I was very interested to read Mr. Worry: A Story About OCD for two reasons. The first is that I have never seen a book like this on OCD before, and the second reason being that my best friend's son has OCD, and he is my son's best friend, so we are very close with him, so I have a personal interest to find out more about OCD. I first of all liked the fact that the author, Holly L. Niner has a son with OCD and that is why she chose to write this book.She starts the book with a note to parents and teachers, teaching a little bit about OCD. This is very important, because I always hear people talk openly about having OCD, when clearly they don't. I don't think people understand that just because you like to have a clean house, does not mean you have OCD. OCD is much more severe, their worrying thoughts and obsessions will consume much of their lives. This book is about Kevin, and his life with OCD. Kevin had rituals he had to do before he went to bed, Kevin had to ask questions to double check things over and over again, even if he should have known the answer. He names his obsessions, Mr Worry. In this book, Kevin tries to over come his OCD. In the end he says that when Mr. Worry calls, Kevin tells Mr. Worry that its nonsense and not to call again. That was his way of overcoming the OCD.
About the Author: Holly L. Niner grew up in Newberg, New York. She is a Speech Therapist with a passion for books. She now lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana with her husband, Keith, and her two children, Evan and Beth. She wrote Mr. Worry: A Story About OCD, because her son has OCD and she wanted to have a book that would teach about OCD that would children and adults could read and learn to understand about OCD.
http://www.hollyniner.com/bio.htm*I also want to mention, that when I googled lesson plans for teaching students about special needs (I searched in a variety of ways), I had a hard time finding anything. Usually, if you google a topic for a lesson plan, you will get a laundry list of sample lesson plans. I think teaching students about special needs is very important. I know it is not part of a curriculum, but I was surprised at how difficult it was to find anything. Luckily, I have my own ideas!
Genre: Special needs, character education.
Theme/Skill: Everyone is different. We should not be afraid to be ourselves, and we should embrace others for their differences.
Grade Level: 1-4
Pre-reading activity: Class disscussion on what makes us different. Everyone is diferent. Make a variety of graphs of favorite color, types of ice cream, eye color, fair color, etc. Students will see that many students have similarities and differences, and that some students may have the same eye color, but not like the same type of ice cream, etc. Then have a clas discussion about all the differenes we can see in the graphs.. Students will learn to appreciate their differences.
Post-reading activity: Disscuss: What is something that was difficult for you to learn how to do? Was there every anything that you did that you wanted to be able to stop doing? Kevin had to teach his brain not to want to do certain things. I want you to write about something you had to teach yourself to do. I want you to write about how you felt when you were trying, how long it took you to do, and how you felt when you accmomplished it.
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