Novel Content
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      FAQ: We have parent concerns about the Fantasy genre. What do you suggest?

      It is important to understand and respond to your parent population.

      There are two units within our program that are of the fantasy genre:
      3.1 - Poppy ~ animal fantasy
      4.2 - The Castle in the Attic ~ epic fantasy

      First of all, it is important to know and respond to your parent population. If a parent requests that their student be removed from a unit, it is appropriate to open up a conversation, try to learn more about what the parent is opposed to or offended by in the curriculum, and then work to come up with a reasonable solution. By reasonable, this would be a solution that will meet the needs of the student without exhausting your time.

      Some solutions:
      1. Skip the unit entirely. This is something you could consider doing if you know about the issue ahead of time (haven't started instruction yet) and multiple students are impacted by the concern. The program is so extensive, filling up a full 180 days of instruction, that skipping one unit would not be a problem in terms of having enough to fill the year.
      2. Provide an alternate activity for the 1-2 students impacted. You could provide an audio book for students who cannot participate in the read-aloud. They simply listen to their audio book while you conduct the read-aloud with the rest of the class. You can provide them our book report to fill-out as they listen. Do something similar for the book club time. Each student would pick a book from the classroom library to read, divide it into quadrants, fill out the book report as they read, and meet with you in a short conference as they finish each quadrant.
       
      If you know you might have a population of students who would have concerns about fantasy novels, you could send home a permission slip at the beginning of the year in which you would explain our fantasy unit and address the concerns of the parents in the letter, and then have them sign indicating whether their student would need an alternate assignment. Depending on how many opt-outs you receive, you could then make a decision whether to include or skip the unit.