Sorting through details: Notes on a couple transitional readers

Here’s a story from inside the dog.

In a recent post I began to explore where meaning broke down during a lesson on figurative language, meaning-making, and poetry. I discovered that some students were not entering the text at a very deep level; they sought literal meaning out of the words in Ted Kooser’s poem, A Child Frightened by a Thunderstorm. This observation caused me to regroup some of my students and focus my instruction and observation on how some kids were making meaning. For one group, I chose an easier chapter book, The Blue Ghost as a common text for us to read. I chose it because the words of the The Blue Ghost are not too difficult to read, and the text is laid out on the page in an easier format for these transitional readers. However, I knew that the plot offered some trouble areas — time travel by going through a wall, the story of a grandmother who is trying to hold onto the past, and an evolving plot that reveals bits and pieces of the past to the main character as she moves through the story.

blue ghostWe started out by looking at the cover of the book, which shows a ghostly blue figure floating above a wooden floor, and the title, The Blue Ghost. Obviously, this illustration and title got the kids wondering about this figure: Who was it? Was it a real ghost? Where was it? How did she die?

The two children in this very small group — I’ll call them Cal and Alice — opened the book and began to read. They took note of the main character (Liz), the setting (her grandmother’s house), and began to puzzle out what was happening. As we read, I tried to stay back a bit, asking questions like this: What are you noticing? What are you thinking about? What makes you think that? I took notes on what they said by filling in a Details – Thoughts – Wonders chart.

Blue ghost p1Blue ghost p2

Away from the support of more experienced classmates, Cal and Alice paid close attention to the arrival of the ghost, but did not notice several clues — her arrival over an old chest, her exit through a wall that had been added to separate the room from the rest of the house — as well as an overall “oldness” to the description of the room that Liz was in. I’m positive that the more experienced readers in the classroom would have noticed these descriptions, and connected them to the old-timey clothes the ghost was wearing. They would have begun to form an draft of the meaning (in Vinton and Barnhouse’s language) that included the long-distant past and something that must have happened in the house.

Instead, these readers focused on the faces in the pictures they were offered. In the picture above, Cal noticed that the ghost looked like the girl and speculated that the ghost was the girl’s dead mother. Alice wasn’t so sure about this interpretation, but then began to agree with Cal as he pointed out how the two appeared to be related. I stepped in and mentioned that we need to look at both the text and the picture to verify that the ghost might be the mom. This picture alone might be some evidence; authors usually give readers a lot of evidence or clues. But as in the poem, the draft understanding of this being the girl’s mother was too enticing to drop. When I asked what made him think that, Cal replied: “Liz is by herself. Where is her mother? Maybe her mother is dead and now she wants to warn Liz about something, or see her again.” I brought up the clothes looking old-timey and that didn’t connect with what her mother might wear. But the evidence I offered wasn’t very convincing and my point wasn’t to hammer home an interpretation, but to show how evidence is used. Cal responded that maybe this is just what ghosts wear, and why would the illustrator make the girl and the ghost look so much alike anyway?

The second chapter dropped the ghost and picked up the grandmother, with an enticing title, “Connections.” The author mentioned that Liz was helping the grandmother move out of her house. Also, we learned that Liz’s mother had asked her to join grandmother, which should have been a clue that she was not the ghost. Alice picked up on this and thought that detail proved the ghost wasn’t Liz’s mother. Cal stuck to his original interpretation by bringing in a ‘logical’ (not textual) argument: “Maybe Liz’s mother died after she told her to go to the house and now she is visiting Liz.” We let that sit for awhile and read on.

As we read, we got more clues about the age of the house, but the children had a difficult time putting this new information — about grandmother and the importance of the long-in-the-family house to grandmother — together with the ghost. As Alice said: “Why did the author introduce the ghost and then we haven’t heard anything else about it since the first chapter?” Their attention started to flag a bit in the second chapter as they expected to learn more about the ghost and, instead, learned only about Liz’s grandmother and her love for a house that was in the family for many generations.

That’s as far as we’ve gotten in the story. Standardized testing (don’t get me started!) and some snow days have derailed our journey. It will take a bit to get us back on the track, if we can get our mojo back.

But I do have some preliminary observations about what has happened.

1. Putting more than one or two pieces of evidence together is difficult for these two students. I’m going to need to work on helping them use more evidence to build a draft understanding. It seems the draft they were creating got built out of a small amount of evidence (for example, the way the faces look in an illustration) and additional evidence was based on “logical thinking”, rather than the text. We’re going to have to practice using textual evidence.

2. I must try using these explicit words — rough draft understanding of the story — so they can see that we don’t have to fit all new details into an already existing understanding. We can shift our understanding as we get new information. While we have talked a lot about this in large group, I can see that was especially difficult for Cal to internalize, as he had a very difficult time letting go of the mother-as-ghost draft.

3. The kids missed some crucial details about setting and costume that might have helped them get a better sense of what was happening. They read the details about the house and room, even noted some of them, but weren’t able to use them in their early draft understanding of the story. They didn’t know how to assign importance to them. Is this just experience? What can I do to help them see the importance of setting, especially early in the story?

4. I can see why Cal and Alice abandon early chapter books so readily. The second chapter’s introduction of a new character — grandmother — threw them. They experienced this chapter as a movement away from the real story, the story about the ghost, rather than as crucial background to the story. More experienced readers would have held their early understanding of the ghost next to the new information about grandmother for longer into the book. They would have produced a more nuanced and observant draft of what was happening. Without being able to do that, the second chapter became less relevant, less interesting. If I wouldn’t have been reading with them, they probably would have abandoned the story at that point.

So, I’m hoping to get back to The Blue Ghost after tests are over. What a huge hole these blow in our instructional day/week/year. Whew.

As usual, if you haven’t been reading Vicki Vinton’s blog, especially her last two entries that explore in depth conversations with two readers in reading workshop, please check them out. You’ll also be able to see how they have influenced my thinking, too. Many thanks to her for that work!

One thought on “Sorting through details: Notes on a couple transitional readers

  1. Pingback: Re-reading to discover author choices — more notes on transitional readers

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