leave 'em hanging

"...finally arrived at Grandmother's door."

and that's the end of
part 1.  tonight, while you're waiting
to fall asleep, you

may find Little Red
lifting the latch of your dreams.
all the better to

be continued

HM 2015 (c)


The Diamond Miners are in the midst of comparing points of view in different versions of well-known folktales--you can guess which one we're exploring this week.  We read slowly, we stop and start, stop and restart, check for comprehension ("BING!"), break the story into Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.  I'm finding that at the accomplished age of seven, children are susceptible to relying on what they already know and are prone to "unhearing" new information.  That's why Lon Po Po has been so gripping--familiar but different, and what's a gingko nut?

From an Education Week article on how we pose our questions to support deep interpretation: "teachers often read through a chapter or text selection completely before starting a discussion....As part of the training course, they are learning to plan stopping points where the text is ambiguous and launch questions that get students thinking about what is going on. "We want to teach kids to not just start at the beginning and read all the way through," Matsumura said. "A good reader is thinking about what they are reading as they are going through."" Well, duh.

But my goal is "never a duh moment."  I can't assume that even the high flyers in my class are coordinating all the moving parts that deep comprehension depends upon. We teachers and writers do it easily, but precisely BECAUSE we are skilled and effective literacy practitioners, it can be hard for us to slow down enough to elucidate this "behind the scenes" thinking we are doing as we read.

So again, there is no way I can get through 6-8 texts in a week, and the ones we do spend precious time with better be really good.  So thanks, Trina Schart Hyman, for Little Red Riding Hood, and thanks, Ed Young for Lon Po Po, and thanks  Wilhelmina Harper for The Gunniwolf....you make us want to work hard to be deeper readers.

The roundup today is with Laura at her spiffy new-look blog at Writing the World for Kids--go lift the latch on her door and see what's hiding inside!

"the gift of time"

Oh, glory! Thanks to a steady sifting of snow yesterday, the DC metro area is now just incapacitated enough to open schools on a 2-hour delay. This is in addition to last evening's gift of a glass of wine and a natter with neighbors, possible because of cancelled kidtivities. My contempt for a local culture that keeps children IN for recess because it's snowing is temporarily outweighed--selfishly--by gratitude for the gift of unexpected free time.








For the gingerbread fans, here are the promised photos: my mother's 1940 cookie cutter, the D's at work with the dough, and the finished adorables on the tree. (I could wish the photos were more skilled--but that's not my area, according to the division of labor in this family).

Poetry is my area, however. This week I've been at work on two projects: judging the work of some high school poets for the PTA's "Reflections" arts program, and working with the wonderfully versatile Laura Shovan on a grown-up poetry anthology that will be published by the Maryland Writers' Association. I'll have three poems in the collection and am also writing an introduction to one section, which has been a refreshing challenge.


At our house we're preparing for Yuletide and our "high holiday" Solstice Dinner. It's a tradition for me to give the guests (close family and neighbors) gifts of light on the shortest day of the year. There have been candles and candleholders and matches and flashlights of all descriptions over the years, but this year I'm going intangible, in this direction:






“If I stand”
from Light by Inger Christensen


If I stand
alone in the snow
it is clear
that I am a clock


how else would eternity
find its way around


Step into the pool of winter light that is Poetry Friday, hosted today by Amy at The Poem Farm!

"you can't catch me"

"Run, run, as fast as you can! You can't catch me; I'm the Gingerbread Man!" It's still fun to chant, isn't it? I'm pondering why this little rhyme is so endlessly appealing to kids, beyond its obvious bounce. An informal trawl of internet sites for teachers suggests that at this time of year, 5- and 6-year-olds all over the country are immersed in The Gingerbread Man. He's handy because he has a festive holiday feel but is resolutely areligious. Certainly he holds a special place in my heart because it's a family tradition to thread red floss through holes in the heads of our simple, two-currant-eyes-and-a-knife-point-smile gingerbread men and hang them all over the tree. The children and I use a cutter that my mother used as a child, a transparent blue plastic piece her mother bought in the 1930's. I'll post some photos once our baking gets underway. (And gingerbread dough is a wonderfully versatile medium: as young adults my partner and I based a whole holiday party around gingerbread Patsys and Edinas from Absolutely Fabulous.) For me, gingerbread men are a symbol of cozy family comfort during a dark and dangerous time of year. I think of the The Gingerbread Man as an equivalent story to The Little Red Hen: patterned repetitive plots, rhythmic refrains, an important lesson to be learned. But wait--what is the lesson of The Gingerbread Man? It took me three seconds to realize what everyone else has perhaps always known, but if you hang out with 4 to 7-year-olds your whole life, you could miss it. What little children love is the naughtiness of the Gingerbread Man who gets up half-baked and runs away from home, and their favorite versions are the ones in which the Gingerbread Man actually LAUGHS AT those who are chasing him. I'm not sure, once they get over the shock of the SNIP-SNAP! at the end, that children go away thinking, "Oh! I'd better stick close to home, and if I do go out on my own, I'd better beware the sly fox who pretends to be my friend but really wants to eat me alive." And while I always make a big deal about the Value of Cooperation when reading The Little Red Hen, I have never, as a teacher, emphasized the Stranger Danger message of The Gingerbread Man. But I have considered the point of view of the oven. 

 

[poem]