Debbie Seevers

Foundations of Literature
Dr. McCracken
What I Learned About Response from Esmerelda, Mirella, Areli and Ezi
This past fall I had the pleasure of reading to four remarkable kindergarteners. Their
names were Esmerelda, Mirella, Areli and Ezi. The first three are bilingual and Latina. Ezi is a
brilliant little boy whose first and only language is English. They were an energetic group who
always had something to say about the books I brought. In this paper I will be writing about what
my kindergarteners taught me about reading and response.
My first lesson was not to take on more than I could handle. I am not referring to all the
students I was working with, but to an incident which took place early in our time together. I
knew Esmerelda and Mirella were bilingual and I had planned to explore a book in English and
Spanish with them. I made notes about key vocabulary words and their translations, which I
printed out and brought with me to the school. After introducing the book in English and reading
through it, I had the girls review the story with me. That all went about as well as I could have
hoped and I was able to introduce what I thought was one of the underlying messages of Sheep
in a Jeep, which is that when your jeep crashes, you sell it for scrap. There can be value even
from our moments of failure or loss. (Ironically, I may have picked up that lesson from this
reading experience). I then pulled out my notes and tried to initiate a discussion in Spanish. The
girls didnt seem amenable to that course of action. After a few tries I ran out of time with them
and had to return the girls to class. I learned to plan more carefully.
The second lesson I learned was from Ezi. I learned that he and my other students could
see deeper insight into the books than I had thought they were capable of. That was the week I

brought the wordless picture book Time Flies. I let Ezi walk me through the book and narrate the
pictures, what I didnt expect was for him to pick up that the bird protagonist of the story was
using his imagination or dreaming to interact with dinosaur skeletons as if they were once again
living creatures. Ezis involvement with the story astounded me. The next week I brought him
another wordless book Flotsam and was once again amazed by how much he picked up on. I
learned not to underestimate my students.
The third lesson I learned was one I should have already known. Children will pick up
vocabulary as they hear it. They may not use it expressively at first, but production is not a
reliable measure of whether a new word has been acquired or not. These things should not be
forced. Even if you have the best intentions. I tried to teach Esmerelda and Mirella the word
remarkable. It appeared in the story Extra Yarn, and the concept of remarkableness was one
that was close to the plot of the story. It only appeared in the text once, but I thought that would
be enough. I made three visual aides so the girls would have other contexts for the word. One
had Elsa from Disneys Frozen on it and one had a drawing of a child walking a pet
Tyrannosaurus Rex. The third featured the girl from the book with her box of extra yarn. After
we read through the book I went back to the page with remarkable and read the sentence it
appeared in again. I showed the girls the pictures, telling them that each of them had something
remarkable on it. I explained that remarkable means something so exciting that people want to
talk about it. I asked the girls to use it in a sentence of their own, and think of something
remarkable. It was all too much too fast at a developmental level that was too high to begin with.
I learned to be more deliberate in my assessment of whether material was developmentally
appropriate or not.

The students continued to surprise me every time I visited them, right up until our final
session (Petes a Pizza had the girls rolling on the floor asking me to pepperoni them.) I have
come out the other side of the semester more experienced and more knowledgable than when I
began it. Some aspects of what I learned were of the sort that I would have expected to come up,
and others were just as valid, but surprised me. I enjoyed me experience with the kindergarteners
and I hope they feel the same about their experiences with me as a reader. The time with them
was very valuable to me as a future educator and a lover of literature.