The basic idea is that when you use a book to do a picture walk with your kids, there are some limitations imposed by the medium (bound pages): 1. Nobody can see more than two pages at a time. 2. Your students can't look back without asking you to stop reading....and then you have to page back and forth through the book. How often can you do that without losing the rest of the class? So access to looking back is severely limited, and when you do look back, It's an interruption. 3. When a teacher is reading students a story, a passenger mentality sets in: the students are physically in the position of least control over the book, the story in its pages, and the speed at which the reading of the story is progressing.
By comparison, scrolls are a much more flexible and usable environment: 1. You can see much more of the text. You can simply unroll it fully, in which case the entire story is visible. Or you can unroll the story as you go, leaving in full view the pages you've read without exposing the pages ahead. 2. Your students can look back whenever they want to, without asking you to stop. So they can see a character and a question can pop into their minds about something that character did earlier in the story, and all they need do is look back along the scroll to see the information they need. 3. Furthermore, with so much of the story visible, students can become more engaged. They will come up with more "I wonders". They will be "drivers" and not just "passengers". There are two ways to make a scroll: 1. photocopy the pages and tape or glue them together 2. buy two books, use a razor knife to cut off the spine, then lay out the pages in order and tape or glue them together For picture books like "Good Night Gorilla", it's cheapest and easiest to buy two books. Make sure you buy the paper, not the board-book version! When you scroll "Good Night Gorilla", your kids will be able to interact with the story in ways not available in the bound book. They'll be able to walk on it (it feels good in socks or bare feet), sit on it, roll on it, and move back and forth along it. These are all useful ways of engaging. The length of the story can be understood in concrete terms -- the length of the scroll; they'll know where things are -- literally where things are in the space occupied by the scroll. And they'll see more things, too. The persistence of the information -- the fact that it all remains instantly accessible -- is an important benefit. Your kids will be more engaged because of this. Things to look for: in "Gorilla", the balloon. Consider: There are 16 two-page spreads in the book. The balloon (or evidence of it) is in 14 of them. Can you spot the balloon? Can you see where it isn't? on each of the pages? More questions: Where is the balloon going? Where does it end up? What might it feel like to be this balloon? What might the balloon be feeling at different points in the story (I think balloons can feel in this story!) -- and what evidence makes you think that? What might it feel like to end up where the balloon ends up? What does the balloon have to do with the rest of the story? How is the experience of the balloon similar to, and different from, the experiences of the other characters? How do the "actions" of the balloon mirror the actions and emotions in the story? In effect I'm asking, What does the balloon mean/symbolilze?. The balloon is, by itself, a very rich topic. Lots of opportunities to model MOT strategies. And yes, when you're ready for "Ten Minutes 'Til Bedtime" (same author) and text-to-text connections, you'll find more balloons. Same questions apply. And more. Great material. Lots of interesting things happening in Ten Minutes 'Til Bedtime. For example, there is a healthy dose of self-referential humor. At one point you see a picture of the boy reading a book. And as luck would have it, the book he is reading is "Ten Minutes...", and he has his copy of the book open to the very same page that you are looking at, which means that on the page he is looking at there is a picture of a little boy (him) reading the same book (Ten Minutes), and he has it turned to the same page, and you can see that there is a picture of a little boy (him again) reading the same book...... So there are lots of things you can say about this, one of them being that you are, by implication, on a page that is being viewed by a "bigger" you, and so on. OK. So it's very "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". It's not like you can't do this stuff with the book, but it's just so much more accessible on the scroll. Scrolls are a great way to support MOT instruction. More information here: http://www.textmapping.org/textmapping.html and here: http://www.textmapping.org/whWorkshopNotes.html I hope you have fun with it! Dave Middlebrook The Textmapping Project A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction. www.textmapping.org | Please share this site with your colleagues! USA: (609) 771-1781 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sternhickey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 3:38 PM Subject: [MOSAIC] text mapping in kinder > textmapping with "Good night Gorilla" was mentioned and textmapping in > general. > i'm teaching kindergarten this year for the first time in a while and > would love the details about this. > thanks, > susan > _______________________________________________ > Mosaic mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to > http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. > > Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. > > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
