Our 7thand 8thgrade students have spent the last several weeks reading a fantastic book, “An Elephant in the Garden by the acclaimed author Michael Morpurgo. Students have read through the eyes of Lizzie, a teenage girl living in Dresden, Germany during the second world war. Through Lizzie’s eyes students read about the horrific bombing of Dresden, the strength of a destitute family, and an elephant named Marlene as an unlikely beacon of hope. Every Friday students have discussed the reading, sharing their likes, dislikes, and questions they have within the story. Meetings were spent discussing the duel nature of life during a war, how everyone is involved and the orality surrounding the choices people make. Students continued practicing their skills in identifying passages within the text to support a claim and how to analyze a text for the underlying messages. As a class, students were even presented pictures of Dresden during that time, in order to not only bring the text to life but the history as well.