf.

2) Another way teachers can use this book in their classroom is to include this into their non-fiction/biography literature and show students how one person overcame their fear and shame about being different and ask why students might be ashamed of those. Afterwards, have the students make a list of ideas that can help other students accept themselves and how other students can help support that person.

3) Another way to use El Deafo in the classroom is to use it for a health/wellness lesson to teach students about hearing impairments.

-Key vocabulary
1) Perspective: a mental view; the state of one's ideas
2) Meningitis: a sickness caused by a bacterial or viral infection and characterized by high fever, severe headache, and stiff neck or back muscles
3) Definite: having fixed limits; positive; for sure
4) Fussing: an excessive display of anxious attention or activity; to annoy or bother
5) Phonic: relating to speech sounds
6) Clarify: to make (an idea, statement, etc.) clear or intelligible; to become clear, pure, or intelligible

-An inferential comprehension writing activity
For a writing activity that helps promote students’ inferential comprehension, click on the following link to see different writing prompts for different content areas, along with the Common Core Standards: El Deafo Teaching Guide

-Before Reading Comprehension Activity: Ask students what they know about deafness and people who are deaf. Find out what their misconceptions are. What type of life can deaf people live? Can they have jobs? Can they go to school? What can be done so deaf people can learn? Are there varying degrees of deafness? Questions like these will help students engage their schema and can help clear up any misconceptions students may have.

-During Reading Comprehension Activity: Write about a time in your life when you didn't feel like you fit it or like someone left you out of a conversation. How did it make you feel? What did you do about it?

-After Reading Comprehension Activity: Encourage students to go to Wordle and create their own individual Wordles based on the knowledge that they learned about from El Deafo. The students must have at least 10-15 words, phrases and/or ideas that support the main theme of this book. Once completed, we will print them out and hang them outside and around our classrooms to help teach other students about deafness.

-Reading Mini-Lesson: Comparing Graphic Novels to Text-written Novels

• The objective of this mini-lesson is to have students compare and contrast the different characteristics that graphic novels and fictional novels have.  This will help them understand how to read a graphic novel and how to interpret the different components.

We have been reading El Deafo by Cece Bell and today, we are going to discuss how a graphic novel is different than a novel. First, let’s create a mind map specifically for El Deafo. What characteristics make up a graphic novel? (Answers should be characters, setting, genre, illustrations, and format/layout.) 

Alright so now let’s fill this map in. (Teacher will then proceed to ask students about what could be put in the different characteristics ‘bubbles’.) Now that we have finished our graphic novel mind map, let’s work on making a text-written novel mind map. (Can vary based on what book is being read as a read aloud.) Who would like to come up and start making our novel mind map? (Teacher will call up various students by repeating the same process as above.)

I noticed that while these two types of genres share a lot of characteristics, they both of differences that make them each unique. Since we learned about the characteristics of two genres, let’s go back to our desks and write about which book we all would like to read based on what our mind maps are showing us.