I love to use Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to teach students about the happiness derived from helping and serving others. This is a great unit to teach around the holidays, if culturally appropriate, and to even include film clips from any of the numerous film adaptations. We would first plot Scrooge’s character change throughout the story, noting how he learns to be kind and charitable. I would use the Booker T. Washington conversation about happiness after my students have read the novel and/or viewed parts of film and ask them to discuss how Washington’s assertion was evident in “A Christmas Carol.”
Level: Elementary English/Language Arts
Subject Area: British Literature
Author: Tiffany Heitman
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