Smile

Product Information

The SMILE approach to learning has created a climate of trust where learners are confident to take risks without the fear of failure and are valued for their efforts. Pupils appreciate that valuable learning often results from making mistakes. Our vision, here at Trellech Primary, is to ensure the four purposes of the Curriculum for Wales are at the heart of our children’s learning – particularly ensuring that they are “ambitious capable learners” who: As someone who has complex chronic medical issues, I really appreciated the author's detailed description of her healing. I too am all too familiar with the "making it up as you go" process of trying everything and everyone and what it feels like to encounter dismissive, distracted healers whose bad advice ends up adding years to your journey. Those stories are some of the most gripping and sad (the PT at the gym!) in the book.

Families can talk about how Raina's experiences with her teeth make her feel like a misfit. Have you ever gone through something that made you feel like you couldn't relate to your friends? Clabaugh, Rich (December 3, 2010). "4 Great Graphic Novels for Family Entertainment". The Christian Science Monitor . Retrieved February 12, 2013. Sarah Ruhl’s Smile is a memoir. She’s a playwright, actress, essayist and memoirist. This is her story. I really liked her writing; it’s personal, informative and honest. She was having her second child when she found out they were twins; a boy and a girl. And because of complications she was on bed rest and they were born early and had some serious healthy problems the first few weeks of their lives; as did she. She got Bell’s palsy in her face and had other health issues . She had the type of Bells Palsey where the left side of her face was frozen and she couldn’t smile. We experience each other and judge emotions and feeling through one’s face. With a frozen smile it makes “one seem cold, joyless and non-caring.” She found it hard to communicate to others as a mother and working with actors on emotions as they work a scene. She found that without a smile people saw her as cold and distant. This is a book about dealing with difficult health issues, living with her face when the frozen doesn’t thaw, being a mom of young kids, a wife, a daughter and having an active career. And I’m so glad I read it. Thanks to Simon and Schuster and Netgalley for an early copy of this work. It’s easily one of my favorite books of the year!

a b "Comics Made Personal." Scholastic Art, vol. 42, no. 2, 2011, pp. 8-9. ProQuest Central, Research Library. Another great way to describe a smile is to use a simile or metaphor. Look at examples of similes to see how to make a comparison using like or as. Then look at metaphor examples for more inspiration. Sarah Ruhl writes about everything with the clarity of a water droplet and the power of a waterfall. I’m not sure I’ve ever read or heard any of her work, in any genre or form, without crying at least a little. Smile: The Story of a Face is no different, though perhaps even more personal and vulnerable, so that reading it feels like being trusted with something fragile and intimate. A reflection on symmetry and divisions, on motherhood and marriage and meditation, on what it is to see and to be seen. A deeply moving, absorbing book; I'd expect nothing less from Sarah Ruhl, and I'm grateful to have read it. Want to learn the ideas in Smile better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Smile by Raina Telgemeier here.

I think Ruhl anticipated that the end of her memoir, people would be wanting some sort of big, satisfying conclusion (which admittedly is what I was feeling), and wrote: The SMILE approach to learning has strengthened pupil voice and given children the confidence to take risks in their own learning by choosing how they like to learn. This book is a meditation on what it means to have a face, what our faces reflect about us. About looking for answers when there may be none. About finding a way to take one step forward and then another. She reads, she listens. She writes. She finds some professionals who say they can help, only to be crushed with disappointment. She learns to find joy in small triumphs. She shares all these struggles with us, not in self-pity, but in self-knowledge. Raina is a likable girl with supportive and understanding parents. Though she makes some missteps, such as standing up a boy at a dance, it's her process of correcting those missteps that makes this such a relatable and true-to-life story. Readers will be encouraged and comforted by the path Raina takes to finding new friends that support her.

Following the success of the implementation of pupil SMILE books and to ensure clarity in understanding of the Curriculum for Wales, I decided to trial the SMILE book format myself, to record my planning. This helped me to develop greater depth of knowledge and understanding of the Four Purposes, Cross-Curricular Links, Pedagogical Principles and the What Matters Statements for each of the AoLEs. In all honesty it was a hard book to read at times. Hard to Face your face and the ways Bell’s palsy or a facial injury has impacted your life. The pain that comes when people turn away from you because we see people as their face. And with bells palsey and facial injuries there is lots of that. Often people don’t know they do so. There is a shaming there.