Showing posts with label wondering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wondering. Show all posts

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Hole


by Ã˜yvind Torseter
Enchanted Lion Books, coming August 27, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

This was the 10th book I featured in my 10-for-10 Picture Books post on Saturday. It's too good to sit at the end of a list. It needs its own post.

As I said before, Enchanted Lion always has the most interesting books. They publish books from around the world. THE HOLE was originally published in Norway.

What you notice first when you pick up this book is that the covers of are heavy cardboard, the pages are stiff cardstock, and there's 
a hole 
punched 
all the way 
through the book.

When you open to the first page of this nearly-wordless book, you see that the hole is in the wall of an empty apartment. On the next pages, a mouse-ish creature moves into the apartment, carrying cardboard boxes of belongings. He opens the box labeled "kitchen," cooks himself an egg, and it's not until he sits down to eat (on a box-chair at a box-table) that he notices the hole in his wall. When he goes through the door that's beside the hole to see what it looks like from the other side, it's not there. It has moved to another wall. When he walks back into the first room, the hole is now on the floor and he trips over it. The hole keeps moving! He gets on his computer and calls someone to see if they will come look at this hole, but they tell him to bring it to them. He empties out one of his moving boxes, and spends several pages chasing down the hole until he finally has it in a box, which he tapes up securely.

Except when he leaves his apartment, the hole is part of his front door. And as he walks through the city, the hole is the mailman's whistling mouth, part of a sign, a wheel, a stoplight, an eye...

He winds up at some kind of high-security scientific place where he puts on shoe covers and gloves and takes the box with the hole into a sealed laboratory. The scientists run all kinds of test on the hole, but in the end, they just put it in a jar in a drawer. And the character goes home.

And the hole, of course, is still there, in the sky now. And then on his wall again. But he doesn't see it. But we do. And we wonder.

I can't wait to read this book aloud to my students. I can't wait for their surprise when the hole moves around. I can't wait to hear what they will say about the nature of the hole -- what it is...what it could mean.

I can't wait for all of those moments in a classroom that you want to put in a box or a jar or a drawer and save forever, but you can't because they're magic and cannot be captured and held.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Noticing

My favorite classroom phrase these days is, "What do you notice?"

For awhile, I was zooming right ahead to, "What are you wondering?" But I realized that before you can wonder, you usually have to notice.

This is a graph that Environmental Club students studied after a dusting of snow:

from SnowCrystals.com
What do you notice?
Do you have to understand before you notice, or can your noticing lead to understanding?



More and more, our content learning begins with one or more images that are rich for noticing. These images and noticings build background knowledge and vocabulary for the entire spectrum of my diverse class of learners.

Ohio’s Native People in the 1600-1700s
from One State, Many Nations
What do you notice? 
As you notice, can you compare and contrast?


White Settlement Patterns in the Ohio River Valley During the 18th Century

from One State, Many Nations

What do you notice?
As you notice, can you infer any causes or effects? 
Why are so many of the settlements named Fort Somethingorother? What is a fort? Why did the settlers need forts to protect themselves? 



As I'm reading aloud, I ask students to notice evidence of the author's craft, times when the author defines an unusual word later on in the text, or actions that can tell us about a character's personality.

All of this noticing leads naturally to questioning, wondering, predicting, and connecting.

It's amazing that one of the smallest questions can yield the biggest rewards in terms of student engagement and student thinking.

That's what I've noticed, at any rate. What are you noticing?