El Deafo
Written & illustrated by Cece Bell & published by Amulet Books, ©2014
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Grade Level: 3-6 Independent Read
Lexile Score: GN420L Accelerated Reader: 2.7
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At four years old, Cece Bell falls ill with meningitis and loses her hearing. El Deafo spans the life of Cece from age 4 to age 10 and captures her struggles with friendships, boys, and most importantly, deafness. This true story about Bell’s childhood is told in the form of a graphic novel—but all the characters are portrayed as bunnies. Join Cece on her journey to feel accepted!
Key words/phrases: friendship, childhood, diversity, acceptance, and disability.
Suggestions for the Classroom
This video, featuring the author of El Deafo, Cece Bell, shows Bell discussing the novel and providing background on her experience with deafness as a child. Prior to reading the text, viewing the video can help students build schema.
This video aims to teach younger audiences about deafness as a whole. It covers topics like hearing aids, sign language, and school support.
This short video introduces and teaches the ASL alphabet to students.
SUGGESTED COMMON CORE STATE STANDARD:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7
Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a
text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
KEY VOCABULARY
Bawl: to cry very loudly and uncontrollably
Captions: in terms of television, written text appearing on the screen that matches what the characters are saying
Deaf: completely lacking hearing or having hearing that is impaired
Hearing aid: a large category describing devices created to improve hearing
Phonic Ear: a type of hearing aid where sound is transmitted to headphones by a microphone
Satisfactory: acceptable performance; not perfect or outstanding
COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES
Before Reading: Activate students' schema by having them write about deafness. Ask students to "data dump" the information they already have in regard to deafness. Some information could include their defintion of deaf, what they think struggles students who are deaf might have, and what aids they think there are for those who are deaf. After completing this activity, show students the video linked above titled Understanding Deafness and allow them to add to and revise their data dumps.
During Reading: Periodically throughout the students' reading of the text, facilitate a rolling dice comprehension game for students to play. For this game, create and provide students with a list of six questions or topics to discuss based on the reading they completed. Divide students into roughly equal groups and provide each group with a question list and die. Students should roll the die three times and discuss the question or topic their roll corresponds with.
After Reading: El Deafo is a nonfiction graphic novel. So, after reading, have students create a few more pages of panels (the number will change depending on the grade level) to add to the end of the book. Use this as an opportunity to have students identify character traits of the main character to incorporate into their panels, as well as identify a sequence of events of the text to add their events on to.
WRITING ACTIVITY FOR INFERENTIAL COMPREHENSION:
Divide students into five roughly equal groups and present them with the following question: why do you think the author, Cece Bell, decided to draw all of the characters in her book as bunnies instead of humans? Give the students time to deliberate and write their answers as a group. Then, have each group share their opinion with the class.