Use What You’ve Got
By Susan Mandel Glazer

This fill-in-the-blank diamente poem framework helped Spring focus on the most interesting facts about snakes.

"This is my retelling from the story," said 10-year-old Spring. "All the food was gone and the animals ran away."

"You did something very special," responded her teacher, Michelle. "You wrote a summary. Look, the story says: 'Mr. Floop sighed. He'd given his bread to the birds, his sausages to the dogs, his peanuts to the squirrels and his milk to the kittens. He was very hungry.' You made it shorter by putting it into your own words, and that's great. You paraphrased, Spring."

Giving credit where it's due
Spring had been asked to read Mr. Floop's Lunch by Matt Novak (Orchard, 1999) and retell the story in writing as if she were telling it to a friend who had never heard it before. Retellings are usually detailed accounts of what children listened to or read so, technically, Spring didn't retell.

But, instead of saying, "You didn't retell," Michelle capitalized on what Spring did produce and let Spring know that she was using an important skill – summarizing – without even realizing it.

A teachable moment
Though it will be important for Spring to learn how to retell stories properly, so she acquires a knowledge of story elements, an opportunity arose when Michelle realized Spring had written a summary. Instead of lecturing Spring on the correct way to do a retelling, Michelle put retelling aside for another time, and praised Spring's ability to shorten text and paraphrase. It seemed to be the right thing to do to spur more learning for Spring at that moment.

Just the facts
A few weeks later, Spring wrote a report about snakes for her science project. She learned to ask questions and find the answers by skimming and scanning texts and was able to identify the processes she used to construct her text.

"I wrote questions about what I wanted to know about snakes," Spring said. "I wanted to know about the things snakes eat and how they live. I wanted to know why some snakes are poisonous and some are not."

Her science reports were usually long and detailed. Michelle realized that since Spring had learned to write in detail in content areas, she would gain from learning to provide detailed information in a shorter format, as she did when responding to literature.

Spring's revision features a diamente framework that she designed herself. It lets you know the poem's topic right away!

Poetic information
Michelle chose to use a poetry framework to help Spring share information about snakes very briefly. Verbal explanation for how to use the framework was minimal since the poetic form being used – the diamente – would guide Spring to know how to shorten her text.

Michelle suggested that Spring search her report for nouns, adjectives and verbs that might be used to create the diamente poem. Synonyms for those adjectives, nouns and verbs were also discussed. Using some synonyms as well as words from the report would help Spring to paraphrase.

"I can't get all of the information into this poem," Spring reported after several days. "It's really hard to decide what words to pick that describe all the things I know about snakes."

"That's the challenge," Michelle responded. "Paraphrasing the information with fewer words means you have to choose the words that are most descriptive."

Spring's first draft
Spring reviewed her long report once again, to select the words that she felt told the most about snakes. After writing her first draft, Michelle helped her to edit it for spelling and to be sure the content was descriptive enough. Spring's summarizing skills helped her to create a vivid poem that included a great deal of basic information about snakes.

The finished product
When Michelle asked Spring to get another diamente framework on which to write her edited version, she was surprised to see Spring abandoning the pre-printed sheet in favor of creating her own visual.

"I decided to make the summary shorter, but the diamente sheet had space for extra words on it," Spring explained. "So I decided to make my own."

"Wow," Michelle said. "You shortened your detailed report using powerful words to share information. You also found a way to paraphrase the framework. That makes your summarized version really interesting. You know, Spring, your framework lets me know that your poem is about snakes before I even read the words. That's great!"

Seize the moment
If you're like me, you plan and replan for your students. Often, however, our students' actions lead us from our own plans to more important ones.

Spring created a narrative and a poem filled with wonderful content because Michelle seized the moment, taking advantage of Spring's recent paraphrased summary of a story. Because Michelle knew summarizing came easily to Spring, she was able to guide Spring to enhance the girl's writing skill.

I hope this school year has brought you many teachable moments like this one. Have a wonderful summer.

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

May 2004, Vol.34, No.8