Mosaic of Thought Book Study Group

Reflection/Focus Questions for Prologue, Ch. 1 & 2

1. Many of us learned to read with Dick and Jane and SRA cards. What was
your personal response to “First Reader”?

2. Ellin Oliver talks about the transformation that has taken place in her
own reading. “I have moved from a passive to an active stance. I am
acutely aware of my own reading process, the questions and challenges I
have for the authors I read, the awareness I have of moments of
confusion and disorientation in the text, and the tools I use to confront
that confusion.” (Pg. 5) How aware are you of the processes you use in
your own reading? Where would you place yourself, as a reader, on a
continuum between being a passive reader and an active reader? How
important do you think it is for a teacher of reading to be an active
reader?

3. Susan Zimmerman asked the group of educators what it would take to

create a group of public schools that would be places “where the children
and adults were deeply engaged and passionate about their own learning?’
How would you answer this question? Have we created this type of
environment at our school? In our own classrooms? What things are we
doing really well? What things could we maybe do better?

4. What touched you as you read this section? Surprised you? Intrigued
you?

5. What questions do you have? What do you wonder about?

Reflection/Focus Questions for Ch. 3/Gradual Release of

Responsibility Handout

1. What were you thinking as you read “Salvador, Late or Early?’ What
were your thoughts after you finished reading?
2. “My concern, “I told them, “is that many children are not so engaged as
they read. They don't know when they’re comprehending. They don’t
know when they’re not. They don’t know whether it’s critical for them to
comprehend a given piece. And if they don’t comprehend, they don’t know
what to do about it.” What were your thought/feelings as you read this
quote? How prevalent is this as a problem with the students you work
with each day?

3. The two classroom vignettes in this chapter demonstrate how two

teachers went about teaching their students to be metacognitive. What
are some ways you’ve helped your own students to be more aware of their
thinking/comprehension as they read? What are some ways we as
teachers can “see” into our students thought processes as they read?

4. Why is it important for us as teachers to understand and be aware of

how we comprehend reading before we are able to teach our students to
do so?

5. What is your understanding of the Gradual Release of Responsibility

Model? How does this model fit into your daily plans with your students?

Reflection/Focus Questions for Chapter 4

1. What was the single one, or two, most interesting or valuable insights for
you as you read this chapter?

2. This is the first chapter that really demonstrates how teachers who
follow this model of instruction explicitly teach one strategy, in depth, at
a time. What are your reactions to/thoughts about this method of
comprehension instruction? What do you think are the benefits or
drawbacks to this type of instruction?

3. How can we mesh this type of instruction with the use of our basal
readers?
4. Debbie Miller, the teacher whose classroom is highlighted in this chapter,
documents her student’s progress through the strategy study with
classroom charts. What kind of chart/visual aid could you envision using
in your classroom, with your students?

5. If you have the time, try to bring or write down the names of a book or
two that you think would be good for “think alouds” in making text-to-
self, text-to-text, or text-to-world connections.

Reflection/Focus for Chapter 5

To me, determining importance, especially in expository text, is one of

the most difficult strategies to model/teach. I thought maybe we could
each bring a sample of grade appropriate expository text with us to our next
meeting and we could discuss as a group the ideas we identify as important in
different pieces and what our thinking behind those decisions was.

Reflection/Focus Questions for Chapter 6

1. “The research shows that children who struggle as readers tend not to
ask questions at any time as they read—before, during, or after.”

“They’re not really reading, not really getting it, not really connecting
with the text enough to interact with it.”

Both of these quotes reinforce the necessity of teacher modeling and

the active teaching of metacognition. What are some ways we can help
our students slow down and become involved enough in a text that they
are aware of the questions or “I wonders” that they have?

2. Typically, I think, teachers (as well as basal publishers) have tried to

force student interaction with a text by providing the questions for
them. These questions are based on what the teacher/publisher have
deemed as important in the text. As we’ve discussed, a student can often
answer these questions and still not have understood the text at much
more than a surface level.
 How comfortable are you in handing over the responsibility to your
students to generate the questions that are important to them and their
understanding of a text? It is sometimes hard for me to step back and
realize that my students don’t have to have the same or as complete an
understanding of a story as myself. Do any of you struggle with this?

3. Are some questions better than others? Other resources I’ve read talk
about thick (those that help the reader understand the story better) and
thin (usually short, factual answers that don’t necessarily increase
comprehension) questions. How can we help our students evaluate the
helpfulness of the questions they’re asking?

4. How can we help our students take the step from generating questions to
using those questions to increase their understanding of the text? Once
we’ve got our students generating questions, what is the next step? How
can we evaluate individual student’s progress with this strategy?

5. The example chart on page 113 in the text seems fairly complicated to
me, especially for primary students. What kind of chart or visual aide
could you envision using in your classroom to document progress during
this strategy study?

Reflection/Focus Questions for Chapter 7

1. I found it interesting that Ellin, after discussing the poem, turns to a

discussion of her sensory imaging with artwork. Do you think it might be
easier for students to initially try out this strategy with modes other
than text? Besides artwork what other mediums might be helpful in
developing our students sensory imaging skills?

2. As I read and reread this chapter I was struck again and again with how
inter-related this strategy is with schema and text connections. The
sensory images each of us makes in response to a text will be very
individual based on our own personal schema. The students in Todd
McLain’s class noted this. I also took note of how this strategy,
 especially when the reader responds emotionally, leads to questioning.
The kindergarten students demonstrated this when they asked questions
about the little boy in the story they were reading. What do you think of
the idea that as we teach one strategy, in depth, children will
independently start to implement some of the other strategies of good
readers? Agree/disagree? For me, this leads to reflection on the
importance of teaching one strategy at a time. How necessary do you
think this is? How do you envision implementing strategy instruction in
your own classroom? What are your thoughts about what order the
strategies should be presented in?

3. I loved how Ellin referred to what was on the walls of Paige Inman’s
classroom as “testaments to what is valued in” her room. What would a
visitor to one of our rooms interpret as important to us and our students
based on what is on our walls?

4. The discussion of how Todd McLain modeled spontaneously forming

images at times and at other times have to purposely form images to
increase comprehension was thought provoking for me. Is the inability to
form a sensory image a sign of a breakdown in comprehension? Is it
always necessary to form a sensory image to comprehend a text? Could
the inability to form a sensory image be related to a lack of schema for
the topic? How do we help our students when this occurs?

Reflection/Focus Questions for Chapter 8

1. Ellin discusses a conversation she had with a study group of teachers

about a perceived need for a hierarchical approach to teaching children
to infer. Several teachers argued for this approach, one that taught
literal comprehension first and independent of inferring. Where are your
thoughts on this issue? Did the following vignette with Christina change
your thoughts at all? In what way?

2. On page 154, Ellin, in speaking of inferring, says, “There must be a fusion

of words on the page . . . and the experience and knowledge of the
reader.” Throughout this chapter I was struck again and again with how
individual a reader’s inferences will be based on their individual life
 experiences and knowledge (schema?). How does this observation fit in
with standardized test questions with only one correct answer?

3. On page 158, Christina infers that the mother in “Tar Beach” is worried
the dad may never come home, “Well sometimes when parents don’t have
jobs, they just go away and they never come back.” I was dying to ask
her about her personal experience with this issue. Could she have dealt
with something like this in her personal life? I haven’t read this story
(but plan to, smile) and am not sure what the central concepts are. But, if
Christina has some personal experience with dad’s who are out of work or
who have left a family behind, don’t you think this could be a very valid
inference, albeit one that wouldn’t show up on a standardized test form?

4. How can we gain insight into the thinking behind the inferences our
students make? How can we help them to recognize the validity/
feasibility of an inference?

Focus/Reflection Questions for Chapter 9

1. What do you see as the major differences between summarizing and

synthesizing? How would you define synthesizing?

2. What key skills do we need to develop in our students in order for

them to successfully synthesize a text?

3. I was struck by the description of Jody Cohn’s 5th grade classroom

and how she describes the work going on there as a building on to the
things previous teachers had done with the students. Reading this, I
felt her school must have a feeling of cohesiveness and collaboration,
of working toward a common goal. A lot of this it seems to me must
stem from the work the reading specialist does with the teachers.
What things could we do to increase communication and collaboration
between grade levels at our campus?
 Reflection/Focus Questions for Chapter 10 & Epilogue

1. How do you see your participation in this group and the material from
this book impacting your reading instruction? Will reading instruction
look different in your classroom next year based on your participation
in this group?

2. What measures can we take as a group to continue our dialogue and

support of each other in implementing this instruction in our
classrooms?