Photo Credit: Doug Brown via Compfight
In a previous post, I raised some questions: Why does it seem like there is less energy in my classroom for reading informational text? Why are the conversations that happen around informational text read alouds not as deep, speculative, or far-ranging as the ones that happen during our fiction read alouds? Why do we seem to reach “WOW!”, but not so much beyond that?
In that post I speculated that at least one reason might be because fiction offers a story to readers that allows us to live in the world of the book, to toss around ideas about what might be happening in that world, or what it all might mean.
Non-narrative informational text doesn’t offer that story-world to inhabit, it offers a world of ideas.
Mary Lee Hahn, writer, poet, teacher, and across-a-distance-friend, offered a compelling reason that nonfiction might have a different feel, and gently pushed me to think more about the distinctions I was making. Says Mary Lee:
I’m wondering if there’s one more piece to the puzzle about response to informational text. Could it be that life experience is what moves us past the “that’s cool” stage to the one where we’re fascinated by the interconnectedness of information…because we’ve lived long enough to develop a network of cognitive connections? Maybe story is a doorway that is so hardwired that we can walk through at any age (in some way, shape or form), but informational text functions like life experience or mathematical learning — in more of a sequential, cumulative way. Maybe we need to embrace the differences in response to fiction and nonfiction, rather than trying to make them the same.
I love the idea that more experienced readers become “fascinated by the interconnectedness of information.” Certainly that is the case for me. The more I read, the more ideas I collect, the more I see, the more the connections (and disconnections) take on an intrinsic interest. Many of the people that I see as models for how to live an engaged and aware life study the world around them. They mine experience and the information it provides for questions and connections and new knowledge.
I think of the work of Bernd Heinrich (Ravens in Winter, A Year in the Maine Woods) a scientist-writer I love to read because, for example, he does stuff like this: While sitting on his front porch at his cabin the the Northeastern US woods, Heinrich follows a small wasp to the woodpile where he observes it laying its eggs inside the larva of wood beetles, an observation that opens up a discussion of the violent world of whole-body parasitism. It’s a larva eat larva world out there.
Paul Gruchow ( Grassroots: The Universe as Home) really understands the social and natural history of both northern and southern Minnesota (quite a feat as they are such different places.) Powerful poems emerge from Mary Oliver’s daily walks around her home in Massachusetts (A Thousand Mornings). How can the same walk each day generate such depth of insight?
As I write, I realize that I hope the learners in our classroom experience the joy of living an engaged and aware life, and the way “reading like the wolf eats” (Gary Paulson), including books on how the wolf eats!, is part of that engaged life.
So, thanks to Mary Lee, here’s a second stab at what I wanted to say.
I suspect that that not only does fiction offer up a story, a world to explore, but that fiction allows us to slow down our life. Perhaps life happens at a pace and with such a welter of experience that it is hard to focus, to slow down enough to let the importance of events sink in until long after they are over. By offering up a text that isn’t our own life, but talks about things we have experienced or anticipate experiencing, we are able to live inside the lives that inhabit that imaginary world because it moves at the pace of a book. Talking, pondering, exploring are the visible signs of slowing down; they are ways for us expand our understanding of what is happening. But the important thing is to slow down.
If that’s true, that slowing down thing, then maybe what I seek for our nonfiction reading is a chance to slow down, too. “WOW!” is a start, but “WOW” is a match whose heat flickers out quickly.
I think I’m looking for ways to slow down the nonfiction reading experience so we can live in the experience, to deepen our understanding, to let the roots of thinking grow, to take the next step into the room that WOW opened for us.
I want to explore how to do this. Maybe this blog is a place to start? Does this distinction make sense to you? Does it seem worth pursuing?
I’ll do some more thinking about how I can slow down our reading and where that might take us.
I, too, feel like I’m still figuring out nonfiction & this sparked a couple of thoughts, many of which involved thinking about purpose. First, like you, there’s certain nonfiction writers I love, whether it’s Atul Gawande writing about medicine or Diane Ackerman writing about the sense of smell. With them, the topic seems less important to me as a reader than their sensibilities & their language. And that makes me wonder whether one of the differences between fiction and nonfiction is that in fiction we live in the world of the story and in what I might call literary nonfiction, we live in the mind of the author. If you want your students to experience that, you might need something like an author study or pairings of texts that look at the same topic through different author eyes. Someone like Nicola Davis might be good for that or Charles Finn, who I learned about from my Opal School friends (see http://opalschoolblog.typepad.com/opal-school-blog/2012/10/literacy-studio.html for a taste of how 5th graders responded to him).
Finn would also be good if the purpose was to help kids experience the joy of an engaged life, as would picture books like Insect Detective by Steve Voake, which invite you to slow down, listen and look alongside the author.
And then I’m reminded of something that happened after I first read this yesterday. I picked up the book I’m reading, Archangel, which is admittedly fiction, and I had a wow reaction to the fact in this sentence: “After dinner, they listened to one of the assistant teachers talk about the remarkable ability of the holothurians, or sea cucumbers, to escape their predators by ejecting their viscera and later regrowing them.” I tried to push into that wow to think about what sparked it, and beneath the wow was marvel at the ingenuity of creatures and evolution. And that made me wonder if the room you want kids to experience may be right there ‘in’ the wow, not beyond it, and the ideas might emerge if we invited kids to slow down and try to articulate the wow. I imagine that might take some time to get to, but that seems like a door worth opening. Yes?
I agree, Vicki. Maybe we shouldn’t dismiss the WOW, or move away from it. Maybe we should slow down and stay with it. If the WOW is a match flame, Steve, then we need to show our students how to get that flame to a candle wick before the match burns out. Or maybe the metaphor should be the old standard lightbulb, because what we want our students to do is create a web of circuits connecting the new idea to others.
Thanks for all of your thinking energy, Mary Lee. You and Vicki have prodded me to think more deeply about this. (Also, quite inadvertently, Laura Purdie Salas’ comment on a different post, the one about metaphor, got me thinking more about metaphor and poetry and explaining complex ideas, which is sort of where I think I”m heading with my re-immersion in Georgia Heard’s work…
In fact, as I think about it, Laura’s comment help me see some of the thinking roots about this that were working below the surface, this trying to live more deeply in the ideas (as well as the writing) presented in nonfiction.
You are busy, you are generous. 🙂
Wow! Thanks for the thinking, Vicki. There’s a lot to process here…I’m very, very grateful for the opportunity to think about what you’ve written.
First, yes, I completely am into the Wow that comes from reading something interesting. I think what I”m striving for (without being very articulate) is to live within that wow for a bit longer than we’ve been living it. As Mary Lee argues below, that’s my job — to take that wow and work with it, to give it some more fuel so it can sustain itself. I suspect “the engaged life” (and is THAT too weird/ambitious to hope to foster as a public school teacher??) comes from the habit of living within these moments of wow, to delve more deeply into them, to make connections (again, as Mary Lee observed) between disparate things.
Also, I love the distinction between living within the world of the book (fiction) and living within the mind of the author (informational text). As you say this it makes me realize that’s probably explains what I love about essays, which are usually explorations of “ideas” via mini-stories and other devices? Perhaps the essayist’s stance is a good mentor for me to think about as I try to create something different for my classroom?
Finally, thanks so much for the link to the Opal School blog post about Finn’s book. I wasn’t aware of this book, but I’m going to order it. It looks like a great book to get me thinking more about this idea. (And, wow, would I love to teach at a place like Opal School!)
And here’s one more wow. Five years ago, heck, two years ago, I never had such a set of colleagues scattered across the country. I feel my “smarts” have been multiplied by some exponent that I’m still trying to understand.
Thank you so much for taking the time to think about this with me. It’s really a huge help.
Steve,
Wow! Your post has generated so much thinking. I’ve got all kinds of ideas bouncing around. First off, your initial thinking about bringing our story skills to our nonfiction is powerful. Really all of life is a story. Bringing fiction thinking to nonfiction may not only provide more engagement, but clearly deeper thinking. Other ideas you’ve brought up…
1- Building on the wow and using that as an entry to nonfiction. What matters and fascinates our students is perfect way to engage getting students to seeing it as the tip of the iceberg, getting them to dive deeper is our challenge.
2- Taking our wonders from fiction and using that as an entry to nonfiction. Developing our wonders and ultimately creating researchers. I’m imagining where wonderings from The One and Only Ivan might lead.
3- Creating an idea driven classroom –one that celebrates the pursuit of our wonderings from all kinds or reading or discussion.
So much of this involves honoring our student’s wonderings and then teaching how to pursue that wonder. All of it requires slowing down and paying attention. The development of students that pursue their wonderings and their wows is really what we are after. That would be a wow in any classroom!
And how about that Opal school!
Juiieanne
Julieanne,
Thanks so much for taking this seriously. I love your framing of what I’m trying to do here. (BTW, that framing seems like a very important teaching task, doesn’t it? You all are helping me understand what it is I mean (the framing part) that I can use to figure out my next steps…)
And, yes, I would love to help students pursue what they wonder about. Part of that is to make wonder more apparent, as you point out. For example, I love the approach(es) you are taking in your own classroom — the conversations about books, the reflection, the questions — partly because they make learning more visible to the community of learners. I would like to do more and more of this sort of thing in my classroom, too. I wonder if a more completely teacher-directed classroom (including a whole bunch of the “learning goals” posted around the room: “The student will/can…”, which is the current model, it seems) actually keeps students from developing their own goals and forces them into a more passive role. I’m seeking ways to assist the active construction of learning.
Finally, you’ve given me some interesting things to think about with poetry and learning. I think I need to explore more about my own processes while reading nonfiction, or writing poetry, like what Vicki does with teachers via professional learning workshops.(Wouldn’t one of THOSE be fun to attend???)
And, yes, it seems that Opal School has figured out some of the stuff I’m trying to figure out, too. It would be fun to be in that environment. (Heavy sigh.) But it sure is wonderful that they share so much of what they do. 🙂