Kuunari

The series “Reading Notice and Note” features essays I wrote for a distance learning class while reading the book Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading by G. Kylene Beers and Robert E Probst. Overall, I found the book and the class enjoyable and hope this series helps others as they read and think about the book. 

Literature allows us to understand other people’s thoughts and emotions better than nearly any other art form. In fact, there was a study reported in Scientific American that suggested that people who read novels had more empathy than people who don’t read fictional texts. The Aha Moment signpost from Notice and Note describes an important realization for a character, a moment that will change them going forward. As a fourth grade teacher, Aha Moments help my students understand why this change is important for the character and the plot in the book. 

By fourth grade, the complexity of the text students read is such that a character’s thought process is often expressed. While most texts are in third person, most provide a least some level of omnipotence for at least the main character’s thoughts. As readers, we begin to empathize and sympathize with the character and his problems, sometimes reacting negatively when we see the character making a decision that seems suboptimal. The Aha Moment gives clarity on how the character is changing. The focal question, “how might this change things,” highlights how these Aha Moments are central to understanding the actions of characters. As a reader myself, I see these Aha Moments in the books I read as signal that something is about to change in the story. It is important that my students develop that awareness as well. 

While I have mentioned Aha Moments during read alouds, this should be an easy one to start turning over to my students. I found the suggested text clues would be helpful for my more concrete thinkers to understand how to find these Aha Moments in their own reading. As my students start to better identify these Aha Moments, they will better understand the character motivations in the books they are reading. Character motivations are a challenging topic to identify and understand for the students. Students typically view reading as a passive activity where they simply sit back and absorb a story, instead of a dynamic telling where the student and the author are in partnership in creating the story. Identifying Aha Moments is another step for the students to treat reading as dynamic as they recognize the change happening in the story. 

As my students become aware of Aha Moments, I will give them heads up that Aha Moments are coming up in the book to help scaffold identification. I expect that as they become better at utilizing Aha Moments in their close readings of texts, our conversations about characters decisions, actions, and changes will become richer. Without Aha Moments, a story lacks tension and nothing happens. Aha Moments allow students to identify why things are changing and create deeper meanings from the text.