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The 7 Keys to Comprehension

Susan ZimmermannCoauthor MOSAIC OF THOUGHT& 7 KEYS TO COMPREHENSIONsusanzimmermann@comcast.net,

www.susanzimmermann.com

SUPPORTING STUDENT LEARNING CONFERENCEINDIANAPOLIS, JUNE 24 & 25, 2009

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Books by Susan Zimmermannwww. susanzimmermann. com

• Mosaic of Thought, Ellin Oliver Keene & Susan Zimmermann (2007) 10th anniversary edition, over 70% new material, 2007

• 7 Keys to Comprehension, How to Help Your Kids Read It and Get It, Susan Zimmermann & Chryse Hutchins (July,2003, Three Rivers Press, $15.00). 7 Keysdemystifies reading and gives parents practical, thoughtful advice about what they can do to help their children understand what they read and love reading. It outlines what is involved in the process of reading, shows parents that phonics is only one piece of the reading puzzle, and focuses on the importance of not just teaching children to decode words, but teaching them to deeply understand and care about what they read. Each chapter includes a classroom connections section for teachers.

• Mosaic of Thought, Ellin Oliver Keene & Susan Zimmermann (Heinemann 1997, $29.00). Mosaic of Thought is a journey into the thought processes of proficient readers. These processes help children become more flexible, adaptive, independent, and engaged readers. Through vivid portraits of remarkable, workshop- oriented classroom environments, we see how instruction looks in dynamic, literature-rich reader’s workshops. An educational best seller that has sold over

a quarter million copies, Mosaic of Thought is changing the way reading

is taught in thousands of classrooms across the country.

• Writing to Heal the Soul, Susan Zimmermann (Three Rivers Press 2002, $13.00).Winner of the Colorado Book Award, Writing to Heal the Soul is a warm, empathetic, but highly motivational guide to using writing to transcend life’s most devastating burdens. According toThe New York Times Writing to Heal the Soul is “Inspiring… Ms. Zimmermann gives readers who have suffered loss some simple but rewarding exercises aimed at easing and ultimately healing sorrow.”

• Grief Dancers, Susan Zimmermann (Nemo Press 1996, $15.00). In Grief Dancers, Zimmermann tells the story of life with her daughter Katherine, a child who developed normally until she was a year old and then drifted into the world of the profoundly handicapped. A finalist for the Colorado Book Award, Grief Dancers won the Exceptional Parent Symbol of Excellence for its “profound contribution to human understanding and dignity.”

• Keeping Katherine, Susan Zimmermann (Three Rivers Press, 2005, $13.00) is an updated and expanded version of Grief Dancers.

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What is READING?CUEING SYSTEMS

Visible Ingredients: Surface Structure Systems

• Grapho- Phonic System: Provides information about letters, features of letters, combinations of letters and the sounds associated with them (letter/sound knowledge, phonemic awareness, decoding)

• Lexical System: Provides information about words, including instantaneous recognition of words, but not including the meaning associated with the word (visual word recognition, visual memory for words)

• Syntactic System: Provides information about the form and structure of language, including whether or not the text sounds correct (language structure at the word, sentence and text level, the “architecture of language”)

Invisible Ingredients:Deep Structure Systems

• Semantic System: Provides information about the meanings, concepts, and associations of words and longer pieces of text (word meanings/associations)

• Schematic System: Provides information from a reader’s prior knowledge and/or personal associations with text that permit him/her to understand and remember information from text (prior knowledge that helps governs storage, retrieval and understanding of information)

• Pragmatic System: Provides information about the purposes and needs the reader has while reading.In other words what the reader needs to understand for a specific purpose and audience (a reader reads differently depending upon the purpose for reading)

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THINKING STRATEGIESThe “7 KEYS TO

COMPREHENSION”• Using background knowledge (schema)• Creating mental images• Questioning• Inferring• Determining importance• Synthesizing• Monitoring for meaning (“fix-ups”)

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1) BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE (SCHEMA): KEY CONCEPTS

• Proficient readers spontaneously and purposefully recall their relevant background knowledge (schema) before, during, and after they read.

• Proficient readers assimilate information from text and other learning experiences into their background knowledge and make changes in it to accommodate new information.

• Proficient readers adapt their background knowledge as they read, talk, and learn, deleting inaccurate information, adding to existing schema, and connecting to other related knowledge, opinions, and ideas.

• Proficient readers purposefully use background knowledge to enhance their comprehension in all forms of text.

• Proficient readers connect information from text and other learning experiences to schemata in long-term memory.

Information is learned, remembered and reapplied because it is linked to prior knowledge.

Proficient readers use background knowledge to make: Text- to- self connections: applying personal life

experience to what they read. Text- to- text connections: applying knowledge about

other texts (movies, videos, television programs) to what they read.

Text- to- world connections: applying their general world knowledge to what they read.

• Proficient readers ACTIVATE (recall relevant background knowledge) and BUILD (create background knowledge on a given topic, author, text structure, etc.) background knowledge.

“THAT REMINDS ME OF…”“I REMEMBER…”“My connection here is…”

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2. Mental Images: The Mind’s Motion Picture

• Proficient readers spontaneously and purposefully create mental images while and after they read. The images emerge from all five senses, as well as emotions, and are anchored in readers’ background knowledge.

• Proficient readers use images to immerse themselves in rich detail as they read. The detail gives depth and dimension to the reading, engaging the reader more deeply, making the text more memorable.

• Proficient readers use images to draw conclusions, to create distinct and unique interpretations of the text, to recall details significant to the text, and to recall a text after it has been read. Images from readers’ personal experience frequently become part of their comprehension.

• Proficient readers adapt their images as they continue to read. Images are revised to incorporate new information revealed through the text and new interpretations as they are developed by the reader.

• Proficient readers understand and articulate how creating images enhances their comprehension.

• Proficient readers change and modify their images in response to images that other readers share.

“WHAT DO YOU HEAR, FEEL, TASTE, SMELL, PICTURE?”

“HERE’S WHAT I SEE. WHAT DO YOU SEE?”

“WHAT DO YOU SEE IN YOUR MIND?”

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3) QUESTIONING: KEY CONCEPTS

• Proficient readers spontaneously and purposefully generate questions before, during, and after reading.

• Proficient readers ask questions to: – clarify meaning– speculate about text– determine an author's intent,

style, content– Answer a specific question– consider rhetorical questions

inspired by the text.• Proficient readers use questions to

focus their attention on important components of the text.

• Proficient readers understand that many of the most intriguing questions are not answered explicitly in the text but left to the reader's interpretation.

• When an answer is needed, proficient readers determine whether it can be answered by the text, whether they will need to infer the answer from the text and their background knowledge, or whether they will need to seek the answer elsewhere.

• Proficient readers understand how the process of questioning is used in other areas of their lives.

• Proficient readers understand how asking questions deepens their comprehension.

• Proficient readers are aware that as they hear others' questions, new ones are inspired in their own minds.

“I wonder…”“Why…?”“What…?”

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4) INFERRING: KEY CONCEPTS

• Inferring is the process of creating a personal meaning from text. The reader combines what is read with relevant prior knowledge (schema).

• When proficient readers infer, they create a meaning that is not stated explicitly in the text.

• Inferring may cause the reader to slow down, reread sections, talk, write or draw to better understand the content.

• When proficient readers infer, they are more able to remember and reapply what they have read; create new and revise existing prior knowledge; analyze text and authors; and engage in reflective dialogue about what they read.

• A wide variety of interpretation is appropriate for fiction and poetry; a narrower range is typical for nonfiction.

• Teachers should allow great latitude for inferences as long as the reader can support the inference with specific text and prior knowledge.

• When they infer, proficient readers:– draw conclusions;– make reasonable predictions;– create dynamic interpretations;– use their background knowledge and

explicitly stated information from the text to answer questions they have as they read;

– make connections between their conclusions and other beliefs or knowledge;

– make critical or analytical judgments about what they read.

I think that…I predict…My guess is…My conclusion here is…

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5) DETERMINING IMPORTANCE IN TEXT

• Decisions about importance in text are made based on:

– the reader's schema -- ideas most closely connected to the reader's background knowledge will be considered most important;

– the reader’s purpose;– the reader's beliefs, opinions,

and experiences related to the text;

– the reader's knowledge of text format. Particularly in nonfiction text, titles, headings, subheadings, graphs, pictures, quotes give clues about what is important.

– key words, sentences, concepts– concepts another reader

mentions prior to, during or after reading.

• Students should be able to articulate how they make decisions about what is important in a given context and how those decisions enhance their overall comprehension of the piece.

• Interesting discussion emanates from disagreement about what is most important. Children need to work to defend their positions, but there is rarely a true set of most important ideas.

• Pointing out non-examples (what isn’t important) can help students distinguish importance more clearly.

I think this is really important, because…

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6) SYNTHESIS: KEY CONCEPTS

The process of synthesizing occurs during reading:

• Proficient readers monitor the overall meaning and themes in the text as they read and are aware of the ways text elements "fit together" to create that overall meaning.

• Proficient readers are aware of text elements in fiction and non fiction and understand that text elements provide clues to help them predict and understand the overall meanings or themes.

• Proficient readers pay attention to character, setting, conflict, sequence of events, resolution, and theme in fiction and to text patterns such as chronology, cause and effect, and problem/solution in non-fiction, and use their knowledge of these elements to make decisions about the overall meaning of a passage, chapter, or book.

– Proficient readers actively revise their synthesis as they read.

The process of synthesizing occurs after reading:

• Proficient readers are able to express, through a variety means, a synthesis of what they have read. The synthesis includes ideas and themes relevant to the overall meaning from the text and is cogently presented;

• A synthesis is the sum of information from the text, other relevant texts and the reader's background knowledge, ideas, and opinions produced in an original way;

• Proficient readers use synthesis to share, recommend, and critically review books they have read;

• Proficient readers can articulate how using synthesis helps them better understand what they have read.

What does this really mean to you?

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7) FIX-UP STRATEGIES (MONITORING FOR MEANING): KEY CONCEPTS

• Proficient readers monitor their comprehension during reading. They know when the text they are reading or listening to makes sense and when it doesn’t.

• Proficient readers identify difficulties they have in comprehending at the word, sentence, and whole text level. They are flexible in their use of tactics to solve different types of comprehension problems. They monitor, evaluate, and make revisions to their evolving interpretation of the text while reading.

• Proficient readers can "think aloud" about their reading process. They can describe strategies they use to comprehend.

• Proficient readers can identify confusing ideas, themes, and/or surface elements (words, sentence or text structures, graphs, tables, etc.) and can suggest a variety of different means to solve the problems they have.

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Possible “Fix-Ups”

• Go back and reread. Often, that’s enough.• Read ahead to clarify meaning.• Identify what it isn’t understand: word,

sentence, concept.• If it is a word, read beyond it and see if

its meaning is clarified later in the text; or think about the content so far and predict what word might make sense. If those approaches don’t work, ask someone what it means or look it up in a dictionary.

• If it is a sentence in a picture book, look at the pictures and think about what has happened so far; then reread and read ahead. If still confused, talk with a friend, parent, or teacher about it.

• If it is a concept, try to summarize the story up to the confusing spot. See if that clears up the confusion. It may be necessary to build more background knowledge. That means going to an encyclopedia, checking out the Internet, having a conversation with someone who knows about the topic or researching in the library.

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How do you know you don’t understand?

• Voice in your head changes; stop having conversation with text

• Camera in your head shuts off; no images• Mind wanders; not thinking about reading• Can’t remember what you just read• Not asking/answering questions as you go• Encounter characters & don’t know when they were

introduced; haven’t kept track

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Effective Instructional Practices: “Cultivate Awareness & Engagement”

TEACHER’S ROLE:

• Thinking Aloud: Disclosing your thinking as you read to students

• Modeling: Showing that you are a reader and value reading

• Practicing in a wide variety of text genres and levels

• Conferring: Talking with individual students about their reading and use of the thinking strategies

• Discussing: Creating time for students to share their thinking with one another

• “Going Public”: Displaying student’s thinking around room on butcher paper, on lists, etc.

• Writing: Getting students to write about their reading

KEY POINTS: THINK ALOUDS

• Select text with attention to modeling options

• Preview text to locate possible think-aloud points

• Be precise about why you’re thinking aloud

• Be precise about when you’re thinking aloud vs. reading aloud

• Limit think aloud focus to one strategy

• Be clear about how being aware of your thinking (metacognitive) helps you comprehend

• Be clear that your students will be expected to be metacognitive in their own texts

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STUDENT’S ROLE:“Cultivating Awareness & Engagement”

Written Response

• Post-its: Reader marks thinking with Post-it.• Double entry journals/diaries: Words or

phrases from text on one side, thinking on the other.

• Butcher paper: small group reads silently, then write their thinking on butcher paper.

• Letters to authors, characters, or other readers: let student decide what to write about.

• Quick write: student writes quickly about gist of text or thinking strategies.

• Highlighting: students use markers to code text.

• Story maps/webs: visual representations of key themes, questions, ideas, images.

• Transparency: teacher uses transparency and reader marks thinking in margin

• Coding text: students use codes to keep track of their thinking, e.g. I=important, BK=background knowledge, ?=question

• Timelines: chronological list of events

Artistic/Dramatic Response

• Sketching• Student-created dramatic representations

of text content • Photographs of the mind: sketch an image

from the text

Oral Response

• Four way share: knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye discussion with four students

• Think-pair-share: record thoughts, then share with a partner

• Book clubs/literature circles: meetings to discuss books or strategies

• Large and small group sharing• Strategy study groups: smaller group

discusses strategy

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Name DateBook Name_____________

My understanding after listening to the story the first time. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I am still wondering if _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My understanding after listening to the story the second time is_______________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Name________________ Date______

book title/article title/excerpt title• TEXT

• TEXT

• CONNECTIONS

• QUESTIONS (WHAT I’M WONDERING ABOUT…)

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Name________________ Date______

book title/article title/excerpt title

• FACTS/CLUES

• NOTES

• What does the piece mean to you?

• INFERENCE

• THINKING

• Did your thinking change?

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Research-Based Characteristics of high motivation/high performing classrooms

• Classroom filled with books at different levels

• Teacher introduces and displays new books

• Teacher emphasizes reading takes effort

• Students given choice in completion of work

• Students do authentic reading and writing

• Lessons promote higher order thinking• Teacher uses small groups for

instruction• Teacher does expressive readalouds.

Research-Based Classroom Practices That Undermine Motivation and Achievement

• Students do not have choices; everyone does same work

• Teacher rarely has students working together on assignments

• Teacher is more a lecturer than discussion leader

• Teacher provides extrinsic rewards • Activities are routine, boring, low-level• Teacher calls out grades; posts grades

or paper with grades

~ FROM: What Really Matters for Struggling Readers, Richard Allington

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Exercises: Short pieces

Salvador, Late or EarlySalvador with eyes the color of caterpillar, Salvador of the crooked hair and crooked teeth,

Salvador whose name the teacher cannot remember, is a boy who is no one’s friend, runs along somewhere in that vague direction where homes are the color of bad weather, lives behind a raw wood doorway, shakes the sleepy brothers awake, ties their shoes, combs their hair with water, feeds them milk and corn flakes from a tin cup in the dim dark of the morning.

Salvador, late or early, sooner or later arrives with the string of younger brothers ready. Helps his mama, who is busy with the business of the baby. Tugs the arms of Cecilio, Arturito, makes them hurry, because today, like yesterday, Arturito has dropped the cigar box of crayons, has let go the hundred little fingers of red, green, yellow, blue, and nub of black sticks that tumble and spill over and beyond the asphalt puddles until the crossing-guard lady holds back the blur of traffic for Salvador to collect them again.

Salvador inside that wrinkled shirt, inside the throat that must clear itself and apologize each time it speaks, inside that forty-pound body of boy with its geography of scars, its history of hurt, limbs stuffed with feathers and rags, in what part of the eyes, in what part of the heart, in that cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and knows only what Salvador knows, inside that body too small to contain the hundred balloons of happiness, the single guitar of grief, is a boy like any other disappearing out the door, beside the schoolyard gate, where he has told his brothers they must wait. Collects the hands of Cecilio and Arturito, scuttles off dodging the many schoolyard colors, the elbows and wrists criss-crossing, the several shoes running. Grows small and smaller to the eye, dissolves into the bright horizon, flutters in the air before disappearing like a memory of kites.

• © Sandra Cisneros from Woman Hollering Creek, Vintage Contemporaries, 1991

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The most dramatic moment in subsequent European-Native American relations was the first encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. Atahuallpa was absolute monarch of the largest and most advanced state in the New World, while Pizarro represented the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (also known as King Charles I of Spain), monarch of the most powerful state in Europe. Pizarro, leading a ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, was in unfamiliar terrain, ignorant of the local inhabitants, completely out of touch with the nearest Spaniards (1,000 miles to the north in Panama) and far beyond the reach of timely reinforcements. Atahuallpa was in the middle of his own empire of millions of subjects and immediately surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers, recently victorious in a war with other Indians. Nevertheless, Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within a few minutes after the two leaders first set eyes on each other. Pizarro proceeded to hold his prisoner for eight months, while extracting history’s largest ransom in return for a promise to free him. After the ransom – enough gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet –was delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa.

• Atahuallpa’s capture was decisive for the European conquest of the Inca Empire. Although the Spaniards’ superior weapons would have assured an ultimate Spanish victory in any case, the capture made the conquest quicker and infinitely easier. Atahuallpa was revered by the Incas as a sun god and exercised absolute authority over his subjects, who obeyed even the orders he issued from captivity. The months until his death gave Pizarro time to dispatch exploring parties unmolested to other parts of the Inca Empire, and to send for reinforcements from Panama. When fighting between Spaniards and Incas finally did commence after Atahuallpa’s execution, the Spanish forces were more formidable.

• “First came a squadron of Indians dressed in clothes of different colors, like a chessboard…Next came three squadrons in different dresses, dancing and singing. Then came a number of men with armor, large metal plates, and crowns of gold and silver… Among them came the figure of Atahuallpa in a very fine litter with the ends of its timbers covered in silver. Eighty lords carried him on their shoulders, all wearing a very rich blue livery. Atahuallpa himself was very richly dressed, with his crown on his head and a collar of large emeralds around his neck. He sat on a small stool with a rich saddle cushion resting on his litter…These Indian squadrons began to enter the plaza to the accompaniment of great songs, and thus entering they occupied every part of the plaza. In the meantime all of us Spaniards were waiting ready, hidden in a courtyard, full of fear. Many of us urinated without noticing it, out of sheer terror.”

» From Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond

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StockingsHenry Dobbins was a good man, and a superb soldier, but sophistication was not

his strong suit. The ironies went beyond him. In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimentality.

Even now, twenty years later, I can see him wrapping his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck before heading out on ambush.

It was his one eccentricity. The pantyhose, he said, had the properties of a good-luck charm. He liked putting his nose in the nylon and breathing in the scent of his girlfriend’s body; he liked the memories this inspired; he sometimes slept with the stockings up against his face, the way an infant sleeps with a flannel blanket, secure and peaceful. More than anything, though, the stockings were a talisman for him. They kept him safe. They gave access to a spiritual world, where things were soft and intimate, a place where he might someday take his girlfriend to live. Like many of us in Vietnam, Dobbins felt the pull of superstition, and he believed firmly and absolutely in the protective power of the stockings. They were like body armor, he thought. Whenever we saddled up for a late-night ambush, putting on our helmets and flak jackets, Henry Dobbins would make a ritual out of arranging the nylons around his neck, carefully tying a knot, draping the two leg sections over his left shoulder. There were some jokes, of course, but we came to appreciate the mystery of it all. Dobbins was invulnerable. Never wounded, never a scratch. In August, he tripped a Bouncing Betty, which failed to detonate. And a week later he got caught in the open during a fierce little firefight, no cover at all, but he just slipped the pantyhose over his nose and breathed deep and let the magic do its work.

It turned us into a platoon of believers. You don’t dispute facts.But then, near the end of October, his girlfriend dumped him. It was a hard blow. Dobbins went quiet for a while, staring down at her letter, then after a time he took out the stockings and tied them around his neck as a comforter.“No sweat, “ he said. “The magic doesn’t go away.”

from The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

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Celebration of the Human Voice•

Their hands were tied or handcuffed, yet their fingers danced, flew, drew words. The prisoners were hooded, but leaning back they could see a bit, just a bit, down below. Although they were forbidden to speak, they spoke with their hands. Pinio Ungerfeld taught me the finger alphabet which he had learned in prison without a teacher:

“Some of us had bad handwriting,” he told me. “Others were masters of calligraphy.”

The Uruguyan dictatorship wanted everyone to stand alone, everyone to be no one: in prisons and in barracks and throughout the country, communication was a crime.

Some prisoners spent more than ten years buried in solitary cells the size of coffins, hearing nothing but clanging bars or footsteps in the corridors. Fernandez Huidobro and Mauricio Rosencof, thus condemned survived because they could talk to each other by tapping on the wall. In that way, they told of dreams and memories, fallings in and out of love; they discussed, embraced, fought; they shared beliefs and beauties, doubts and guilts, and those questions that have no answer.

When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven, by others.

Eduardo Galleano, The Book of Embraces

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Custodian The job would get boring if you didn’t mix

it up a little. Like this woman in 14-A, the nurses called her The Mockingbird, start any song and this old lady would sing it through. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat a lick of solid food, had to be straightened out of her sleeping position each morning, but she sang like a house on fire. So for a kick I would go in there with my mop and such, prop the door open with the bucket, and set her going. She was best at the songs you’d sing with a group, “Oh, Susanna,” campfire stuff. Any kind of Christmas song worked good too, and it always cracked up the nurses if I could get her into “Let It Snow” during a heat spell. We’d try to make her take up a song from the radio or some of the old songs with cursing in them but she would never go for those. Although once I had her doing “How Dry I Am” while Nurse Wichell fussed with the catheter.

Yesterday, her daughter or maybe granddaughter comes in while 14-A and I were partways into “Auld Lang Syne” and the daughter says, “Oh oh oh” like she had interrupted scintillating conversation. She takes a long look at 14-A lying there in the gurney with her eyes shut and her curled-up hands, taking a cup of kindness yet. And the daughter looks at me the way a girl does at the end of an old movie and she says, “My god, you’re an angel,” and now I can’t do it anymore, can hardly step inside the room.

– © 1996, Brian Hinshaw Winner World’s Greatest Short, Short Story Contest,Florida State University

A Real Durwan

Boori Ma, sweeper of the stairwell, had not slept in two nights. So the morning before the third night she shook the mites out of her bedding. She shook the quilts once underneath the letter boxes where she lived, then once again at the mouth of the alley, causing the crows who were feeding on vegetable peels to scatter in several directions.

As she started up the four flights to the roof, Boori Ma kept one hand placed over the knee that swelled at the start of every rainy season. That meant that her bucket, quilts and the bundle of reeds which served as her broom all had to be braced under one arm. Lately Boori Ma had been thinking that the stairs were getting steeper; climbing them felt more like climbing a ladder than a staircase. She was sixty-four years old, with hair in a knot no larger than a walnut, and she looked almost as narrow from the front as she did from the side.Interpreter of Maladies,Jhumpa Lahiri

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The dress I wore was lavender taffeta, and each time I breathed it rustled, and now that I was sucking in air to breathe out shame it sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses.

As I’d watched Momma put ruffles on the hem and cute little tucks around the waist, I knew that once I put it on I’d look like a movie star. (It was silk and that made up for the awful color.) I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right with the world. Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, “Marguerite [sometimes it was ‘dear Marguerite’], forgive us, please, we didn’t know who you were,” and I would answer generously, “no, you couldn’t have known. Of course I forgive you.”

Just thinking about it made me go around with angel’s dust sprinkled over my face for days. But Easter’s early morning sun had shown the dress to be a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman’s once-was-purple throwaway. It was old-lady-long too, but it didn’t hide my skinny legs, which had been greased with Blue Seal Vaseline and powdered with the Arkansas red clay. The age-faded color made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs.

From I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

The Cough

Our young father walked Ash Alley whistling“Rescue the Perishing,” but already he carriedmine tunnels home in his black-streaked breath.It was like first sleet against an attic window. Mymother would look at him, her lips a line ofimpatience and fear. “Your lungs will soon bestone,” she said. “It’s good money, Dorse. It’s ouronly money.”

Some of the men who stopped at our houseto see my father had tongues like fish that stuckout between words. Gray-faced, shoulders bony,they all seemed to cave in. My mother would leavethe room, her lips thinner than ever, but thecough followed her across the linoleum, down thecellar steps, hunkered close when she plantedsage and primrose. The cough was like a child. Itwas always hungry. It demanded attention. Itwoke us up at off times and sat in the good chairby the window. In the winter, it trailed behind myfather like a peacock feather on a woman’s hat.

One summer he told us we were on a planetgoing nowhere fast. He made a model he called anorrery, and showed us how the heavens worked.The center was bright and hung there like one ofmy mother’s peony blossoms. “That there’s whatpushes it,” he said. “And that’s what made thecoal.”

We looked at him and nodded, but we hadour own ideas about what made it go. We couldhear it behind the least little thing..By Harry Humes, MicroFiction,,Anthology of

ReallyShort Stories

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• But here on the High Plains – look at this wheat in the early summer of 1931: it was pouring out of threshers, piling high once again, gold and fat, and so much of it that it formed hillocks bigger than any tuft of land in Dallam County, Texas. On the Texas Panhandle, two million acres of sod had been turned now – a 300 percent increase over ten years ago. Up in Baca County, two hundred thousand acres. In Cimarron County, Oklahoma, another quarter million acres. The wheat came in just as the government had predicted –a record, in excess of 250 million bushels nationwide. The greatest agricultural accomplishment in the history of tilling the land, some called it. The tractors had done what no hailstorm, no blizzard, no tornado, no drought, no epic siege of frost, no prairie fire, nothing in the natural history of the southern plains had ever done. They had removed the native prairie grass, a web of perennial species evolved over twenty thousand years or more, so completely that by the end of 1931 it was a different land – thirty-three million acres stripped bare in the southern plain.

• And what came from that transformed land – the biggest crop of all time – was shunned, met with the lowest price ever. The market held at nearly 50 percent below the amount it cost the farmers to grow the grain. By the measure of money – which was how most people viewed success or failure on the land – the whole experiment of trying to trick a part of the country into being something it was never meant to be was a colossal failure. Every five bushels of wheat brought in from the fields was another dollar taken out of a farmer’s pocket.

• The grain toasted under the hot sun. With the winds, the heat gathered strength; it chased people into their cellars all day, and it made them mean. Their throats hurt. Their skin cracked. Their eyes itched. The blast furnace was a fact of summer life, as the Great Plains historian Walter Prescott Webb said, causing rail lines to expand and warp “A more common effect is that these hot winds render people irritable and incite nervousness,” he wrote. The land hardened. Rivers that had been full in spring trickled down to a string line of water and then disappeared. That September was the warmest yet in the still-young century. Bam White scanned the sky for a “sun dog,” his term for a halo that foretold of rain; he saw nothing through the heat of July, August, and September. He noticed how the horses were lethargic, trying to conserve energy. Usually, when the animals bucked or stirred, it meant a storm on the way. They had been passive for some time now, in a summer when the rains left and did not come back for nearly eight years.”

• From The Worst, Hard Times, by Timothy Egan p. 101-102

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Before we left for our trip, we neglected to wipe the kitchen counters. Our trip was tiring, and not as much fun as we’d anticipated. When we returned—we gasped—for there—in our kitchen—a mouse carnival was taking place! Our electric mixers made for a wild ride. Our scrub-brush wedged against our faucet formed a waterslide. Pearls, once part of our heirloom necklace, served as balls in a lively game. Our cheddar cheese created an edible playground. Some mice had found the scotch and were staggering among the plates. A four-mouse band performed atop the table. They used spoons to keep the beat and mewled cheerfully. It was packed in there. They were all having a great time, wiggling their tails and feasting on the crumbs we’d failed to wipe off the counter. Truth be told, we didn’t have it in us to interfere. This was just the kind of party we were always wishing to go to. And now here, in our very own kitchen …

We went to the bedroom … and what should we find there but a nursery, many mother mice nestled among the sheets, each with a bunch of tiny bald sweet things squirming around her. The mother mice smiled—or so it seemed—in the soft yellow light of our bedside lamp. We had to admit, it was a heartwarming scene. Quietly, respectfully, we shut the door behind us.

In the living room, there were no mice. We sat and wondered what to do. And then we noticed that, among our plants on the windowsill, pairs of mice were strolling. They gazed up through the leaves to the enormous moon outside. They nuzzled each other. They sat on the edges of the flowerpots and—perhaps—made plans for the future. It was lovely to behold.

All these mice—the partygoers, the parents, the lovers—they were doing such a better job than we’d ever done. They were succeeding where we’d failed again and again . . . we gathered up our luggage, headed toward the door, and went away forever.

© 2008 Helen Phillips, And Yet They Were Happy

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The Importance of Background KnowledgeHeavy Nymphs: Freestone rivers create

the ideal habitat for larger insect forms such as hellgrammite, Pteronarcrys nymphs and some very large caddis species. These food forms dictate the trout’s diet and therefore the angler’s approach. The nymphs featured here suggest #6-#8 line and rods of about 3m. (9ft.), often requiring floating, sink-tip and sunk line. The majority of the following nymphs translate well into other fly-fishing areas.~The Classic Guide to Fly-Fishing for Trout, Charles Jardine

Special thanks to Ellin Oliver Keene, Cris Tovani, Chryse Hutchins, the staff developers at the Public Education and Business Coalition for their contribution to the forms and thinking behind these handouts.

Although Cretaceous and Tertiary deposition has buried older rocks in the area under a sedimentary blanket many thousands of feet thick, an outline of the earlier geologic history may be inferred from deep well records and from studies in the surrounding areas. In the half-billion years from the close of the Precambrian to the end of the Cretaceous, this region experienced many cycles of uplift and submergence-but none of the great folding and faulting so conspicuous in the Appalachians, the Oachitas, and parts of Europe and Asia.

~Desolation Canyon River Guide