Teaching Fish in a Tree: Dyslexia Awareness for Grades 6-10

Ally Nickerson has spent years being called lazy, careless, and worse before anyone realizes she has dyslexia. Lynda Mullaly Hunt's Fish in a Tree is built around a simple, devastating idea: a student can be genuinely brilliant and still be failed completely by a system that only measures one kind of intelligence. That premise makes the novel useful for two different but overlapping goals — literary analysis, and direct instruction in disability awareness that most students haven't encountered elsewhere.

Why This Novel Does Double Duty

Fish in a Tree works as straightforward literary analysis — character development, theme, first-person narration — while also functioning as a genuine entry point into disability studies, neurodiversity, and the history of how schools have (and haven't) accommodated different kinds of learners. A unit built around the novel can serve an English classroom, a special education awareness week, or a psychology elective equally well.

What Students Should Be Able to Do

• Trace Ally's transformation from believing she's "dumb" to understanding that her brain simply processes information differently.
• Analyze Mr. Daniels's teaching methods as a model of trauma-informed, strengths-based pedagogy.
• Evaluate the novel's treatment of bullying and social hierarchy through Shay's behavior and its psychological roots.
• Connect the novel's themes to real historical and legislative context around learning disabilities and educational equity.

Discussion Questions Worth Raising

• On misdiagnosis and misunderstanding: Ally is called lazy and careless for years before anyone identifies dyslexia. What specific moments in the novel show adults misreading her behavior, and why does that misreading happen?
• On teaching that works: What does Mr. Daniels do differently from Ally's previous teachers? Be specific — what techniques or attitudes actually change her experience of school?
• On friendship across difference: Ally, Keisha, and Albert form a genuine friendship despite very different challenges. What holds that friendship together?
• On growth mindset: The novel repeatedly returns to the idea that struggling with something doesn't mean you're bad at it forever. Where does that idea show up most powerfully in the text?

Bringing It Home

Ask a student to think of a time they were judged for something before anyone understood the real reason behind it. Ally's story tends to unlock genuinely personal responses, even from students who've never struggled academically themselves.

Where This Leads

Beyond literary analysis, this novel builds empathy and media literacy around how disability is represented in fiction — a foundation for critical thinking about representation that extends into every subsequent text and, just as importantly, into how students treat their actual classmates.

See the Unit in Action

Get the Complete Fish in a Tree Curriculum

I built the most extensive Fish in a Tree curriculum available — 698 pages for grades 6-10:

• 35+ chapter-by-chapter guides with psychological contextualization and literary analysis
• Comprehensive vocabulary lists featuring learning disability terminology and neuroscience concepts
• Primary source materials exploring dyslexia research and famous individuals with learning differences
• Advanced discussion questions promoting critical thinking and evidence-based argumentation
• Multiple assessment formats including analytical essays, character studies, and interdisciplinary projects
• Cross-curricular connections to psychology, neuroscience, special education history, and social justice

Get Fish in a Tree Complete Guide on Teachers Pay Teachers →

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