Teaching Ring around the Rosie: Rigorous Questions and Texts Aren't the Answer

Most of the time, when I look at the work people are doing with the new TEKS for ELAR, I see that thinking isn't really addressed. I watched a video recently that had some good ideas that I'd like to take further.

Dr. Gibson presented the classic sing-song poem, Ring around the Rosie to establish that the text is simple, but the understanding of the text is not. To really understand this piece, one must ask WHEN this was written and WHY it was written. She then explained the macabre meaning of the text.

The WHEN and WHY are directly connected to specific strands in our new TEKS:

• Inquiry and Research:listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student engages in both short-term and sustained recursive inquiry processes for a variety of purposes. 
• Author's Purpose and Craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the author's choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances. 

But here's where the problem begins: 

Most of the time...in the past maybe...teachers addressed this by telling kids the historical background of the text. (I've seen some great and engaging lectures and powerpoints on the background of King Lear and Fahrenheit 451.) Teachers explain the when and the why. But how is a reader supposed to know that there is something more to know about the text? How does the reader know how to think about a text? How is the reader supposed to know that there might be something more to consider? 

Without examination and explicit teaching of how one processes and analyzes texts, we are teaching Ring around the Rosie and NOT our standards. How can we teach students to know when Inquiry and Research are warranted to aid comprehension and analysis? How does one use Author's Purpose and Craft to reveal the meaning? 

If we don't figure this out, when kids encounter a more complex text, they will - again - be relying on the teacher to give the background and context of the work or continue in uniformed oblivion about the text's purpose and message as well as how a critical reader uses inquiry, multiple texts, and connections to craft meaning. 

While I agree with the premise of the video (that we can use simple texts to teach complex thinking skills for the first exposure), I do not think that asking complex questions about simple texts is going to be any more fruitful than holding hands and singing Ring around the Rosie as we fall on the ground and pretend to be dead. We might as well be.

John Hattie talks about the four levels of feedback in his 2007 work with Timperley. 

Task levels focus on the whether something is right or wrong, the content of the text or task. Process levels focus on how something is done, how we know, the thinking. Self-extending levels focus on the awareness a person needs to identify problems and what needs to be done next. Don't we need students to be able to understand HOW they comprehend and read? Don't we need students to be the ones who notice and respond when something isn't working. 

Here are some of the questions posed in the video about Dr. Seuss' Yertle the Turtle. All of these questions focus on the CONTENT of the text and nothing to do with how one would do something similar if given another text. 

1. What is the author's purpose for writing the story? Why would I care or want to know? How would I figure that out if I wanted to? 

2. What is the main idea not stated in the text? There's an idea not stated? How did I miss that? What would I look for so I'm not fooled next time? How did the author slip that in there without me noticing? 

3. How does the theme apply to leadership today? The question tells the students exactly which pieces of content to focus on to make the connection. What happens when no one is there to tell them to focus on leadership? What happens if there is another possibility? 

4. What environment represents the pond? Again, the question focuses on the content of the text.  As a reader, how would I know to ask that question if the teacher wasn't there interrogating me through the text? A better question might be phrased like this: Authors use the setting on purpose to help you make connections to their message or theme. When you look at the setting, what are you noticing that might give you a hint about what the author is trying to convey? 

5. Who could be Yertle in your world? Again...asking content questions. These questions and the discussion that follow will not help readers navigate the SKILL - the THINKING -  required to answer the question. Students will not understand what they are supposed to do and notice when they read the next text, especially a text that's harder to read than Yertle the Turtle. 

No wonder kids aren't transferring their learning to new and more complex texts. We aren't teaching them how to do so! 

I loved these two quotes from the video: 

• "Cognitive demand is about the complexity of the task and the mental processing required to complete it." 
• "Rigor is measured by depth of understanding." 

Agreed - but the examples shown in the video STILL don't get us to the ideals expressed in the truths of these quotes. 

Asking leading and funneling questions to students about texts that have answers directly related to that text alone will not lead to the ability to transfer that skill to another text. Simply said: asking questions about the text itself - the content - are not going to work. It doesn't  matter what level they are on Blooms. It doesn't  matter what DOK you assign them. It's not about Ring around the Rosie, or Yurtle the Turtle, or King Lear. Y'all, it's about teaching people what to do, what to ask themselves, and how to THINK with any text.