In the next section, Sandra analyses her guided reading discussion, highlighting some key issues for teaching and learning. Sandra’s contribution is included as an extended quotation.
Considering their lack of experience, I thought the children coped well with the two talk activities and showed great enthusiasm. I shared the objective for the discussion of Burningham’s book: ‘We are learning to talk about a book and read text and pictures to help us understand the story’. I told the children I hoped they might have some questions to ask and some comments to make, so that we might have a chat about the book and help each other to understand it, adding that we might not find out the answers to our questions. I noted that Jack spoke the most and Dawn was the quietest.
Subsequently, I recorded our talk about Where the Wild Things Are. I was generally pleased with the discussion and believe that I can show evidence of learning taking place. I took 153 turns in the conversation, while Jack took 99, Anna 71 and Dawn 56 turns. Many of my turns were questions, because I believe that asking probing questions helps children to see how to generate such questions themselves.
I tried to ask questions to which I really didn’t know the answer. Some of these questions scaffolded the children’s thinking and learning, for example by asking for evidence, e.g. ‘How do you know he’s asleep?’
Sandra: You think it’s just a dream?
Jack: ’Cos he’s asleep.
Sandra: How do you know he’s asleep?
Jack: ’Cos he’s going like this.
Anna: Yeh. And he’s got his eyes closed.
or asking for clarification, e.g. ‘What makes you say that, Jack?’
Sandra: He scared them?
Anna: Yep.
Jack: But why would he scare them? – they, they could just, kill him.
Anna: Yeh.
Sandra: What makes you say that, Jack?
Jack: ’Cos of sharp claws.
Another example of asking clarification is, ‘But you’re sort of saying you don’t think this would be true, really, are you?’
Dawn: I know why they’re scared of him – ’cos they think, erm, he’s a monster, too, and he’s stronger than them.
Sandra: Right. They think he’s a monster? Maybe. He’s different to them, isn’t he? – so, he’s something they don’t know about. But you’re sort of saying you don’t think this would be true, really, are you?
Jack: No, I don’t . . .
Sandra: Because he’s a little boy in a wolf suit and they’re big monsters.
Jack: Yeh.
I used my contributions to show respect for the children’s opinions:
Jack: He’ll go back home.
Sandra: You think he’ll go back home?
Dawn: Yeh.
Anna: But he is in his home.
Sandra: Right. That’s interesting. He is in his home.
Jack: Yeh, but he goes back home in his dream.
Sandra: Why did you say that, Anna?
Anna: Because at the beginning, then there’s like his wall and the trees.
I repeated or reformulated many of the comments made by the children, sometimes in question form, and tried to encourage them to extend their thinking, e.g. ‘That’s one of the monsters, Jack’s noticed. So what do you think that means? Does that tell you anything?’ The talk shows that all three children brought some of their own experience to the book. Anna mentioned Jesus as an example of a king who is not bossy. This comment came while the children were talking about the monsters crowning Max king:
Anna: Yeh, but he’s, he looks a bit bossy.
Sandra: You think he looks bossy?
Dawn: Yeh. But it’s just a dream.
Sandra: Do you think a king would be bossy?
Jack: Erm, yeh.
Anna: But Jesus isn’t, and he’s a king.
Sandra: Right.
Dawn: Yeh, but Jesus ain’t . . . Sandra: Not every king’s the same.
Other examples of children contributing ideas based on previous experience or knowledge are when Dawn talked about the moon: ‘The moon is bigger than this planet, ain’t it?’ (though her understanding of the solar system could be the subject of another discussion!) and Jack introduced a monster he’d already heard about: ‘I liked it when he meeted that monster – the Loch Ness monster’.
The discussion helped the children to reflect on their own ideas, and to shift their opinions with a fluidity created by confidence in the supportive nature of the talk. Initially Dawn was persistent in her opinion that Max was dreaming, using this word five times. She then changed her mind and told us seven times that Max was thinking, even contradicting Jack: ‘No. He hasn’t got a dream. He’s thinking’. All were quite happy to express their own views and to change their minds. Anna disagreed with Dawn that the ‘wild thing’ on the cover could be a dinosaur, but later suggested this herself: ‘They’re dinosaurs? Monsters?’ She also contradicted me: when I pointed to a picture and said, ‘The sea looks rough, doesn’t it?’ she replied, ‘No it doesn’t’. Anna
thought he had been somewhere when we were talking about his supper still being hot, because he was out of the room when his parents brought the meal. Jack had his own opinion about when the dream started, but I believe he was influenced by Dawn’s idea that Max was thinking, concluding, ‘He’s thinking like daydreaming’.
Jack seemed to get most involved in the text, laughing quite a lot and making more spontaneous comments about things he noticed, e.g., ‘They still look the same but Max doesn’t. ’Cos he used to not have a crown’ and
‘Hey, he’s got human feet!’ Jack was the only one to ask questions: ‘Why’s he hammering that thing on his wall?’ and ‘But why would he scare them? – they could just kill him’. He also makes a prediction that Max will jump out of the window and puts himself in Max’s shoes by saying, ‘What I would do is, erm, get a golden gun and shoot them in one shot so that they die’. As Fry (1985: 99) says, ‘Our picturing as we read puts us there in the story, and unless we find ourselves there, the story passes us by’. I think Jack did find himself there.
In the following sequence, the children understand what Anna means well before I do, and patiently offer me help:
Anna: Sometimes it’s hard to read without because it’s like w, it’s all together.
Sandra: Sorry. Say that again, Anna.
Dawn: But this one’s just a dream.
Anna: It’s sometimes hard to write with, read without because sometimes it’s all together.
Sandra: It’s hard to read without what, Anna?
Jack: A space.
Anna: Without spaces in without.
Dawn: And without full stops.
Sandra: Oh, it’s hard to read the word ‘without’, because it hasn’t got spaces. I see.
Guided reading provides good opportunities to discuss unfamiliar words. In the following sequence, the group considers the word ‘rumpus’. Jack uses the pictures to suggest this means some sort of parade, with Anna think- ing that people might bow and curtsey to whoever is parading; and that the monsters are jumping. Dawn suggests ‘party time’. Later Jack notes that the monsters are shouting. The group is sidetracked into talking about the moon, so that the definition of a rumpus never really becomes clarified and none of the children subse- quently uses the word in their talk, suggesting that they are not fully confident about its meaning. However, the guided conversation about this book has served to introduce a new word in a meaningful context – a useful first step towards eventual understanding. The word rumpus has become helpfully associated with party, shouting, parade. When asked to say which part of the story she enjoyed most, Dawn says, ‘I liked the bit where the monsters and the boy was having fun.’ I ask, ‘Where they were having the rumpus?’ to which she agrees. She thinks that having a rumpus is some sort of fun; the Collins English Dictionarydefines rumpus as ‘distur- bance, noise, confusion’ – which any parent will recognise as a children’s party!
Sandra: . . . ‘let the wild rumpus start!’ (pause) What do you think a wild rumpus is?
Anna: Erm, it’s . . .
Jack: A parade or something.
Sandra: A what? – sorry, Jack.
Jack: A parade or something.
Sandra: A parade?
Jack: Or something.
Anna: Or maybe, you would like (mimes)
Sandra: Bow? – bow and curtsey? Maybe. Let’s have a look. So here we haven’t got words.
We’ve only got pictures, here.
Dawn: Party time.
Anna: Yes.
Sandra: So this is the rumpus. What do they seem to be doing?
Anna: Er, jumping, and maybe it’s just like a little parade.
Jack: Looking at the moon.
Sandra: Looking at the moon, yes. It’s a full moon, isn’t it? – that’s what we call that, when it’s, we can see all of it.
Anna: A parade.
Sandra: It is a bit like a parade, isn’t it? Yeh.
Dawn: Do you know what? The moon is bigger than this planet, ain’t it?
Sandra: They seem to be . . . They’ve got their arms up in the air as though they’re, sort of, bowing down, aren’t they? And what’s Max doing?
Jack: Shouting.
Anna: It’s just a piece of rock in the sky – that’s what the moon is.
Now they’re swinging on trees.
Sandra: Swinging on trees?
Jack: Yeh.
Sandra: Is the moon still there?
All children: No.
Anna: Because it’s the morning, or afternoon.
Sandra: Oh it’s the morning now? So they had the rumpus all night long, then.