Overcoming Adversity
A curated collection of 7 books exploring overcoming adversity, each with discussion questions, activities, and printable lesson plans.
Targeted Learning Goal
Students will identify how characters overcome adversity, develop resilience strategies, and apply them to their own challenges.
Standards Connections
- ELA: RL.K-7.3
- ELA: RL.K-7.6
- ELA: SL.K-7.1
- SEL
Books in This Unit
7 titles — each with a full lesson plan.
Overcoming Adversity
Light Enough to Float
by Lauren Seal
5 learning goals · 55 minutes
Resilience & Recovery
Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans
by Don Brown
4 learning goals · 60 minutes
Resilience & Self-Discovery
The Mighty Macy
by Kwame Alexander
3 learning goals · 50 minutes
Resilience & Recovery
When Stars Are Scattered
by Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed
4 learning goals · 60 minutes
Resilience & Recovery
The Great American Dust Bowl
by Don Brown
4 learning goals · 45-60 minutes
Resilience & Friendship
Everything's Wrong!
by Jory John
4 learning goals · 40 minutes
Resilience & Hope
The Teacher of Nomad Land
by Daniel Nayeri
3 learning goals · 45 minutes
Pacing Tools in This Unit
2 tools from the Pace-Write-Read handbook.
Point of View
Who is telling the story, who is narrating it — create options that will make a huge difference. Memorable choices have included death itself, so how do you decide? The narrator you choose quietly rewrites every scene.
Details
Serve double duty and point to what a reader must not miss and help to build out your story in extraordinary ways. One well-chosen detail does the work of a paragraph of explanation.