Detecting Patterns

Thursday I got to regale my 6th and 7th graders with a grandkid tale while reading them a picture book. It was hilarity with a point: the middle schoolers realized they were much more sophisticated readers than a preschooler. Then I told them about my adult daughter's chat message about a novel she’d just finished: “No one to discuss it with! Just finished and I have questions!!” Literature has a variety of levels of complexity—some challenge preschoolers, some challenge middle schoolers, and some challenge adults. Meeting the challenge can be fun. And there are tools for helping meet the challenge at every level. Here’s how those levels came together for me last week and culminated in a good reading lesson.

Different book, but you get the idea of what our reading times look like

Preschool Level:
Earlier in the week I was reading Getting Dressed with Lily and Milo to my grandson. (Though living on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, we have regular online reading times using Readeo.com.) The interesting thing was how much scaffolding it took for my grandson to notice and understand the contrasting pattern of the simple story. 

It starts with Milo, the little brother mouse character, fully dressed and ready to go outside. The text narrates Lily, the big sister rabbit character, choosing (for example, green, pink, or striped socks) and putting on each item of clothing, page by page. Meanwhile, the illustrations also show, without any text, Milo taking off an item on each page, so that by the time Lily is ready to go outside and play, Milo is not.

At first, my grandson didn’t even notice the Milo illustration, being fully focused on the Lily illustration that was described by the text. When I asked him what Milo was doing, he answered, “Putting his coat on!” “Hmm,” I said, “it does look like he could be putting his coat on. But if we look back at the page before—look he has his coat on already. So what is he doing here?” “Taking his coat off!” 

The second time he didn't notice the Milo illustration on his own either. I prompt him again, and again he answered, “Putting his boots on!” After repeating the same procedure of looking back to the previous picture where Milo has his boots on, my grandson recognized that Milo is taking them off.  The third time I had to prompt him to look at Milo, but he had the pattern then—“He’s taking his socks off!” And the fourth time, he went straight to the Milo illustration, shrieking with laughter. 

It fascinated my how much coaching it took for a preschooler to notice a pattern that had seemed so obvious to me at first glance, how gradually he mastered it, and how delighted he was once he did.

Expert Level:
My phone lit up with a message from my adult daughter: “Have you read Night of the Living Rez?” I knew it was a collection of short stories set on a Penobscot 

reservation in Maine that had made many "Best Books of 2022" lists. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that, so I got the book and tore through it. It was a tough read. I struggled to find the hope and compassion reviewers mentioned finding in the midst of trauma, dysfunction, and despair—though I do believe that love listens to all the stories of all our neighbors. It took me over half of the book to even realize that the stories shared the same main character as a child, young person, and adult (though not in chronological order, and called by different names). Then I had to look back for the patterns: What was the chronological order, and why did the author decide to put them in this order?

Middle School Level:
As my students returned from Christmas break for a new term, I wanted to introduce them to their fourth signpost from Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Beers and Probst (one of my professional books from last summer): Again and Again. When you notice a word, phrase, image, or event coming up over and over, stop and ask yourself, “Why might the author bring this up again and again?” You’ll probably learn something about character, conflict, and theme. I’d planned to use Langston Hughes’ short story “Thank You, M’am” as the whole-class lesson to prepare students to use the signpost in their book clubs on resilience which will begin this week. 

Suddenly I put it all together. What is so fantastic about Beers and Probst’s signposts is that they give readers with some sophistication in reading—like my middle schoolers who could easily recognize the pattern in Getting Dressed with Lily and Milo—the tools that more sophisticated readers--like my daughter and me--naturally use, possibly without being able to articulate what it was that alerted them to stop and notice and note. After the hilarity of the picture book and grandkid story, students did a good job searching out the Again and Again patterns in “Thank You, M’am,” and I look forward to seeing how they do with it as they begin their book clubs this week.

How about you? What kinds of questions do you ask when you are reading challenging material? What patterns do you notice? How does it help? How do you help less sophisticated readers ask good questions and notice important patterns?