Asking Our Questions for the First Time
From the desk of Karen….
This true story demonstrates why I am so grateful to Debbie Miller, Stephanie Harvey, and Cris Tovani. I share this short transcript of the first time this group of struggling readers brought their own questions to a reading group like these ladies taught me.
Jerome began our discussion by asking, “Why did Tecumseh cry?”
I waited to see what his classmates would do. The group sat in silence, heads down, flipping through their book, The Defenders.
“Watch me act as a participant in a book group, kids,” I said. “Jerome hasn’t given us enough information to help us answer his question so I am going to model what you can do when this happens again – and it will happen again. I’ll ask him something like, ‘What page are you on?’ This way we know what he is referring to and we can help him better.”
We turned to page 55 as per his response, but we still sat in silence. This behavior is typical of students in first-time groups. I discovered they truly do no know how to talk to one another about books.
“Watch what I do now, kids,” I said. “Jerome. Just knowing what page to turn to is not going to help us. We need you to read all the words around your question. Do you remember our minilesson? The one about reading context clues in order to get un-confused?” Turning to his bookmates, I said, “If I were you, I would ask Jerome something like, ‘would you tell us where Tecumseh cries and read the sentences around it for us?’”
“It’s at the bottom of the page.” Jerome told us. “It says, Tecumseh hated the white man, but he had compassion and he cried – – – (turn the page) – – – to his Indian brothers and said, ‘You are not acting as men.’”
More silence.
I realized that the page turn got in Jerome’s way and so he immediately fell back on his definition of “cry.” I’m experienced at this now, though. I’m the one who teaches how to talk to one another, so I pushed the students harder.
“What would force Tecumseh to cry? Sometimes you’ll find that you have to read the whole paragraph before you can answer someone’s question.”
We backed up and read the whole paragraph. The students pieced together that the Indians burned a white man at the stake. Everyone wanted to know what burning at the stake meant. I was surprised by their question, but I answered it anyway. They were interested now. However, they’d strayed from Jerome’s question. I needed to show them how to come back to an unanswered question.
I modeled again, “You just asked what burning at the stake means and, while interesting, that doesn’t answer Jerome’s question. Here’s another way to help. You can read the confusing part aloud to see if by reading aloud somebody sees the answer.” I read it without the page turn,”…and he cried to his Indian brothers.”
“Oh,” said Jerome. “That was a stupid question. He didn’t cry.”
“Plenty of readers confuse words because they have more than one meaning,” I assured him. “The page turn got in your way.” I pointed out that his group members had been confused, too. His question didn’t waste our time, either. As a result, we found out how white men were burned at the stake and what that meant. “Plus, you discovered a different meaning for cry by yourself. That’s what readers do.”
I used one of the many discussion moves I learned from watching the goddesses at work in their video clips and their workshops to honor Jerome’s dignity. I said, “Reading can be confusing, sharing our problems with others might be uncomfortable, sustaining our attention on solving the problem worked, getting off task and talking about other things in the book were okay, and as a result of our conversation, we found other interesting facts we had missed the first time around.”
Of course, I named what we learned for these readers. I called my observations to their attention in hope that that they would notice and repeat these behaviors.
And then our circle took off – off into the world of talking about books on their terms. Not where the teacher asks the questions, but where the students do the thinking, asking about things they truly do not understand.
These “strugglers” searched for answers for 30 more minutes because the questions were theirs. The level of engagement shot up: the kids pulled out maps, actually consulted their social studies book because they wanted to know, and asked about things that most teachers wouldn’t dream to assess. Would I have even considered “cry” as a vocabulary word in 5th grade?
Maybe, like me, you aspire to turn work over to the students. Maybe you want to know how to pay attention to what students ask, what they want to know, and what you can teach next. Maybe you want to learn from their questions instead of asking yours. Maybe you seek the joy of watching students ignore you while exploring their books.
Best of all, like me, hopefully you’ll love watching reading pleasure soar along with test scores from having this kind of fun. Wouldn’t you like to know how? I learned from reading and going to workshops with Cris, Debbie, and Stephanie all over the county. Now, they’re coming to us right here in our region. Come join us and get started!
Karen Haag is a teacher, a researcher, and a coach. She is the owner of LikeToWrite. She maintains 3 websites: www.facebook.com/LikeToWrite, www.liketoread.com, and www.liketowrite.com and is co-author of Thinking Out Loud on Paper (Heinemann, 2008). Karen would love to hear your comments. (Names of students have been changed.)
3/1/12