Cultivating Awareness
By Susan Mandel Glazer

For a downloadable copy of the Good Learner Strategies sheet click here. PDF 16KB

If you haven't read Harvey Daniels' wonderful book Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups (Stenhouse, 2001, ISBN: 1-571-10333-3) then you must! Harvey's book helps teachers to guide kids to understand what they read, through discussion. It also helps kids identify the actions they're taking to understand what they read.

Harvey does this through a series of assigned roles during discussion. There are eight roles in all, including the "connector," who links something in the book to something in life or in other books. The "question asker" develops questions to ask peers concerning the text. The "illustrator" creates visuals to represent ideas. These jobs guide students to connect the text to prior knowledge in order to find meaning in stories.

Sparking discussion
Rachel Steinberg, a teacher in the Montgomery Township Public Schools in NJ, and six of her second graders chose the book Mother, Mother I Feel Sick, Send For the Doctor Quick, Quick, Quick by Remy Charlip and Burton Supree (Tricycle, 2001, ISBN: 1-582-46043-4) for literature circle discussion. This book is about a boy who eats everything, from a reading lamp to a spaghetti dinner – including the plate.

Since the children chose the book from several titles that Rachel preselected, discussion about the story began without prompts from Rachel. She facilitated discussion simply by placing books on a table and saying, as she paged through one, "These are wonderful books. I'm having a hard time deciding which one to read."

Making connections
As the children thumbed through the books, Rachel attended to their remarks using a discovery approach. Here's how she guided Jonathan to know how he was making meaning of the text.

"I like this one!" said Jonathan.

"Why do you like that one?" asked Rachel.

"Because I eat too much sometimes, and my stomach hurts like the boy in the pictures in this book."

"You made a connection, Jonathan," Rachel responded. "You made a connection between the picture and the boy's tummy ache and..."

Jonathan interrupted, patting his stomach. "My tummy feels like it gets all blown up like a balloon, like the boy in the book, and I get a tummy ache."

"Good for you," said Rachel. "You made another connection, to eating too much and having a tummy ache. You are a connector," she said, emphasizing the role Jonathan had taken.

Reinforcing the roles
Jonathan talked and then Rachel pointed out his role. Instead of assigning or explaining roles, she provided a name for the role each child played. Because the children had taken the action, they understood how what they'd seen in the book related to their lives.

After she identified the action, Rachel asked, "Tell me what you did."

Jonathan said, "I made a connection between the book and things in my head."

"Write that down!" Rachel said. Jonathan recorded his behavior on the "Good Learner Strategies" sheet Rachel keeps in order for her students to identify, label and record good learning strategies that they use. The strategies include, "Make a picture in my mind," "Predict before reading," "Predict during reading" and others.

Rachel then gave Jonathan a "Connector" name tag to wear. Another one of our teachers, instead of making name tags for the different roles, attached string to paper cups so one cup could be worn around each child's neck. He wrote the various discussion roles on tongue depressors. Each time a student provided a response that fit one of the roles, he dropped a tongue depressor bearing the name of that role into the child's cup.

Young children enjoy this method, but some of them can't help toying with the cup. For those youngsters, the teacher used pre-printed stick-on labels. Each time a child played a certain role, the teacher affixed the appropriate label to the child's shirt.

It's interesting to see how many of Harvey Daniels' discussion roles students will play just to receive that role's name tag to wear. It's as though the tags are medals of honor for their accomplishments.

For a downloadable copy of the Good Learner Strategies sheet click here. PDF 16KB

Susan Mandel Glazer is the Director of the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrence, NJ.