moasic of thought

Keene & Zimmerman's Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop (1997): Summary and Impressions of Three Chapters from the Text

Having carefully read Chapters 5; 7; 9, 10 of Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman's Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop (1997), I have found each of these chapters uniquely inspiring, thought-provoking, and refreshing, not only in terms of ideas discussed by the authors about the teaching of reading, but about reading (and other life processes, activities, and events) itself. Most importantly, from a professional perspective, these three chapters from Mosaic of Thought have provided me with additional insights and new understandings about reading processes and behaviors of young students, described by Keene & Zimmerman. Especially interesting to me was the authors' discussions of what seem the inherent or automatic reading processes of those students who might be considered either "stronger" or "weaker" readers within typical classroom settings.

Summary of Chapter Five: "The Essence of Text: Determining Importance"

A. Key elements. Key elements from Chapter Five, "The Essence of Text: Determining Importance," included ways of determining, for oneself as well as one's students (to illustrate their points about this, the authors used examples not just from reading itself, e.g., from Susan Griffin's book A Chorus of Stones: A Private Life of War, but also of dilemmas from "real life," e.g., Ellin's career vs. her attention to her child, Elizabeth, e.g., "I need to take Elizabeth to the library more" (p. 75); Ellin's catching up on work vs. participating in more pleasurable activities, e.g., Ellin's thought that "Maybe it's essential to plow through the pile on my desk (but I don't think so!"). More implicitly, the authors also compared and contrasted, within this chapter, processes (often more automatic for some readers than for others) of identifying and defining "essence(s)" within texts and "essence(s)" within life (or one's day, or within any individual experience or process). Also suggested within the chapter was the idea that it is important, for a teacher who hopes to be able to bring out the best in student readers, to understand and recognize the fact of each reader's unique processes, of identifying and finding meaning in texts.

Another important central idea, within Chapter Five, that I came to understand in a new way, is that reading, like all life processes, involves a series of individual realizations about, and prioritizations of, important aspects of a text, based on interest, past reading (and/or real life) experience, and other factors unique to every reader. Thus, the authors suggest, components of a written text (arguably like components of life itself) will be more or less important, relevant, interesting, etc., to a reader (or not) during reading processes. A key task of a teacher wishing to facilitate student reading, then, is to find ways to encourage each student to make his or her own meaningful connections, between himself or herself, individual experience, understanding, and the reading of a given written text or texts. For students who make such cross-connections less easily or automatically than others, the task of the reading teacher becomes, to describe and model as well as possible, for that student, "good reader" reading behaviors that might enable those students to themselves make their own such connections, while reading, as well.

B. An example of how the material can be applied within a classroom setting with one student or a small group of students. Within this chapter, I was struck by the authors' description of Jeremy (pp. 83-89), a student who was having difficulties not so much with reading itself, but instead with picking out what was and wasn't important within a textbook passage, "Lexington and Concord" (which did not especially interest him). Often, as the authors observe, students like Jeremy find textbook reading (referred to in this chapter as "inconsiderate" reading, since it is not "written in a way that its content and format are familiar or predictable to a particular reader" (p. 87), as opposed to "considerate" texts, e.g., novels, children's stories, etc. Although the authors did not make it entirely clear, in this case, whether or not they had actually helped Jeremy solve his problem with "inconsiderate" texts in its entirety, one partial solution they tried (or a version of it) seems like it might work well, for similar types of classroom reading problems, with "inconsiderate" and "considerate" texts alike, for either one student at a time or small groups of students. This was the technique of giving students who have trouble identifying important ideas within texts a colored marker (or maybe several of them, in different colors) and asking them to pick out: (1) important ideas, in red (or some other color); (2) less important ideas (in a different color); (3) the most interesting ideas (in another color); and (4) the least interesting ideas (in yet another color). This could also even be done at the word, sentence, and/or paragraph level. I have read some articles that suggest reading instruction is effective when combined, when possible, with other types of experience (e.g., tactile experience). So this exercise, it seems to me, would be a good one to try, especially with slower or more "bored" readers, one-on-one or in small groups, or maybe even with a larger group of students.

Summary of Chapter Seven: 'A Mosaic in the Mind: Using Sensory Images to Enhance Comprehension'

A. Key elements. This chapter begins with various examples of written material, and mental images of the authors' springing from that written material, replete with sensory images. The major argument of this chapter is that the conjuring up, in the mind, of sensory images enhances (and can be used by reading teachers to encourage enhancement of) reading comprehension. Sensory images have to do with the five senses: sight; sound; taste; touch, smell. Sensory images, the authors further suggest within this chapter, also often encourage recall of past events, which can, in turn, add to the current relevancy, or interest-level, of a written text, for a student reader or for any reader. A poem by Jane Kenyon, called "Three Small Oranges," the language of which is rich with sensory imagery, is used at the beginning of this chapter to illustrate how automatic (and easy) it is, in the course of everyday human experience, to vividly recall sensory images from written texts, while going about everyday activities. Such recollections, creating automatic cross-fertilizations of meanings between written text and real life, serve, the authors imply, to make richer; more significant, and more personally clear and memorable.

In other parts of this Chapter, Ellin Keene recalls various instances of when she, as a staff developer in the Douglas County (Colorado) schools, she would visit various teachers' classrooms (e.g., those of Enid Goldman; Paige Inman, Todd McLain, and others, and sometimes experiment with the technique of encouraging students to conjure up sensory images from texts they had listened to being read aloud. One such instance took place within Enid Goldman's eighth grade class at Parker Junior High. On a visit to this classroom, Ellin started out by reading aloud to these (initially bored) eighth grade students from a picture book called Where the River Begins, by Thomas Locker, "to help the students describe sensory images I was sure they'd had, but to which they probably hadn't paid conscious attention" (p. 128).

At first, the students felt that both the picture book and the reading aloud exercise were rather childish for their age group. However, as Ellin persisted in both reading the text aloud and asking the students to describe the sensory images they imagined while listening to the story, first a few, and then more of them began, enthusiastically, to describe not only the sensory images they were now visualizing, but their own past relationships to such images as well. As Ellin later concluded, of this slow-starting but ultimately rewarding (for her, the regular teacher Enid, and the students):

These kids showed us that images come from the emotions as well as the senses. Readers take the words from the page and stretch and sculpt them until the richness of the story becomes the richness of a memory replete with senses and emotions. Words on the page become recollections anchored in an unforgettable image of one's own making (Mosaic of Thought, p. 130)

B. An example of how the material can be applied within a classroom setting with one student or a small group of students.

In this chapter, I found Ellin's example of her reading-aloud experiment with Enid Goldman's eighth grade class both thought-provoking and inspiring. As an example of a similar, related exercise, this made me think about one of the most challenging kinds of reading, for students or anyone: the reading of plays (as opposed to, say, acting in them or seeing them performed). It also occurred to me, though, after reading this chapter, that plays, including not just their dialogue but their stage directions, and sometimes even the names of the characters, are replete with sensory images. Based on that, it seems that a related yet different "listening to a text being read aloud" exercise might be done with a play. One might start by explaining to the students that the dialogue in a play makes it a lot like television (something, which, unfortunately, is all too much of a staple of most students' lives). However, implicit in the underlying argument of the entire book, is that students relate, and ought to be encouraged to relate, while reading, to that with which they are already familiar.

An idea for a reading-listening-describing exercise for a small group of students, then, might be listening to a play being read aloud (stage directions and all) by others, maybe another small group of students, who would them switch off and be the "listeners," while the earlier group became the readers. The listening group(s) would be asked to think of the play dialogue and stage directions as being like television or movie words and actions, and report the sensory images that come to mind. Such an exercise would combine reading; listening; imagining, and describing all at once.

Summary of Chapter Ten: 'From Problem to Resolution: Empowering Children to Solve Reading Problems Independently"

A. Key elements. Key elements of the chapter have to do with ways that reading teachers, facilitators, and peers can help children (of all reading levels and abilities) to solve various grammatical, syntactical, contextual and other reading comprehension by teaching them to use various "fix-up" strategies, such as sounding out a word, viewing a difficult word in the context of the whole sentence or paragraph, applying to a reading situation what one already knows about the material being read, etc. At the beginning of this chapter, Ellin relates her own struggles with reading material she herself found difficult, a poem called "Comrade Past and Mister Present" by the Romanian writer Andre Codrescu. On her first reading, Ellin understood almost nothing about the poem. As she states: "As I read, my eyes lost focus on the page. I struggled to keep my eyes opened, yawned, and lost the battle" (p. 189).

After further readings, reflections, and discussions with her husband and others about the material, however, Ellin began to understand and enjoy it. As she then tells the reader, "I deliberately chose this piece because I was looking for a challenging piece . . .I was determined to do what I asked children to do, to stay focused and work hard to fix up my comprehension problems" (Keene and Zimmerman). Struggling through "Comrade Past and Mister Present" in ways similar to those in which children often struggle through difficult or "over their head" texts gave Ellin more personal insight into the actual word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence struggles for meaning encountered by child readers.

Ellin then explains how these sorts of insights into one's own reading processes might be applied to the teaching of reading to other, younger readers. To illustrate this, she gives two examples. The first is her observation of a remedial high school reading class taught by Cris Tovani at Smoky Hill High School in Denver. In this example, Cris struggles aloud, in front of her students, with her own comprehension of a wordy and difficult text. As she moves through the text, she demonstrates (i.e. models) to her students how various "fix-up" strategies, like breaking words down into smaller components; applying what you already know to the reading situation, etc., can help with "deciphering" difficult reading materials.

The second example is that of Anne, a second grade student in the class of Kristin Venable, also in Denver. Anne is a very good reader and wants to next tackle The Secret Garden. Her teacher, Kristin, is worried that the book might be too difficult for a second grader, even one who is a very good reader. Together, Kristin and Ellin help Anne one day, after Anne has read the first chapter (about five pages) of The Secret Garden, and reviewing with her parts of the chapter she had found unclear or difficult (they had asked Anne to mark those parts with stick-notes as she went along). Then the three of them went over the difficult parts, and helped Anne with various "fix-up" strategies for better understanding the difficult material.

The fix-up strategies described in Chapter 10 of Mosaic of Thought are parts of a "cueing system" for readers. The "cueing system" contains six components: (1) grapho-phonic; (2) lexical or orthographic; (3) syntactic; (4) semantic; (5) schematic, and (6) pragmatic.

In terms of the actual classroom teaching of "fix-up" strategies for reading comprehension, both (1) the group strategy modeled by Cris, for high school students (although it seems this same strategy could be used for younger students as well) and (2) the individual "fix-up" strategy modeled by Kristin and Ellen for Anne, could be used in classroom situations. Both of these could be used alone; separately, or interchangeably.

Cris's group demonstration of fix-up strategies for remedial high school readers not only modeled various uses of "fix-ups" for reading comprehension, but also illustrated to her students (whose very body language, upon entering Cris's classroom revealed that they dreaded the read process) that everyone, even good readers like their teacher, occasionally has reading comprehension problems. During the three weeks that Ellin observed Cris teaching reading comprehension, Cris talked with the students about the variety of reading tasks they face each day and specifically, which fix-ups might be used if problems are encountered in each" (Mosaic of Thought, p. 200). For their own part, "Cris's students talked about tackling the density of content in a science book, the technical instructions . . . In computer manuals, and the difficulty of sorting out a lengthy dialogue between several characters in a novel." Cris continually pointed out to them, however, "explicitly and implicitly that comprehension strategies, including fix-ups," can be used in all reading situations -- in class; at home; alone, or with other readers nearby" (Mosaic of Thought, p. 200)

In Anne's case, her second grade teacher, Kristin Venable, with Ellin's own help and support, guided Anne through various "fix-up" strategies that quickly made Anne both a more independent and a more confident reader of rather advanced (for her age group) material. Kristin then enlisted a fifth grade peer reader, who had already read the book, to continue helping Anne through it, using similar "fix-up" strategies. Some of the "fix-up" strategies modeled in Anne's case by Kristin (and Ellin) had to do with helping children pick out what is essential to absolutely understand, and, similarly, to pick out what elements of a difficult reading text can be let go for now, until greater overall comprehension of the reading material has been reached.

B. An example of how the material can be applied within a classroom setting with one student or a small group of students.

Based on examples, explanations, discussions and ideas within Chapter 10, the idea of a "fix-up" exercise like the one Cris Tovani demonstrated with her remedial high school reading students, for a small group of student readers or even one student reader one-on-one or two-on-one (like Anne) seems promising.

Something like this might be tried not just with a theoretical book the teacher happens to be struggling through (like the one Cris used for her demonstration) but a text the whole class is actually reading, and (better yet) having problems comprehending on a word or sentence level.

In the case of Ellin and Kristin's demonstration of how to best help Anne, a relatively advanced second grade reader, get through The Secret Garden without growing discouraged or demoralized, it seems that those same "fix-up" strategies could be applied, one-on-one and/or in other classroom settings, to students of all abilities and reading levels. Working with students on fix-ups, individually; in small groups; and as a whole class would in fact, it seems, help students to reinforce in their own minds the power and efficacy of "fix-up" processes and tactics.

Summary of the Three Chapters: Impressions, Observations, Questions

A. What did I already know about the concepts of reading in each of these chapters? As far as what I already knew about the concepts of reading discussed in Mosaic of Thought, prior to reading these chapters, I already understood various concepts about the importance of pre-reading activities, in order to help students preview what they are about to read, and to also help them to more easily understand and reflect upon what they will be reading. I already understood the key importance of clear and interesting pre-reading activities for students (the basis, it seems, for quite a few of the strategies for helping students to read described by the authors). I was familiar, also, with what now seems to me a much more cut -- and dried, although in some ways overlapping, method of teaching reading comprehension, the SQ3R (Survey; Question; Read; Recite; Review) (underlying components of SQ3R seem to be contained within other methods, or parts of methods, Keene & Zimmerman describe). Intuitively, I knew that reading is both easier and more enjoyable when reading content is both clear and personally meaningful, and that students who are considered "good" readers seem better able, perhaps naturally or automatically, than those who do not read as well, to engage with a written text in ways that make the text interesting and personally relevant and meaningful to them.

B.What did I learn from reading each of these 3 chapters? In Chapter Five, I learned, and reflected on, the authors' ideas about how "essence" (that is, in a written text; in any portion of life, or in life itself, as a whole) is distinct and unique for each individual, and an important key to each individual's (associated) perceptions of relevancy; interest-level, relationship(s) to past, present, and/or possible future experiences, etc. I also learned, especially from reading Chapters Five; Seven; and Ten, combined, that overall, various types of mental processes of "determining importance," from a written text or elsewhere, are similar cognitive processes.