Seven Hills Elementary
January Book of the Month
The Recess Queen
by Alexis O’Neill & Laura Huliska-Beith
“Well – now when recess rolls around that playground’s one great place.”
The Recess Queen is about how the new student to a school brings fairness
and fun back to the playground by inviting the playground bully to play with her
and everyone else.
We chose The Recess Queen as our book of the month to highlight the
importance of fairness. This month we will focus on treating each other fairly,
and how we can work together to treat everyone with kindness and respect.
Language Arts:
 Students could write a letter to Mean Jean explaining to her about fairness
and how she is not being fair to others. OR Students could write a letter to
a student who was bullied by Mean Jean to suggest to them how they could
have solved the problem.
 Have students construct a multi-flow map to show cause and effect of how
Mean Jean’s behavior led to the way others treated her. (the kids avoided
her and did not want to play with her because she was so mean, but Katie
Sue included her and therefore she decided to be nice).
 Rhyming Words—“mean/Jean”; “hammer/slammer”;
“howled/growled”…Primary students could locate rhyming words as a whole
class by giving a signal when they hear rhyming words.
 Compare/Contrast; construct a double-bubble map comparing and
contrasting Katie Sue and Mean Jean
 Adjectives- there are lots of adjectives/describing words throughout the
book. Primary grades could locate these describing words as a group or
write a list or even make a bubble map to describe the characters in the
book. Older grades could locate the adjectives and look up synonyms for
these adjectives.
 (after previous activity) Rewrite the story using the synonyms they found in
place of the adjectives in the book.
 Name Rhymes- Instead of “Mean Jean”, students can take their own names
and put a rhyming word that describes them in front of it. If they can not
think of a rhyming word for their name they could do a word that begins
with the same letter as their name and write a poem about themselves and
why this word describes them.
 Have students write about a time they were in an unfair situation and how
they solved their problem.
 Text-To-Text connections: Older students could locate other books where
characters were in a situation similar to Katie Sue/Mean Jean and compare
the texts.
Social Studies:
 Lower grades: Fair/Not Fair- make a T-chart of situations that are
fair/not-fair
 Upper grades: Fairness throughout generations: Upper grades could
examine groups from generations past that experienced unfairness, such as
segregation, slavery, religious persecution, etc.
 Upper grades: Mean Jean tried to rule the playground. Use this as an
illustration for how different types of government rule their society, such
as comparing a monarchy to a democracy.
 Lower grades as a class, create a list of playground rules to review
procedures and following rules and being fair to others
 Lower grades Make a T-chart of Tattling vs. Telling situations for bullying
and understanding
 Lower grades Brainstorm some recess games that would include everyone
Math:
 Rope Story Problems: Using the jump rope that Katie Sue and Mean Jean
play with as an illustration, give students story problems to solve such as “If
the jump rope is 6 feet long and 2 girls can jump in it, how long should it be
for 6 kids to be able to jump in it?”
 Younger kids could measure small ropes of different lengths or estimate the
length of a large rope and use other objects to test their estimations
 Using a pedometer, students could perform activities on the playground and
other students could record the number of steps per activity and graph the
activities by the amount of steps.
 Use a rope to measure the perimeter of objects (after measuring the rope)
 Make a relationship table that shows the increase of the number of jumps
per rotation of the rope or the number of jumps in 10 seconds, etc.
Science:
 Primary grades could discuss movement and motion using the playground
equipment from the book. Make a chart of the objects and what motion
they do (ball—roll, bounce; rope—twirl, spin)
 Upper grades could compare the playground equipment with simple machines
(such as how a see-saw is a level and fulcrum).
Related Titles:
 Sometimes I’m Bomballo by Rachel Vail
 Wings by Christopher Myers
 The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth
 Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell