Filling the Classroom with Possibilities: Using Writing and Talk to Help Students Read Beyond Plot

by Franki Sibberson

As we consider the needs of our older readers, we look for ways to help them read beyond the words. This is a time when we can help them see the possibilities in books.

Younger students read for plot. They focus on what is happening in the story. They recognize the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They can identify the problem and the solution. But as students become more sophisticated in their reading, they encounter books that are complex―books that have layers and layers of meaning and offer much to think about (for some suggestions, see Box 1). Often, however, our students don't know the power they have as readers and the possibilities that books provide. So it is important for us to have a safe time in the classroom for talk around books to focus on these possibilities. Read-alouds offer a natural starting point.

We have begun to think about read-aloud time differently. Instead of reading a book aloud as students listen quietly, we now encourage students to explore the possibilities in the text by participating in discussion and writing activities during the reading. If the read-aloud time is risk-free and the students are comfortable giving things a try, they can discover how much they can figure out about an author's meaning. They can read deeper into the text and uncover what only sophisticated readers can uncover. They begin to identify themes that only sophisticated readers can recognize. Not only are they reading more deeply, but they are also able to stand back from the text and understand the larger meaning the text has to offer.

Before We Read: Previewing the Book

In order to set the stage for deep reading, my students and I spend time previewing each new read-aloud book. If I do not have multiple copies of the text, I make copies of anything that I would preview if I were reading the book on my own. These things include the cover, the epigraph, the back blurb, the author blurb, the first page, the dedication, and anything, such as a map or character chart, that comes before the story begins.

When I first began to think about previewing a fiction text with my students, I thought about my own reading. I often spend hours in a bookstore choosing the right book. In the process, I take a very long time previewing the book that I will eventually read. So before I even start to actually read the book, I have an idea of where the story will go, who the characters are, and how the story will begin. All this aids in plot comprehension. And that became my goal in previewing with my students: to help their comprehension of plot. I wanted them to know the characters, the setting, and other important components of the book before they started to read.

I still think that previewing is an important piece to comprehension of novels, and my students naturally begin to preview their independent reading books because of this routine. However, I have come to the realization that the preview can be so much more than just gathering information before we read. It can pave the way for thinking and discussion throughout the reading of the book. Now, after we preview a book, I ask my students to list the questions that they have thought of based on the preview. The preview sets the stage for talk and thinking for the entire book.

Recently, my class read The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg. Following the preview, we listed all the things we knew about the book before we began. I then asked the class to think about the questions they had after the preview. As I was recording their thinking, I realized that some of their questions were "little" questions, questions that would probably be answered quickly once we got to a certain point in the book; but there seemed to be bigger questions on the chart―questions about themes and issues in the book. I wanted my students to see the difference between the two, and I also wanted to casually invite them to keep some of these "big" questions in their heads during the reading. I knew that if they focused on questions beyond plot, they would get into understanding the deeper layers of the book. So we went back to our original list of questions and put an asterisk next to those questions that we would have to hold onto and think about throughout most or all of our reading. You can see an example list in Box 2.


Box 2

Questions We Have After the Preview of The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg
(*Questions to hold onto throughout the book as we read)

*Why is it called The View from Saturday?
*Why did they choose the cover illustration?
Will there be a tea party?
*Do they beat the odds? Does beating the odds just mean winning?
What kind of team is it exactly? What kind of competition?
Who are the team members?
*Who is the main character?
What is the team trying to do in the Academic Bowl?
*What is the theme or big message?

Spending time previewing the book often supports kids in thinking beyond plot in the book. In the past I had always rushed into starting a new book. The kids understood the book well enough, but much of their time was spent keeping track of characters, predicting what might happen next, and trying to make sense of where the story was going. Now, by giving students time to think about the preview and the way it will impact their reading, they are empowered to begin to make sense of the book. The preview conversation raises the level of talk and understanding throughout the whole book because it helps kids begin to think about the big issues before they even begin to read.

During Reading: Using Reading Notebooks and Sticky Notes

My students use reading notebooks during read-aloud time. As I read aloud a novel, I stop often to give students a chance to jot in their notebooks and/or allow us to talk as a group―to put our thinking together. The notebook is a safe place for readers to think more deeply about a text. I don't give much direction to this jotting. Instead I just ask kids to jot whatever it is they are thinking about. Early in the year, the open-ended thoughts are often focused on plot―making predictions and summarizing. But as the year goes on and students learn about all the possibilities in books, they try different things.

If multiple copies of the book that we are reading aloud are available, I give each student a copy of the book along with a pad of sticky notes. Rather than ask students to follow along as I read, I give them the option to use these sticky notes to mark places in the text that they are thinking about. Because I want my students to find their own tools for thinking, this gives them another risk-free way to make meaning of their reading.

Some students might use their notebooks and sticky notes to follow a character through the course of the book―how does he or she change? Others might focus on the title of the book, jotting down clues about why the author chose the title. Still others might focus on finding the main theme in the book by writing down lines that seem to connect to a bigger message.

During our read-aloud of The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo, the class wondered about the title of the book. Early in our reading, several students noticed that the word rise came up a few times. Tessa decided to record all the times that Kate DiCamillo used the word rise in the book to help her make sense of the title. So as we read, we stopped each time that we heard some version of the word rise so that Tessa could record it. This opened up some new possibilities for other students who were listening in on Tessa's thinking.

When we read Konigsburg's The View from Saturday, students were very interested in the dedication. Konigsburg had dedicated the book to David who had "beat the odds." During the preview, the students predicted that the dedication could have something to do with the theme of the book, and so Justin decided to track instances in the book where someone seemed to beat the odds, thinking that these would give us more insight into Konigsburg's message.

In The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, Maria became intrigued by the meanings of the characters' names. Since Lemony Snicket pays such close attention to words, Maria was sure that the characters' names were chosen for a reason. She researched the meanings of the names and kept them handy during our reading. This gave her another way to think about the characters.

Because students are each tracking different things, the whole-class conversations are layered and in depth. One student might be focusing on the title, while another is concentrating on a character's changes. When Tessa followed the author's use of the word rise, we all benefited from her thinking. As we talk in whole-class conversations, students see how all these things come together.

Anchor Charts During Read-Aloud: Lifting the Level of Conversation

Our read-aloud session includes lots of time to talk about the ways we are using our notebooks to help us understand the book. I never require students to record a certain thing in their notebooks, but I model many possibilities through charts, and I also make sure that students are aware of effective things other students are doing in their notebooks. I give my students opportunities to share what they are doing with each new book we read. Early in the year, they all make predictions. It is a safe way to think―something they are all comfortable with. To help them see other interesting things to do with their jotting, I often keep chart paper as my own notebook. While students stop and jot, I do the same. On the chart paper, I show them other ideas for jotting―other ways to think about a text. In the past, I have used my chart paper "notebook" to collect lines with powerful language, track character traits and changes, list lines with a word that keeps coming up, find connections to the quote or epigraph at the beginning of the book with things as we read, and list references to the title.

To raise the level of conversation and to help students understand vocabulary that will lead them to think differently about text, I sometimes display literary terms on the board. For example, this year, I displayed the words and definitions that readers use to describe different characters―such as antagonist, protagonist, round character, flat character, static character, and dynamic character. By displaying words and definitions about characters, I am not mandating that students learn them. Rather, I am inviting them to think about characters in more in-depth ways. I am never sure how an invitation like this might go, and I have to be careful not to make it a mandate or something for me. I have to share it with the students in a way that shows them, "Hey, this is a way we can talk about characters that might make more sense." Usually, this invitation is all they need to start trying out the words in their talk about books.

Using charts helps my kids to see all the ways they can track things in books. I want my kids to see that making meaning on their own is part of the fun of reading.

After We Read: Big Questions

One way that I help students to see beyond the plot in the book is to have them think about big questions after we are finished reading―questions that they are interested in pondering with a small group for a few days. We spend a great deal of time discussing the difference between little questions (those that have answers that we merely need to recall) and big questions (those that are never completely answered but that could be better understood with more thinking). Then, they have time in small groups to discuss one big question that is interesting to them. For me, it doesn't matter which big question they choose. If the question is truly a big question, it is one that will help them delve more deeply into the book. By asking them to stick with one question, there is very little round-robin sharing. For the conversation to go anywhere, kids need to build thinking through talk. And by staying on one question, they continue to think of new angles. This also helps them to understand that a book isn't over when you've finished the last page. I want them to experience the act of lingering with a book.

When we finished The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, one group tried to answer the question of what light and dark meant in the book. They tracked all the places where DiCamillo used the words light and dark. Then they analyzed the dark and light characteristics of each character to determine a specific definition for each word as it was meant in the book.

In The View from Saturday (by Konigsburg), students wondered what the illustration on the cover of the book meant. A group spent several days examining the cover and making inferences about the symbols that the illustrations could have referred to in the text.

During the discussion of Journey by Patricia MacLachlan, one group of students was interested in the role of photography in the book. We had read a quote about photography during the preview, and this group went back to all the references of photography to think about what the author was trying to tell us.

Big questions seem to impact students' independent reading as well. Instead of finishing a book and moving on, I find that my students now linger with characters and books well beyond the last page.

Changes for the Better

In both high school and college, I sat in English classes, waiting for the teacher to tell me what I was supposed to understand about a piece of literature. And if I still didn't quite understand everything that I was supposed to, I bought CliffsNotes to study. I usually skimmed the books beforehand, I took good notes on the lectures, and I did well. However, it never occurred to me that I could make meaning from the text. I assumed that my professors, by virtue of their education, had some literary "secrets" and that my job in class was to take notes on their understandings of the book. This won't happen to our students! They are able to think more deeply about books because they know that often books have layers of meaning. They feel empowered as they find their own evidence to back their thinking.

References

DiCamillo, Kate. (2003). The tale of Despereaux. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

DiCamillo, Kate. (2002). The tiger rising. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

Konigsburg, E. L. (2003). The view from Saturday. New York: Atheneum.

MacLachlin, Patricia. (1991). Journey. New York: Delacorte.

Snicket, Lemony. (1999). The bad beginning. New York: HarperCollins.

Franki Sibberson teaches fourth and fifth grade at Eli Pinney Elementary School in Dublin, Ohio. She has co-authored Beyond Leveled Books: Supporting Transitional Readers in Grades 2-5 and Still Learning to Read: Teaching Students in Grades 3-6 , both published by Stenhouse.

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