I can remember reading entire novels to my class—chapter one to
final page, every word read aloud by the students or me. Picture, if you will, the wonderful variety
of ways one can slump in a chair. Heads
lolling back; elbows sliding off of armrests jerking the student awake; cheek
resting on arm, resting on desk, with the book propped open and the eyes maybe
opened maybe closed; legs splayed out across the aisle with body slumped down
so low the head can rest on the chair back, book in lap, both fists dug into
both cheeks keeping head solidly in place.
Oh, I could just go on and on, but I don’t need to, you’ve been in a
classroom, you’ve seen it. In fact,
you’ve no doubt done it. So, just
picture it and run your eyes around that classroom. Are we having fun yet?
And there is me,
probably really into the book because most of the time I actually like the
literature I assign. Every five to ten
lines I’m interrupting, to ask a question, usually one designed just to see if
anyone besides me knows what’s going on.
“Isn’t that
funny?”
“Huh?”
“Well, don’t you
get it? Mr. Avery is urinating off the
porch?”
“Huh?”
“And Jem and
Dill are trying to see who can pee the furthest, but Scout feels left out
because she is ‘untalented in that area.’”
“Huh?”
“Oh, go back to
sleep!”
I shudder to
think about it now. What the heck did I
think I was teaching them? Well, now, to be
honest, one time a senior came to me and said, “You know, that’s the first book
I’ve ever read all the way through.” So,
that was something. And I’m a pretty
good reader, so there were different voices for different characters and lots
of expression.
“Ain’t ya gonna
tell about da Rabbits, George?” I’d
drawl out in a deep, slow-witted, loose-mouthed voice. And maybe a few realized I was modeling good
reading.
But really,
weeks and weeks would go by with very little time for discussion or guided
analysis, or understanding of how one piece of literature fit with others and
with the times in which it was written.
I don’t know
exactly when it happened (probably on a day when I looked up from the page to
realize I was the only one awake) but, one day I decided I was never going to
read to them again unless I had a very specific purpose. Whatever day that was, it was certainly
liberating, but it left one tiny, teeny, itsy, bitsy problem—I would have to
find a way to get them to read on their own.
Now, maybe other
people have students who can’t wait to get at the books they assign, finishing them the first
night because, “Well, it was just so good I couldn’t put it down.” I’ve never met those kids. I’ve met one or two of their cousins, who
would read because reading was assigned, but actually, not too many of those
either. In fact, when I was in school, a
night when the only homework I had was pages to read, was a night without
homework. The students I have taught
would fully endorse that attitude.
I started out my
new approach by using a recipe of reason, spiced with guilt. “The work I have planned for tomorrow
absolutely depends on you reading this chapter.
There will be no way for you to participate if you haven’t done so,
therefore making tomorrow a complete waste of your time. And besides, I have worked hard on the lesson
and you’ll really be letting me down if you come in unprepared.” They really let me down.
Next, I went to
the old reliable stand-by—guided reading questions. “1. How does Bigger’s desperate run from the
police relate to his existence as a whole?
2. From what do you think he is really running?” On and on like that. I can’t bear to repeat them. In any case, those who did the homework did
only what was necessary to come up with an answer to the question. And since the questions were disconnected,
they often still had no idea what really happened in the chapter.
Time to get a
little creative. Have them make up questions. Ten questions from each chapter with the
answers. “These very same questions will
be used on your test at the end of the week, so don’t ask something you can’t
answer.” This had potential, if I had
bothered to teach them about how to ask questions, and the differences between
different kinds. After a while I got
tired of, “What is the reason why Bigger did that?” or “Who is Jan?”
Then, in
desperation at attempting to light yet another discussion unfueled by any
knowledge of the text, I slammed the book on my desk and said, “Okay, that’s
it! From now on we start every class
with a quiz on what you were assigned to read the night before. Twenty points each, five quizzes equal a test
mark.”
What! Was I out of my mind? Thirty to thirty-four kids in a class, five
classes, five questions per quiz—that’s a minimum of 750 answers to be checked
every day! Suicidal! I pursued this mad
policy for exactly one day.
And then,
finally, the great god of education took pity on me and sent me
inspiration. Here was a way to teach
them how to ask questions, get them to read the pages, help them learn to think
like a teacher (i.e. a mature reader), reduce my workload, and maybe even have
a little fun in the process.
“Okay, tomorrow we’re going to handle this a
little differently. I am going to read
the next ten pages tonight and I am going to make up 5 questions about things
that I consider to be important to know from the chapter. They are going to be strictly factual, that
is, you’ll be able to put your finger on the answer stated clearly in the
story. What words do we usually use to
begin factual questions?”
“Whowhatwhenwherewhy
and how.” Several voices call out in
bored unison.
“’Why’ usually
gets you factual answers?”
“No, not ‘why’,”
someone says.
“Ah, good. See, two things happened there. You stopped to think, which is always a good
thing to do in a classroom, and you read my thinking. You knew I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t
want you to change your answer. In other
words, you thought like me. That’s good
because for your homework tonight your assignment is to read my mind.
“To do so, first
you are going to read the same 10 pages I do, and then you are going to write
at least 5 factual questions about important facts from the chapter. If any two of your questions match two of
mine, you don’t have to take the quiz, you get twenty free points, and while
everybody else slaves away at the quiz, you can sit back, relax and grin at the
backs of their heads. Now, I said, at
least five questions, but you can write as many as you want. Try to think about what things might be
important. I’m not going to ask, ‘What
was the third word on page 62?’ Also, be
sensible, don’t ask, ‘What color was Jane’s pink nail polish?’ Duh!
“Don’t waste
your time on ‘why’ questions, there won’t be any. ‘How come’ and ‘for what reason’ are ‘why’
questions too, so don’t bother with them.
And if anybody asks, ‘what is the reason why…’ I swear, I will rent a
truck and run them over with it.
‘Reason’ means ‘why’ and ‘why’ means ‘reason’ so send this phrase back
to the Department of Redundancy Department and keep it out of my classroom.”
(Corny, I know, but kids love corny so long as they love you.)
Good ideas have
two possibilities in the classroom—fly or die.
As soon as they entered the next day, I asked them for their five
questions, circling slowly through the room to pick them up, allowing the last
kids a few minutes to write down one or two more. “Now, take five minutes to look over the
pages, while I check your questions against mine…. Julese, you don’t have to
take the quiz…”
“Yessss.”
“David, you’re
out, too. Tough luck, Akbar. Robert, you have twenty questions here…”
“You said we
could…”
“I know,
unfortunately, only one matches mine. As
you take the quiz see if you can tell why….”
And so on down
the line. In the end, four students were
excused. After I spent some time on a
review of what constitutes “important information,” the next day eight people
were excused. By the fifth day we were
down to only one to three people per class taking the quiz. Kids were regularly writing ten to fifteen
questions and were reading the text thoroughly.
They would rush into class before the bell to express indignation about
something dumb the protagonist had done, often anticipating the day’s lesson
but sometimes sending us in a gloriously different direction.
As time went on
and there were occasional days when no one had to take the quiz, I added another
wrinkle. I would have them open to the
chapter under review, put their thumb in the book and close it, then I would
read one of my questions and the first person to find the sentence that
answered it, would get two extra points.
Their skim/scan abilities improved dramatically. They began to pay attention to where things
happened. Some got so good at it I had
to limit them to answering no more than two questions.
I suppose, over
the years I did become somewhat bored with having to begin nearly every period that involved a shared text, in the same way.
And, after we had done it with one or two texts, I would try to wean them
away from it. Still, it was immensely
popular with the kids. They wanted that
push, and the hint of competition, and the improvement in their grades that
came from getting perfect quiz marks without taking the quiz.
In addition to
the benefits of having more class time to look at author’s craft issues (moving
them from appreciators of a story, to appreciators of how the story was
created), there was the bonus of ever greater understanding of the varieties and
purposes of questions.
We discovered
that ‘why’ questions could bring factual answers after all—“Why, according to
Holden…?” would bring us Holden’s exact words.
We learned that ‘how’ questions, could require deep analysis of a
situation—“How well does Holden cope with changes in his life?” We moved from simple “How much…who…when…”
questions to more thoughtful ones, and it gave the students a different way
into the mind of the teacher, as they tried to anticipate what I might consider
important enough to ask.
As we began The Taming of the Shrew one day,
the first thing students who had been in class with me before asked was, “Are
we going to have those quizzes?” There
was a groan from a couple of the new kids, then I heard a whispered, “No,
they’re great!”
Kids reading on
their own—what a concept!
