“I noticed [something]... ,” I said. “I did this quickly counting on
my fingers. There are four lines. I didn’t have to use my fingers for that,
but there are 10 syllables in Lines 1, 3, and 4, if you count ‘thats the end’,
which the writer has taken out, and 11 [syllables] in Line 2.”
This observation was striking to others as well, and it immediately
raised questions about whether the number of syllables was an accident
or intentional. What implications did the syllables have for whether or
not this was a poem? Could this young child have actually counted the
syllables? Could she have known that syllabification is an established way
many poets determine where to break the lines of their poems? Could
she have “invented” this poetic form? Or was this syllabification simply an
accident? As usual, we reached no clear conclusions. The discussion pro-
ceeded and explored questions about the nature of the assignment.
(Could the child have been told to go outside and observe nature on a
recent May day?) The group jumped back and forth between observa-
tions and thoughts about the feeling of the piece and its structural com-
ponents (e.g., punctuation, line breaks, and use of conjunctions).
Finally, it was Pam’s turn to speak, and she was quick to note that in
September this child was writing complete sentences with punctuation.
“As a matter of fact, the poetry piece I had her do before last time was
much more sentence oriented. Less free flowing. It was interesting to me
that she broke out of that mold.” Julie asked Pam to say more about this.
“She was very much into a prose mold. Here’s my complete thought, and
this is the ending. This strikes me as atypical of her work.”
Pam added that “two lips” was, indeed, meant to be tulips, and that
the last line should be read as “flowers that are red and blue [pause]
tulips.” Pam reported that she had heard the writer read this poem
aloud, and her reading of the final line made clear where the pause
should be.
Teaching Moves and Responses
After considerable conversation about the child and her relationship
to this piece of work, to writing in general, and to Pam, Julie decided it
was time to move on to a discussion of teaching moves and responses.
I include here a significant portion of the transcript of that part of the
Wonder ing to Be Done 243