Engaging Students in a Visual Reading of Chapter 14 in Number the Stars

Papercuts from Schenker's Little Red Riding Hood

In a fifth grade e-book I am completing there is a unit focusing on analyzing historical fiction. One of the texts is Lois Lowry's Number the Stars (1989).  I want students to see chapter 14 of the text--to feel Annemarie's desperation and uncertainty. You may recall that this is the chapter where Lowry tells the parallel story of Red Riding Hood as the main character, Annemarie, negotiates the woods while attempting to avoid Nazi soldiers. There's great tension here--at the climax of the novel. Annemarie will never be the same innocent she was before this trip through the woods.

I want to slow down students' reading at this point. I want them to dwell in the text as they grapple to see-feel the metaphor.  So after various readings of the chapter, I will engage them with Sybille Schenker's visually stunning version of the Brother Grimm's Little Red Riding Hood.  (Thank you Tom V. for showing me this book!)

Schenker's laser die-cuts create partial views of the world and in doing so heightens suspense. We are never really grounded anywhere. Secrets are hidden and revealed through the lacy work of die-cuts as we turn the pages. In some ways, this parallels what Lowry did with words.  By having the main character, Annemarie remember variations of the Red Riding Hood story as she makes her way through the still darkened woods, the reader experiences the unsettled environment where nothing is familiar even though the woods and the path through them should be familiar to Annemarie. 

I want the readers--the students--to be unsettled.

from Schenker's Little Red Riding Hood

After the read aloud, students will have the opportunity to engage in art conversations (nonverbal discussion using drawing) through flockdraw (allows you to draw in real time with others). I then plan to invite students to work through Molly Bang's ideas about aesthetics that she outlines in Picture This: How Pictures Work.  Students will learn 10 of Bang's principles and then apply them to creating an image that is made in response to the phrase, Wolf Waiting. I want them to feel the presence of the four Nazi soldiers with their dogs that we meet at the close of the chapter and to feel this within the context of the Red Riding Hood story. 

Wolf waiting. 

Bang asked this provocative question: “How does the structure of a picture affect our emotional response?" It is this that I want students to experience as they compose. To that end, students will be issued four pieces of construction paper (black, white, red, and purple), white glue, and scissors. They then apply some of Bang's principles as they create a visual response to the phrase, Wolf Waiting.

My paper response using Bang's Visual Grammar to the phrase, Wolf Waiting.  (Reilly, 2015)

After this visual work is completed, I'm wondering what transformations students might make of the work. For example, what might happen if some students took all or some of the images and then used these with an online tool such as Animoto to juxtapose and share the work against some music?  The randomness via Animoto might make for some interesting surprises.  Or perhaps other students might like to create a text set using flickr.  I also wonder what might happen if the paper images we made were juxtaposed alongside WWII or Holocaust images.  What stories might such juxtaposition tell?  What would happen if we borrowed Schenker's methods and created die-cuts using historical images and our work? What metaphors might such work reveal?

Endless possibilities. 

A goal here is to mimic the climax of the novel: the point at which the main character's fall from innocence cannot be undone. How might this work we engage in alter us? What transformations might we bear?




Works Cited:

Bang, Molly. (2000).Picture This: How Pictures Work. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. 
The Brothers Grimm. (2014). Little Red Riding Hood. Illustrated by Sybille Schenker.  Translated by Anthea Bell. London, UK: Michael Neugebauer Publishing, Ltd. 

Six Ways to Move Into and Out of Text in Order to Deepen Learning

Example of Stop and Jot used in 2nd grade classroom.
Robert Treat Academy, Newark, NJ - 2014.

Stop and Jot
Students stop during a lesson and write a quick note, reaction, question, reflection, or idea. The link above will take you to a brief video that explains the technique.  I would only add that this technique can be strengthened when the stopping and jotting are connected to emerging understandings as well as learning targets.

Sketch to Stretch
Sketch-to-Stretch is an instructional strategy developed by Harste, Short, & Burke, (1988). Students draw quick sketches to stretch their thinking and understanding of concepts. Moving to another communication system, such as art, can lead the learner to generate new insights and meanings. For students who access to the internet, FlockDraw, could be an interesting way for collaborative sketching to occur. 

Resource: Sketch to Stretch: Sketch Me a Story (Short & Harste, 1996)

I use this technique with poetry.  You can see examples here, here, and here.

In addition to sing pencil and paper, young students can also use Doodlecast to draw, explain, and share their learning.

Lift a Line

(A good student example can be found here).

Lift a line is a strategy that shows students how to choose an interesting sentence and use it as a first line for a new entry. Students choose an interesting sentence from their own writing or from their reading to recopy onto a blank page. This lifted line or sentence becomes the first line of a new entry.

An interesting range of writing approaches can be found on the Facing History/Facing Ourselves website.  Here's a link to it. 

My favorite example of lifting lines (see below) can be found in Kevin Hodgson's (@dogtrax) post, In the Poet's Defense: I Lift Lines to Remix Ideas. Pure genius, that.

from here.

One Minute Sentence  

This strategy encourages students to form a concise summary of what they just learned. Students are able to demonstrate their understanding of an idea or concept by writing only one sentence to capture the most important elements. This strategy allows students to practice their writing skills and gives teachers a way to check students’ understanding.

Tableau

In this activity, students create a still picture, without talking, to capture and communicate the meaning of a concept. Students must truly understand the meaning of a concept or idea in order to communicate it using physical poses, gestures, and facial expressions rather than words. This collaborative strategy is appealing to kinesthetic learners and allows all students to be creative while strengthening their comprehension of a concept.

An interesting variation is that after students freeze, they can be tapped by other students in the room and they need to step into the character/concept they are depicting and speak.

Below is an example from Minneapolis Public Schools. Provides context for drama use as a means to improve comprehension  (disc. about tableau begins about 1:30 in).

Snowball: Promoting Thinking through Discussion

This technique involves progressively expanding groups. The teacher and/ or students prepare a question. Students work alone first thinking about the question, then discuss it with a partner, then join another pair to form a group f four, then eight, and so on until the whole class has been brought together.

This is an example of work I've done shifting from close reading of a Loren Eiseley text to snowballing.

Close Reading: from Text Annotation to Talk from Mary Ann Reilly / Blueprints for Learning, Inc.

Here is a compilation of discussion techniques (including Snowballing) that I regularly use.  They all are based on the work of Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill that can be found in their book,  Discussion as a Way of Teaching. 

Discussion from Mary Ann Reilly / Blueprints for Learning, Inc.