Stop and Think About It

Sometimes it surprises a teacher when a student actually absorbs and practices the lesson. I love to teach reading. You see, reading is thinking. If my first graders can develop the strategies of great readers, they will be equipped to be great life-long thinkers. You may ask, what are the strategies of great readers? I'm glad you asked. According to Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmerman, the authors of Mosaic Of Thought-Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop, the strategies proficient readers use are:

• making connections, text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world
• making sensory images
• asking questions
• making inferences
• determining importance
• synthesizing
• using fix-up strategies when meaning breaks down.

Some may be amazed, but first graders, even while they are learning to "crack the code," can learn to use these strategies. I am learning to teach them how. And, even though I am convinced that they can, when it actually happens, I find myself delightfully surprised. A case in point:

Last Thursday I sat on the carpet beside one of my first grade boys with my 5x8 card poised to jot down my observations of his reading. He began reading. He read two pages slowly, but smoothly. Then he closed his book in his lap, and sat. He just sat there starring into thin air. I looked at him. He just sat.

Knowing this young man to be a hard worker, not one to take short-cuts, I questioned, "S, I know you are doing something important here. Can you tell me what you are doing?"

"I'm thinking," he responded.

Okay, I thought, I've been telling the class to stop and think about their reading after every few pages. Let's see what he's thinking.

"S," I prodded, "since I can't read your mind, can you talk to me about what you are thinking?"

"Well, it says that owls see by moonlight," he answered, "but I was wondering, if they see by the bright moonlight, why do they need such large eyes?"

As I said, it takes me off-guard when they show me their thinking skills. I'm not sure why. They do it often. "S," I encouraged, "What is your schema about that? What do you already know?"

He cocked his head to one side and pondered. Then his eyes lit up. "The moon doesn't always shine brightly! They need those big eyes for the times when the moon is not bright!"

Do you see what S did? He read the text. He asked a good question. At my prompt, he added his own knowledge to what the text said to make an inference, answering his own question. He is a first grader, in the process of learning to read, really read. I am his teacher, and I am surprised that he can do so much.