Disabilities Unit: What's Eating Gilbert Grape Workbook

Empathy, sympathy, and compassion are at the forefront of this unit. Teaching kids to understand and feel others' feelings and emotions is a skill they will need for the rest of their lives. In this unit, students will work on understanding the difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Students will take part in journals that can pull from their own experiences. Students can take a walk in someone else's shoes to practice responses that lead with sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Through a web quest, students will learn about person-first language, and how to communicate with people who have a disability. This unit includes an opportunity for students to research a disability that they want to know more about, and then they will create an informational, and educational brochure to share with their classmates. After the brochures are done, students should engage with other students' work to learn about other disabilities. After learning about disabilities, and having an understanding of proper communication techniques, students will take part in watching the 1993 film, What's Eating Gilbert Grape and analyze the message of the film, as well as cinematic techniques, and literary techniques. Students will have a focus each day of the viewing and have opportunities throughout the unit to have meaningful discussions with each other.

The Workbook in this unit is a PDF, and can not be edited.

The disabilities Webquest will be available by link, but can not be edited.

The empathy situations slideshows will be available for you to "make a copy" of and edit as needed.

This is a perfect unit for any time of the year for Film Studies or English classes. I hope you enjoy these projects. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me at mrsrowe.scene213@gmail.com.

This is a BRAND NEW unit! It may be one of the favorite movie units I have ever created!