Little People, Big Dreams: Greta Thunberg By Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

March is Women’s History Month. At our school, each class is choosing a woman that has made an impact on the world to research. They will then create a display to teach the rest of the school about that woman. Soon, our hallways will transform into a museum of Women’s History!

We kicked the month off with a schoolwide read aloud of Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara’s, Little People, Big Dreams featuring Greta Thunberg. If you don’t know the Little People, Big Dreams series, you should definitely check it out! Each book features a prominent figure from history or pop culture. We have used these books for school wide read alouds in the past because they are accessible to a wide span of ages.

We used the Greta Thunberg read aloud to reintroduce the idea of windows and mirrors to students. We named mirrors as books that help us see ourselves and windows as parts of books that help us learn more about others. As our principal read the book aloud, she planned stopping points to have kids think and discuss places in the story that served as mirrors for them and those that served as windows. We also asked students to reflect on the kind of person Greta was, building on character and vocabulary work happening across the grades. We closed the read aloud by asking what lessons we can learn from Greta Thunberg’s story.

Here you can see our school bulletin board sharing the traits and lessons our community took away from this powerful experience.