Medicine Wheels

by Byron Graves

After his mother is incarcerated, Bryce, a young Ojibwe athlete, moves in with his grandparents on a reservation and turns to skateboarding for stability and purpose. Training for a championship becomes part of a larger journey through loss, community support, and the discovery of his father’s legacy and the meaning of unconditional love.

Big Idea

Achievement can offer direction during upheaval, but belonging and self-understanding grow through relationships as well as individual effort. Bryce’s story invites students to examine how athletic ambition, family history, and community care shape identity.

Discussion Questions

1.How does skateboarding help Bryce respond to changes he cannot control? When might athletic focus provide relief, and when might it leave difficult feelings unresolved?
2.How does moving in with his grandparents change Bryce’s understanding of home, responsibility, and belonging? Which moments in the text best support your interpretation?
3.How does learning about his father’s legacy complicate or change Bryce’s understanding of himself? What makes a family legacy different from a fixed expectation?
4.What does unconditional love mean in Bryce’s relationships? How can love coexist with disappointment, boundaries, or accountability?
5.How do Bryce’s personal choices and his community’s support work together as he prepares for the championship? How does the novel complicate the idea of a completely self-made athlete?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of the novel or a legally shared teacher-selected excerpt, paper, pencils, highlighters, and a timer; optional sticky notes or a shared digital document.

Learning Goals

Analyze how sentence structure, scene development, and reflective pauses influence narrative pacing.
Use textual evidence to explain connections among Bryce’s athletic goals, family relationships, and developing identity.
Write and revise a brief narrative using purposeful shifts between action and reflection.
Discuss family disruption and community support respectfully without requiring personal disclosure.

Activity Steps

1.Establish discussion agreements: analyze characters rather than classmates, avoid stereotypes about incarceration or reservation life, and allow students to keep writing entirely fictional. Introduce the question: How can one brief athletic moment carry a larger emotional story? (5 minutes)
2.Read a teacher-selected skateboarding or training passage. Students mark physical actions, sensory details, thoughts, and references to relationships, then identify where the reading seems to accelerate or slow. (8 minutes)
3.In pairs, draw a pacing map with reading progress on the horizontal axis and perceived speed on the vertical axis. Label three changes in speed with textual evidence and discuss their effects. (7 minutes)
4.Students draft a 120–150-word imagined practice scene connected to Bryce’s championship preparation. Include a physical goal and a moment when thoughts of family or community affect his attention; label all invented events as creative extensions. (10 minutes)
5.Revise a 50–75-word portion twice: first for urgent movement and then for reflective attention. Experiment with sentence length, punctuation, selected detail, and paragraph breaks rather than assuming that short sentences always produce speed. (10 minutes)
6.Partners read both versions aloud and explain one meaningful difference. Students submit an exit ticket naming a revision choice, its intended effect, and a connection to the passage studied. (5 minutes)

Standards Connections

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3: Analyze how complex characters develop, interact, and advance plot or theme.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5: Analyze how an author’s structural choices create effects such as tension or surprise.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3 / W.11-12.3: Write narratives using effective technique, well-chosen details, and structured event sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 / SL.11-12.1: Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and supporting interpretations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3: Analyze the impact of an author’s choices regarding the development and relationships of story elements.

Printable Teacher’s Guide

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Grades 9-12 Ready to print

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

In Medicine Wheels, Bryce’s championship goal offers a useful starting point for studying two kinds of narrative movement: progress toward an external achievement and movement toward a changed understanding of family and self. A skateboarding attempt can unfold in seconds, while its emotional significance may require much more space. The Pace-Write-Read approach asks students to notice that difference, experiment with it in their own writing, and read their revisions aloud to test the effect. Begin with a verified passage from the class edition and ask what receives the most narrative attention: movement, anticipation, surroundings, conversation, or thought. Then examine how changing that balance might alter readers’ experience of Bryce’s training, his adjustment to living with his grandparents, or his search to understand his father’s legacy. Treat Ojibwe identity and reservation life as specific dimensions of Bryce’s story, not as shorthand for a single Indigenous experience; do not assume that the title authorizes interpreting or recreating culturally specific medicine-wheel teachings. This package uses the supplied synopsis as its factual foundation, not a verified full text. Accordingly, the craft prompts below invite students to investigate techniques in their copies rather than assert unverified features of Graves’s prose, narration, or book design. Where a device is absent, students can explain that absence or try it in a clearly labeled creative adaptation.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a passage about Bryce’s skateboarding with one about family or belonging. Track how much page space each moment receives and explain how that allocation shapes its importance.
2. Plot	Map Bryce’s championship preparation alongside changes in his understanding of his father and community. Identify where these external and internal storylines influence one another rather than merely occurring side by side.
3. Prosody	Read a selected passage aloud twice, experimenting with stress, breath, and pauses. Discuss which delivery best supports its emotional movement without imitating an assumed cultural accent.
4. Word	Examine the verbs used in a skateboarding passage and the words used to describe Bryce’s relationships. Test how replacing one precise word with a general one changes movement, tone, or emotional weight.
5. Concept	Distinguish the premise—a young athlete pursuing a championship amid family upheaval—from a developing theme about love or belonging. Ask how particular scenes turn that broad concept into a specific human experience.
6. Voice & Worldview	Identify textual choices that reveal how Bryce understands success, family, and support. Discuss his perspective as an individual Ojibwe character rather than treating him as representative of all Ojibwe people.
7. Point of View	First establish the novel’s actual narrative perspective from the text, then ask whose thoughts readers can access. Rewrite a brief, clearly labeled imagined moment from a grandparent’s perspective to explore what changes or remains unknowable.
8. Setting & Place	Track concrete details of the reservation and Bryce’s skateboarding environments. Ask how place affects his routines, relationships, and opportunities without reducing the reservation to either hardship or refuge.
9. Original Characters	Gather details that make Bryce more specific than the familiar figure of a determined athlete. Consider how conflicting wants, responses to help, and relationships distinguish him.
10. Dialogue	Select an exchange involving Bryce and examine what the speakers say directly, imply, or avoid. Read it with and without surrounding narration to hear how dialogue and narrative context work together.
11. Details	Identify a small detail in a training or family scene that carries more than factual information. Explain whether it clarifies action, suggests emotion, or links Bryce’s immediate experience to a larger concern.
12. Descriptions	Compare description during movement with description during a quieter moment. Ask how the selection and placement of sensory information changes the reader’s attention.
13. Firsts	Study the first presentation of Bryce, his grandparents, or his athletic goal. Identify what readers learn immediately and what is withheld, then explain how those choices establish expectations.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Locate a moment when readers closely experience Bryce’s physical or emotional pressure. Identify the precise language or access to perception that creates that closeness, rather than attributing it only to an exciting event.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Mark where the novel dramatizes an event moment by moment and where it compresses time. Consider why a practice routine might be summarized while a consequential interaction receives a full scene.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Separate uncertainty about athletic outcomes from uncertainty about Bryce’s family history and relationships. Discuss how each kind of uncertainty gives readers a different reason to continue.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check whether the text uses any of these devices, especially when presenting information about Bryce’s father. Distinguish an actual shift in narrated time from a brief mention of the past or a prediction about the future.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine several chapter endings for unresolved actions, emotional changes, or unanswered questions. Explain how the next chapter continues or redirects that momentum; note that physical page turns may vary by edition.
19. Pace & Creativity	Rewrite one invented skateboarding moment with the action delayed by anticipation, then with the outcome revealed immediately. Compare how the two structures affect readers’ interest in Bryce’s experience.
20. Play	Look for evidence of whether skateboarding gives Bryce enjoyment, experimentation, or freedom as well as competitive pressure. Ask how a playful moment, if present, changes the emotional pace.
21. Performance	Discuss the difference between practicing a skill and performing when an outcome matters. Use evidence to examine how Bryce’s attention changes under athletic pressure, then model that difference through an oral reading.
22. Personality	Trace how Bryce responds to setbacks, guidance, and uncertainty. Explain how those responses reveal personality more effectively than a list of character adjectives.
23. Humor	If humorous moments occur, examine who creates the humor and whether it offers connection, relief, or deflection. If none appear in the selected passage, discuss what its sustained seriousness accomplishes.
24. Pause	Find a moment when action gives way to reflection, observation, or silence. Ask what readers can understand about Bryce during that pause that the action alone would not communicate.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Investigate imagery, sound patterns, similes, or metaphors in a verified passage. Explain their local effects without assuming that poetic language or the title carries a particular cultural teaching.
26. Repetition	Track a repeated word, action, or concern if one emerges in the text. Consider whether its meaning shifts as Bryce’s training and understanding of family develop.
27. Rhythm	Mark sentence lengths and recurring grammatical patterns in a short passage. Read aloud to test how their sequence conveys effort, hesitation, sustained movement, or reflection.
28. Punctuation	Examine how punctuation organizes a passage about pressure or movement. Repunctuate one sentence as an exercise and discuss changes in emphasis, clarity, and reading pace.
29. Questions	Create a reader-question log about the championship, Bryce’s father, and his changing relationships. Track when answers arrive and how an answer can generate a more complicated question.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare Bryce’s ideas about achievement or support at two points in the novel. Identify both change and continuity, grounding the comparison in specific passages.
31. Objects	Begin with Bryce’s skateboard as a practical object and investigate any additional meanings supported by the text. Avoid assuming it is a symbol until repeated context or narrative emphasis supports that reading.
32. Threes	Look for groups of three in phrasing, actions, or scene sequences without forcing a pattern. If none appears, try a three-beat practice sequence in an original scene and assess its effect.
33. Lists	Check whether lists or accumulations of details appear in descriptions of preparation, surroundings, or thought. As an adaptation, build a short list of pressures Bryce faces and test whether it creates urgency or overload.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect paragraphing and any section breaks in the class edition for shifts in time, attention, or emotional intensity. Also discuss what a selected scene leaves unstated, distinguishing textual gaps from unsupported assumptions.
35. Art & Graphics	Examine the cover and any interior graphics actually present, distinguishing publisher-created design from narrative evidence. If the novel contains no interior illustrations, create an adaptation storyboard of a training moment using only text-supported details.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Build a classroom pacing challenge in which students earn points for evidence-supported craft observations and purposeful revisions. Keep the game focused on writing decisions, never on ranking Bryce’s losses or simulating incarceration or cultural practices.
37. Placement	Study where information about Bryce’s father or family circumstances enters a selected sequence. Ask how moving a revelation earlier or later would change readers’ interpretation of his actions.
38. Form	Identify the novel’s actual organization and consider how it accommodates both athletic development and family discovery. Compare that form with a hypothetical sports recap, which would likely omit much of Bryce’s interior and relational experience.
39. Dummy	Create a six-panel planning dummy—a rough paper mock-up—for an adaptation of a selected scene, not a claim that the novel is illustrated. Allocate panels to action, observation, and reflection, then explain how space controls emphasis.
40. Passion	Investigate what Bryce’s commitment to skateboarding reveals about his desires beyond winning. Connect that investment to a writing principle: readers care about a goal when they understand what pursuing it means to the character.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: “Before the Next Attempt.” Minutes 0–3: Read a brief, teacher-selected training passage from Medicine Wheels and identify one action beat and one moment of thought or observation. Minutes 3–5: Discuss how each changes the passage’s pace and connects athletic effort with Bryce’s larger circumstances. Minutes 5–10: Write a 90–120-word, clearly labeled imagined scene in which Bryce prepares for another skateboarding attempt while a concern about family or belonging competes for his attention; invent no cultural teachings or purported quotations from the novel. Minutes 10–14: Revise the scene to include a deliberate acceleration and a deliberate pause, using precise verbs, sentence variation, or paragraphing. Minutes 14–18: Partners read aloud and mark where they actually experience the speed change; writers compare that response with their intention. Minutes 18–20: Submit a two-sentence craft note explaining one revision and how it helps readers understand Bryce as more than a competitor. Students may keep all emotional material fictional and need not disclose personal experiences.

Classroom Activities

One Run, Two Tempos

Students create an annotated pacing map of a skateboarding or training passage from the novel, then write an original, clearly labeled imagined practice scene connected to Bryce’s circumstances. They revise the same scene at two speeds—one emphasizing physical momentum and one emphasizing reflection—to investigate how narrative pacing shapes readers’ understanding of athletic pressure, family, and belonging.

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