When Melody is assigned a project in her Language Arts class to write about any famous person Melody chooses Stephen Hawking. Hawkings is a scientist, professor, and author who has motor neurone disease, and uses a sensor to talk which is activated by a muscle in his cheek. Even though he is disabled he does marvelous work in physics and cosmology, and is one of the most smartest people alive. Melody looks up to Hawkings because in a way both of them are very similar. Both Melody and Hawkings have disabilities, but also they both want to show the world that that’s not the only thing they are made out of. Even though they both are alike in some ways, Melody and Hawkings have a huge difference from each other. In the beginning of Out of My Mind it tells us that Melody was born with Cerebral Palsy, but Hawkings wasn’t. He got diagnosed with motor neurone in 1963, and gradually became paralyzed over the decades. This also means that Hawkings was once able to walk and talk and experience something that Melody has never experienced in her life.

When Rose went to the aquarium with Melody i believe she both had a good time and didn’t. When Rose was first in the car with Melody and her family she was talking to them normally, and sounded like she was having an excellent time. Then at the aquarium she was enjoying herself and wasn’t really worried about anything, but when Claire and Molly saw Rose with Melody, Rose became more uptight and tried to avoid Melody and her family like she wasn’t there with them. Also when Rose got asked by Claire who she was there with, Rose responded hesitant and said “I’m here with Melody and her parents” This shows that she was fine and was having a fun time with Melody until she saw Claire and Molly. I think Rose is a good person and wants to be friends with Melody, but at the same time she doesn’t want to be teased by her classmates that she is hanging around a person like Melody.

In order to know how Melody feels we made a communication boards with words we use everyday at school to communicate with people around us. Then we had to communicate with our partners by only using the words we put on out boards. The purpose of this was to see how Melody has to live everyday, and the frustration she has to go through. Also this shows us that we have so much to appreciate in life, like words that not everybody is able to use just as easy as somebody like me.

When making my communication board I was mainly putting on words like can, why, because, and that, since you use most of those in your sentences when you talk. A phrase that i chose was “Can I go to the bathroom” “I am thirsty” things like that because at school instead of spelling the whole thing out, it’s easier to just to put it into one full phrase. If i could go back and fix my communication board i would add words like give, under, high, above, past, and words that you would need in a detailed sentence.I would pick those because if i want to talk about something that’s hard to say, i would want words that you could use in detail.

My experience with a communication board was difficult and frustrating, especially when i was trying to say something but didn’t have the right words. When communicating with my partner about homework i couldn’t just start off by just saying “where is you homework” I didn’t have those words, so with my whole board the two words i used where “Me HW” which hardly made sense. Through my whole conversation it wasn’t a full sentence you would say to somebody, it was only one or two words I could use because of the certain things i put on my board. I also felt like i wouldn’t be able to last a full day without my words, knowing that I couldn’t hardly even go through one conversation use two words every sentence.

Going through this activity i have much more respect for Melody, knowing that it’s frustrating sometimes when you can’t say what you really want to say. When Melody gets her tornados explosion it’s much more understanding now knowing how hard it can be trying to talk to somebody about something as simple as naming your dog your favorite candy. This definitely impacts how i will see the rest of the story, and how Melody keeps trying to communicate to the people around her. Also knowing the difficulties of a communication board the fact that Melody wasn’t even able to pick what words she wanted, that really impacts how i view Melody and the rest of the story of Out Of My Mind.

When i’m reading this book one thing that grabbed my attention is when Melody says “Thoughts need words and words need a voice” This really grabbed my attention because I have never thought how hard it is not being able to tell anybody anything and being trapped in your thoughts. I think later on in the story it will show Melody trying to communicate with the people around her and trying to fit in. Also when Melody says “Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes, each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands” This really grabbed my attention because it shows how intelligent Melody is and how she compares things with her own self. 

Melodys experience at school is far different from mine in elementary school. Melody has a classroom with walls you would see at a nursery while most of my classrooms where just plain white, and while she learns the same things over and over every year, I learn new things everyday. Just because Melody is different she goes through a whole different process of school then I had to, she doesn’t even get to play like another normal kid outside like me. Even though we have a lot of big differences Melody and I have a similarities, we both were in a public school and had the ability to make friends it was just hard to. I can’t wait to keep reading and finding out more things about Melody and what she does at school.

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