Compelling Students to Read: Why One Question Might Matter

The questions you see in this post are from a preview of a Middle School Guided Reading by Genre: CCSS Aligned, a product  for 5th-8th grade teachers available at Teachers pay Teachers. What I appreciate about the product is that Kiehl (the teacher-author) distinguishes between the genres in the discussions. For example, she clearly notes that each genre leads readers to think in a way that other genres may not and the questions reflect that distinction. Further, the questions provided do offer teachers an effective template from which to work. 

The essential questions, though, the big questions, the ones that would help students understand why we’re asking all of these other, rather random questions, can't be put on this template for obvious reasons. There are just too many possibilities.

However, my fear is that teachers, particularly those who are either too new, too fearful, or too apathetic to personalize the templates purposefully and thoughtfully, will over-rely on the offered questions, using them verbatim and nothing else. Again, don’t get me wrong—the questions will work, and Kiehl is to be lauded for creating a clear, cohesive document.

But what these questions cannot do is inspire any sort of motivation to read other than to answer the questions.  The motivation is the grade that the student will get from answering the questions (possibly for a simple participation grade or maybe for accuracy, depending on the teacher).  

Without any reason to want to answer these questions about a text or a character within it, why should the student bother exercising his or her brain to use the skill?

Without that desire, the questions, much like the ones answered on a standardized test, the goal is just to get the right answer by demonstrating mastery of the critical thinking skill.  But is that all really what we want? Don’t we want more? Don’t we want students to either LOVE reading or LOVE reading the particular novel, short story, text, or poem?  How can we encourage and instill that love for reading in any genre if all we want them to do is plough through questions to demonstrate that yes, Johnny can infer, synthesize, predict, and connect? 

We have to take a crucial initial step.

Let’s use one of the recommended inference questions from the template to create a quick example from Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear, a text within the historic fiction genre: 

                What can you infer about Creb based on what Ayla has to say about him in the text?

From the template: What can you infer about (insert character's name) based on what (insert character's name) says about him/her in the text? 

I dearly love this book, and I’ve read it over and over again. I have to wonder, though, what question I could ask before this one that might inspire a student to want to care about what Ayla has to say about Creb. Why should the student care what Ayla thinks about the Mogur?  What question can I ask to get the student to even bother to desire to make this inference and respond to it? 

That compelling question, whatever it is, must be asked first. 

There must be a compelling reason for students to want to understand other than just practicing inferences because it’s something that students have to do because it’s a standard they have to know because we’re being evaluated on how well our students perform on that standard because that’s how our school is graded and plays a part in how much funding we get.  

Are we asking these initial, compelling, driving questions? 

Perhaps:

                Does it matter what daughters think about their fathers or father-figures? Why? 

From this over-arching question the follow-up inference question would flow quite nicely. 

Does it matter what children think about their fathers or father-figures? Why or why not?

Based on what Ayla says about Creb in the novel, what kind of a person and father do you think he is? (for the girls)

Based on what Broud says about Brun in the novel, what kind of a person and father do you think he is? (for the boys)

Actually, from that initial question, several others would naturally flow, particularly those under the category of connections.   Further, the distinction of gender provides an even greater connection for students. (You’ll notice that I changed the wording of the template question somewhat, but the meaning and underlying skill is the same.) 

When we offer students a compelling, clearly connective question BEFORE we have them analyze from a text, we can instill a greater intrinsic motivation to analyze, but we also move the emphasis away from the grade and the test and the standards. We make it real. We make the story mean something to them.  Figuring something out has a purpose that might make a difference in their lives. 

Try it once and see. Create that compelling, connective question that will drive the rest of those aligned questions on that worksheet and discuss it with students, first. If you’re really adventurous, try it one class but not the other, and compare the final products.  Let us know what you find out! 

Mindy and some of her former students have collaborated on a book of teaching strategies: Transparent Teaching of Adolescents: Creating the Ideal Class for Students and Teachers.  Check us out on FaceBook, too!

Cynical Teens and the Literature We Feed Them

I suppose I have to preface this whole thing by saying I don't want to eliminate the use of powerful literature. I do support the teaching of works from Faulkner, Cisneros, Orwell, Walker,and many others. I'm not talking about historical selections either, by the way. We have to teach history and all the ickiness that comes with it.

However, I'm sure you'll agree that most literature selections for high-schoolers (9-12th grade) are profoundly negative. They deal with negative themes, such as revenge, racism, anger, war, genocide, injustice, abandonment. Most include murders, suicides, abuse of authority/power. 

Our non-fiction selections center around individuals usually in dire circumstances, who overcome those circumstances (maybe). Those circumstances generally being war, poverty, abuse, illness, and more. Even poetry selections tend to be negative. Consider these lines from Jarrell's "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner":

               When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Our lesson for the day? Imagery. Apparently, as our teacher said, we were not "getting it". So, she assigned this one from our textbook. For the student to get the imagery, here, he/she has to visualize someone shot to death in WWII ball turret to the extent that the body is a mash of bloody pulp. (I mention this particular poem because it traumatized me for months after reading it.)

I have to think that today's battle-weary gamer would shrug this off with ease.   Callousness is another potential issue with the negative themes and story-lines. The impact is minimal.  Murder? Pshaw, just another news story, game, movie.

Somewhere after middle school, the literary tide turns to the darker side human life. One of the arguments for the selections promoted in a recent discussion I encountered was that students need to see the non-examples in an effort to get them to understand negative consequences or to create "What if" scenarios.  For example, what if so and so character had chosen to do something else (as opposed to murdering, bullying, abusing, etc.). What might be a better way to handle this situation?

Of course, literature can be used this way, but I have to wonder why we can't provide them with an example of someone doing the right thing or a positive example. I have to presume this has to do with the cynicism of teens. They simply don't see people doing the right thing very often, do they?  They see adults in their lives self-medicating with alcohol, drugs. They see abuse, whether physical or verbal. They see authority figures doing the wrong thing. 

They see the core of the darkness all the time. They live it.
 
Is the emphasis on negative themes truly helping them consider potentially negative outcomes? Or would they be better served by our providing them (at least once in a unit) with a positive text? Granted, we can only teach To Kill a Mockingbird (effectively) one time, and it is a middle-school selection. But surely, there is another Atticus Finch for high schoolers? Would they accept him/her, though, or would they sneer with derisive cynicism because nobody "really" acts this way?

Does the positive message of a text get lost when a good person makes the right choices, but the problem--racism or corruption, for example--remains? What does that say about our ability to tackle the social ills that plague our cultures? If our students feel that the problems are insurmountable, and don't see the impact of small changes or ideas, then they may be less apt to even consider the "What if" scenarios.

Because they might feel that doing the right thing doesn't matter anyway.  If we can, we need to help them see a much larger picture. And we're going to have to have some evidence for it. Literature may be one way to do that.


I'd love for you all to share some of your literary selections that emphasize a positive example or a character making positive choices! Maybe we just need to have a few to consider, specifically for high school.  




Mindy and some of her former students recently published Transparent Teaching of Adolescents, a discussion of effective teaching strategies for high school. Join the conversation!

Get Rid of Romeo and Whatsinhername

By the time students graduate from high school all they can tell you about Shakespeare is that they had to read Romeo and Juliet and either the "Scottish Tragedy" or Othello, generally accompanied with a rolling of eyes. Why are we so quick to load already arguably-depressed teens down with tragic Shakespeare? The recommended texts per CCSS are Macbeth and Hamlet, if you’re wondering.
 
If we are truly concerned with suicide ideation, bullying, and domestic abuse, then shouldn’t we move away from these darker sides of humanity in our literature choices?

The beauty of Shakespeare, we English-teacher types argue, lies in his understanding of human nature and motivation, use of poetry and dramatic structure. mmkay. Then, I humbly suggest that we use some of his comedies to share these same elements with students.

Joe Dixon (Bottom) and Andrea Harris (Titania) in A Midsummer Night's Dream by the RSC. 

Photograph: Tristram Kenton. January 16, 2009

Consider A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which pulls on teen heartstrings just as much, if not more, than R and J. Imagine their reactions to Helena and her machinations, Hermia’s rebellion against an arranged marriage, the outrageously funny Pyramus and Thisby, and the perfect tying up of every plot point—all worlds, the natural, the supernatural, and the created are one.

It’s beautiful, fun, and provides students with an answer to why Shakespeare is timeless.  It answers, “Why do we have to read this?” with a chuckle and perhaps a stronger lean towards understanding his creative choices as a playwright. 

That’s what we want them to understand about him… isn’t it?

Further, what does our audience of students need to read, today? What might effectively transport them to another time, place, and situation, where they might just want to stay for a while?

Some years ago, when Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne plowed through Florida, we decided to cancel our theatre department’s production of Gibson’s The Miracle Worker. After six weeks of no school, we could have pulled it together with a bit less flair, but we took a moment to think about our audience.

Our intended audience was trying to get back on its feet after losing homes, loved ones, and jobs. We all had firsthand knowledge of MREs and generators, and what it was like to go without water and electricity for weeks. People fought each other over bags of ice. Bare signposts and fallen trees, blue FEMA tarps on roofs, and devastated businesses—these were the sights that greeted us on the way into school in the aftermath. That and our gym roof that had been peeled away from the building like a sheet of aluminum foil.

While Miracle Worker is a profound and wonderful play, it just wasn’t what our audience needed.  So, instead, we wrote a play: a comedy that pulled in laughter to help overcome the dark moments. A comedy that spoke to their spirits at that moment.

Comedy, and an analysis of this art form, may be what our audience of students needs. Enough what with the death and the dying and the killing and the feuding families. They’ve got that covered, I think.

Do we dare go against the tide and take a creative risk with students, or do we rest on our tried-and-true already-printed out lesson plans, literary guides, and tests for Romeo and Juliet?