The Advent of Literacy

Among literally hundreds of universal and naturally occurring childhood passions, is that of the treasure hunt. A remnant of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, becoming excited by finding things, is in our DNA.

Understanding this principle from years of mentoring youth, my wife began a new holiday tradition last year that has brought literacy more deeply into the culture of Christmas and into the heart of our three year old daughter.

Using a string of 24 tiny pails clad in green and red ribbon, our advent calendar does not contain chocolate. Instead, each morning when she awakes, my daughter runs to the buckets hung carefully along the stairs that lead downstairs. With great pride she counts the days of December until she arrives at the one containing a note, or more accurately, a clue. A simple rhyme or riddle written by a Christmas elf (a.k.a. mom) points toward the hidden treasure.

One, Two, Three

You’ll find me where

the cat goes pee

(Okay, this classy example was mine but you get the point.)

With a finger in the air revealing her revelation, my daughter exclaims, “The litter box!” and off she goes, tearing through the house to where the litter box is kept. Near by, she finds wrapped the familiar Christmas cloth, a gift! Or more accurately, a book!

As excited as if it were actually Christmas morning, she unties the bow, pulls off the cloth and looks at the book for a few seconds before holding it up and asking one of us to read it to her.

The books are almost always library books so there is no expense and every year we can mix it up. And when Christmas has passed, while the pails come down and are put away, the desire to be read to has increased and the memory of the holiday has been enriched. Best of all, I am watching all sorts of pre-reading skills emerge in my daughter, forming a solid foundation for the advent of literacy.

by Michael Trotta, Sagefire Institute

Reframing Character Inferences- Part II

Character Traits
Inferring and understanding character traits seem to be difficult for teachers and students to understand. I've come to see it as a very powerful yet often misunderstood aspect of literacy. A trait is often explained to students as something inside of the character, but this is not really true and often very confusing to children. A trait does not exist inside of someone, it is the opinion or judgement we as onlookers form of them. A trait is a label we put on someone based on what we see, hear, and experience.

Imagine you met someone who jumped out of an airplane. Some people might think this person is brave and adventurous while another person might form the opinion that the person is reckless and foolish. Any of these judgements of the person could be proven with evidence of what happened, but who you are, what you believe, and what you value will be the filter you view the person through and ultimately the “trait” you put on them.

When third graders are asked to infer the character’s traits they often are stumped. My theory is that they are not used to judging people yet. Eight year olds tend not to be judgmental and have a hard time labeling people, at least in the beginning of the year. We end up teaching students how to label people and assign them a trait. This realization has made me quite uncomfortable. I do not want to teach children to label people and certainly not that their judgements are fixed, real traits that live inside people.

I have partially reconciled this dilemma by teaching students that traits are opinions and judgements based on what we think of what the character did, said, felt, or thought. Then we have some fun debating how we might each view and form opinions about characters in different ways. For example, a student might form the opinion that Junie B. Jones is really funny based on what she did in a chapter. Another person (perhaps a teacher or adult) might form the opinion that Junie B. is sneaky and naughty. We could debate this by providing evidence from the text and also acknowledging that we have different beliefs and experiences that help us form our opinions.

When we teach traits as static, fixed, internal entities we are implicitly teaching children that people are static, fixed, and that the labels people put on them are real internal entities. If we reframe our teaching so students understand that traits are opinions and judgements that come from others, they can own them for what they are-- interpretations. As a human being this feels better to me and as a teacher it seems to free students up to form their own opinions and not try to find the “right answer” they think exists.

As for teaching about character change, I’ll leave that for another post... perhaps Part III.

by Gravity Goldberg