| Nicole: |
Throughout your career, you have been deeply involved in computers and education. Can you talk about that? |
| Monica: |
When computers came along, I became really interested in their potential for helping students to write, and I went for a master's degree in Computers in Education. It was an exciting field, and I became very active in it. I did many professional presentations. I authored a column evaluating stand-alone software. I was one of a group of pioneer educators interested in using computers in the classroom that piloted an online network for educators by Scholastic. It was fabulous working with all these nationally known educators. I worked on the language arts portion of the network and wrote a series of Internet field trips for the site. In the mean time, I was doing some other Web-published projects in my classroom such as a Sierra Leone project, for which I won a Global Educators Award from the National Peace Corps Association. I did a couple of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) seminars on children's literature, and I published an article in Educational Leadership about using portable word processors for writing. I was also in the first cohort of fellows for the Library of Congress' American Memory fellowship program. My work for that project is described in a book I wrote for Heinemann called Seeking History: Teaching With Primary Sources in Grades 4-6.
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For the American Memory project Monica's students wrote poems based on immigrant life histories contained within the Library of Congress. Click on the image to see the students' poems.
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| Nicole: |
Let's talk about your Many Faces of Alice project. It's somewhat unusual to study Alice in Wonderland in the 4th grade—what made you want to do it?
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| Monica: |
My father read Alice in Wonderland to me as a young child and I have loved the book ever since.
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| Nicole: |
Your approach to the book is unusual in that you spend a lot of time studying the illustrations. What motivated you to approach the book in this way? |
| Monica: |
I have been interested in illustration since I was a child. I earned a B.A. in art at Barnard and worked in printmaking for a while. Even when I began teaching I kept illustrating on the side.
My exploration of Alice illustrators began in 1990 as part of a NEH seminar for schoolteachers. There are so many illustrators [Monica provides a partial list of illustrators on her website], and they fascinated me. When I came back to school, I started looking at the illustrations with my students. I read the book aloud to them and showed them the different illustrated versions. We would discuss the book and then I would invite them to illustrate any parts they wanted. [See some of Monica's own Alice illustrations.]
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Student illustrations depicting characters from Alice in Wonderland
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| Nicole: |
Why read the book aloud to the students? |
| Monica: |
I don't think I would ever have them read it on their own. I think they would have a hard time. They need the verbal annotation that I provide. And I don't think they would like it. Kids want to read something that has driving plot, and Alice is so minimally adventure. And you don't identify with Alice—you don't care whether she gets to the garden or not. So, kids can't really read it for those reasons.
I make a point of being very expressive, very dynamic, when I read the book to them. It draws them in. I don't know what the right age is to read the book independently. I was introduced to it as a child but my dad read it to me, and he was a great reader. I'm not sure it would work for kids that young today—their experiences are very different.
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| Nicole: |
Describe to me what happens as you read the book aloud. |
| Monica: |
I read aloud from an annotated version by Martin Gardner. I read from it because I can reference the annotations as I see fit. I discuss the parody—all the songs and poetry in Alice are parodies, and once the kids get that they just love it. Many of the characters are based on real people, and there are constant references to [the real] Alice's life. The students come to really understand that this was done for a Victorian child (1832-1900), with cultural references all over the place—just like there are in The Simpsons television show. Last year I showed a PBS show,The 1900 House, [a show that documented the experiences of a contemporary family living for a few months as if they were a Victorian family in 1900] to help them get a sense of the Victorian way of life—although Alice lived in fancier surroundings than did the family in the show.
By reading the annotations, I provide them with the background information they need to understand the story. For example, why is this particular line referring to the March Hare funny? It doesn't mean a thing to them until we look at the annotations and realize that March means that the hare is in heat. We can talk about their animals when they are in heat, and they understand a little bit better why he is so crazy.
Deciding which annotations to read is a real art—I wouldn't be able to say absolutely whether or not to read a particular annotation. You have to know the readers.
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| Nicole: |
Now you have something you call the Alice Center? |
| Monica: |
I have a place where I display the many different Alice books. The children will each select a different one to look at on their own. I've also collected cartoons, news articles, and other media that reference the book. The kids give me a lot of stuff too.
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A sampling of work from the many illustrators inspired by Alice.
Illustrations by (left to right) Mabel Lucie Attwell, Maria L. Kirk, Arthur Rackham, and Bessie Pease Gutmann.
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| Nicole: |
What are the different ways that students are given to respond to the book? |
| Monica: |
We talk about the book, they do illustrations, they write essays, and they write weekly in their journals. I've developed dialogue journals a lot over the years. It's become very formalized. Although their writing is private between the two of us, they have to write very carefully and thoughtfully. I usually have them write three paragraphs. The first is a personal response to my letter. The second is a response to a prompt, like what illustrator do you really like. The third paragraph asks them to write about their independent reading for the week (they are required to read 30 minutes every night).
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Monica's students write essays at the end of the unit assessing the project and their perception of it.
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| Nicole: |
How did the Alice in Wonderland website come about? |
| Monica: |
I was taking part in an online children's literature discussion group called Childlit. In talking to one of the other members, Roxanne Hsu Feldman, I discovered that we had a common interest in Alice in Wonderland. I learned that she was a librarian in New York City, and serendipitously, I later found her at a conference in New York. We connected right away, and she ended up taking a job at our school's library. She had done lots of Web design and had this amazing website. I asked her how we could put the Alice in Wonderland illustrations my students had done online, and she came up with the idea of putting the whole book online and the kids could illustrate it in its entirety. So, together with a technology person at the school we constructed this website [Learn more about the beginnings of Monica's Alice website.]
We divided the book—the kids each chose a chapter and worked together on illustrations. The first year Roxanne and our technology person scanned the illustrations and made the website. The next year I hired an assistant to do that. The third year I had the kids do the scanning and I let them choose their own project. Some of them made stuffed animals, for example.
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| Nicole: |
The last two years the student illustrations took a new form—Toy Theater productions. What was the motivation behind that? |
| Monica: |
I felt like we weren't doing enough performing. There was a tremendous amount of literature study and writing going on. The illustrations were great, but the project was still two-dimensional. My students used to do a lot of building and creating—making models and maps, for example. But after I got really interested in exploring and creating literature, less of that happened. So, I was trying to figure out a way to bring back a performance component. I had tried doing plays but they became too elaborate, and the true meaning of the project got lost. The Toy Theater has been a really great alternative because it's contained and manageable.
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| Nicole: |
Focusing on the illustrations and giving students an alternative to writing via the Toy Theater seem like great ways to draw students in. |
| Monica: |
That's where it started out. I wanted the kids to look at the illustrations along with the language and some of the story behind it. It's not so text driven.
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| Nicole: |
Where did you come up with the idea to do Toy Theater? |
| Monica: |
For several years, I had wanted to do a Victorian Toy Theater production. In England, there is a store called Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop where you can buy toy theaters and Victorian plays. I had heard about this video editing program Imovie and came up with the idea of taping Toy Theater productions of Alice. I bought a theater and some sample plays at Pollock's and had a few students stage them as a model. The other students were all inspired and became interested in doing Toy Theater productions of Alice.
I should note that while it is fun to have an "official" toy theater, it would be very simple to make one yourself. It isn't necessary to buy one to do a project like this.
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(video clip 1150 KB)
Click on the image above to view students' Toy Theater production of chapter 8: The Queen's Croquet-Ground from Alice in Wonderland.
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| Nicole: |
Tell me about the process you and your students go through for these productions. |
| Monica: |
It's still all about the story and connecting the art and the book. I read the story to them, we talk about it, and we look at the illustrators. As we are reading, I tend to mention the project here and there so that they are thinking about it. I start out by showing them the work from the year before. I have constructed a way for them to critique the first group's work—with the understanding that it's not that the first group didn't do a good job but that they're coming in second so they have an advantage of looking for ways to make it better. We generate a list of what we will do and how we will do it. I structure it by writing a packet that lays it out for them.
The students work in pairs. I give them a table of contents, and they indicate an order of preference for the chapters. Then I pair them up two to a chapter--so the pairing has nothing to do with their social connection.
The kids are expected to come up with a script modeled after a real Victorian Toy Theater script. We studied the Jack the Giant Killer Toy Theater script, and I gave the students each a copy to use as their model. They start by going to our website, which has the book's full text, and copying and pasting their chapter into a word document. They have an option of rewriting the text. Some students totally reconstruct the text, and others just change the language a bit. They are given just one minute of script so they have to think hard about what parts of the chapter they are going to include.
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An excerpt from a script for two students' Toy Theater production of chapters 9 and 10: The Lobster Quadrille and The Mock Turtle's Story
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| Nicole: |
How do they manage working with a partner? |
| Monica: |
Last year I had them sign contracts with their partners. We brainstormed a whole bunch of characteristics that were necessary to work well with someone. Each student pulled characteristics from the list to put into a contract with their partner. This way they could anticipate perhaps what might be difficult about working with that person.
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| Nicole: |
What's involved in developing the backdrops? |
| Monica: |
We brainstorm what the illustration possibilities are in terms of materials and special effects. I limit the number of backdrops they can do. They model their illustrations after those they've seen—although some of them will just cut out the Tenniel or Disney illustrations.
Then we have workshop time for them to work on their illustrations. I give them a checklist of things to do. They move in and out of discussing the project as a group and working individually, with me rotating among them. Throughout the process they write in class journals—I will ask them to write about their plans and how they are going. Before the final taping, we have a Tech Rehearsal—a trial run—so that they can watch the tape and see what is working. At the very end, we do an assembly. We also have a tea party. Last year, one student brought in a crown and a mantel, and I had to be the Queen of Hearts. They love dressing up in costume and sharing their projects!
We had a whole blooper tape last year. One group was doing the Lobster Quadrille and used a Ziploc bag filled with water and blue food coloring to give the effect of water. During the taping, they accidentally broke into the bag and we had a little flood. The two children involved were pretty serious students but decided it was funny.
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This Toy Theater backdrop borrows from John Tenniel's famous illustrations, shown right.
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| Nicole: |
Are there any drawbacks to the Toy Theater component?
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| Monica: |
Maybe the one negative of this Toy Theater project is that the students are less apt to come up with original illustrations. They might use Tenniel's illustrations, cut out bits and play around with them. But that's not necessarily bad—some of them don't draw that well, and there is more to the project than just illustrations.
With the Toy Theater we've moved away from the students being committed to a particular illustrator, and I don't think that they are as aware of being inspired by a particular illustrator. But I'm not sure I want to put that back in the mix—it might overwhelm them.
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In his final essay, a student describes the inspiration for his backdrop for The Queen's Croquet Ground.
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| Nicole: |
What room is there for creativity? |
| Monica: |
The students play around with the story in real interesting ways. One year some students did this wonderful Alice in Baseball Land kind of thing, set in Yankee stadium. Last year a student chose a chapter where Alice is dreaming that she turned into someone else. She contemporized it by giving the girl braces, and she figured out how to make these great little thought bubbles come down [go to video clip]. Students have been truer to the story than they were in past years because they're grappling a bit with the mechanics of the Toy Theater production.
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| Nicole: |
How do you assess the students' work? |
| Monica: |
Most of it is just observation as the project moves along. At the end, I ask the students to assess the project themselves, to think about what they've learned about the whole thing, and they write about that in their journals. They also do a summative essay about what inspired them.
I'm not assessing basic literacy skills but instead higher level literacy involving literature. The reason for this is that concurrent with the Alice project, the students are doing very in-depth and challenging work involving the Pilgrims. They read primary sources, learn to read in context, learn to take notes, and end up writing historical fiction. They can't have that going on at two places at the same time.
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| Nicole: |
How would you characterize the literacy skills targeted by the Alice project? |
| Monica: |
Howard Gardner has this theory about multiple intelligence or literacies. For this project, the main skill is what you might call literary literacy. The students are learning a new way to approach an alien text in a scholarly way.
Following along as I read the book aloud is very helpful to the students in terms of decoding, but the reading piece really doesn't target that kind of basic literacy. We work on things like understanding the literature's context.
The kids are also learning to use different modalities. They are looking at the text and they're listening to it being read. They have to be able to follow oral and written directions.
The project is also great for them socially. There is a lot of negotiating that goes on as they work with a partner. What's great about it is that regardless of who they are working with, they usually get the chapter that they love. And so although their partner is not someone they would choose to work with, they both love what they are doing so much that they get past it quickly. It's great for them to work together on something that they are passionate about.
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Samples of students' essays from the Alice project
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| Nicole: |
This must be a great project for struggling readers. |
| Monica: |
Often the weakest readers are the most sophisticated with other things, and some of my weakest readers have the best time with Alice. It's a great unit for them because they are not limited by decoding problems. I have two girls this year whom I consider the weakest readers in my class. One of them scored the lowest in her grade on the Gates MacGinitie Reading test. I have a feeling that she is going to love the book. The other student, who is a somewhat stronger reader, is more concrete, so she may not like it quite so much. But I think that they'll both respond to it better than some of the really strong readers.
People make the false assumption that the poorest readers shouldn't read this book. The students who don't like Alice are not the weakest readers but those who aren't very visual or, you know, the Redwall [an adventure series for children written by Brian Jacques] fanatic who is so driven by plot that nothing else is of interest.
The book really speaks to a range of abilities. You can have readers who are very concrete, who struggle with decoding. You can have very sophisticated kids who are reading at a very high level. They all respond to Alice. The book is very democractic.
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| Nicole: |
How does this project change the way your students look at literature? |
| Monica: |
It's really fabulous. I introduce the whole idea of approaching literature as a scholar does when the students look at Charlotte's Web. That's where they are introduced to the idea of an annotated text, that there is more to a text than what meets the eye, that there is a way of going deeper. Alice gives them another chance to scholarly examine a fairly alien text. It's kind of a wake-up call for them. The students develop even more awareness of what they can get out of a text. Of course, not all texts offer that depth. They're sort of aware of that, and they're intrigued by it. They will talk about whether or not you'd want to do this kind of analysis with Harry Potter.
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| Nicole: |
What kind of equipment do you have in your classroom? |
| Monica: |
We have two desktop computers, and each of the students has an alphasmart (a portable word processor). I'm really a fan of portable word processors, because I don't think kids need really elaborate equipment for writing. They just need something that they can write on, a spell checker, and a way to print their work. I think bells and whistles just distract them. We also have a digital camera, and because the fourth grade has been very innovative in using technology, we were given a set of twenty laptops that the five classes share. The school has a wireless airport system, a scanner, and a video camera.
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| Nicole: |
How much help do you get from the school's technology specialist? |
| Monica: |
We don't rely on the technology person much anymore. He'll come in one or two times and show us how to do things. With scanning and things like that, once a couple of students do it they teach the others how. It's not that I don't know how to do things—it's that I don't always need to be the person interrupted!
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| Nicole: |
Has it gotten easier as the technology has evolved? |
| Monica: |
Every year it's easier to have the technology around. The old portable word processors were so unreliable that I spent too much time fixing their problems and not enough time working on the writing. But that is less of a problem now.
And years ago students would come to me with these horrible, hard-to-change, self-taught methods. Now they come in much more knowledgeable. They conceptually understand the technology and can troubleshoot well on their own. I can teach them efficient use of the technology.
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| Nicole: |
What kind of role should technology have in the classroom? |
| Monica: |
There is an awful lot of work done to sort of fit technology into the classroom, making it seem like the literature is coming first when it isn't. I don't buy the argument that we have to teach students technology—kids in our culture are born into it, and I don't think we have to worry about it. If anything, I'm uncomfortable with the amount of technology teaching that goes on with younger children. The technology piece can become overwhelming. It bothers me that they don't have enough time on their own in between school, homework, sports, and various things. But as the technology becomes more transparent, there will be more reason to use it.
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| Nicole: |
How do you maintain the balance between technology and literature in your classroom? |
| Monica: |
I made books as a kid. I have always loved bookmaking and publishing. So it was sort of a natural progression to publish the work we'd been doing on the Web once the technology got to the point where things could be scanned and such. Now it's so easy. I'm publishing things for them online all the time—just so their parents see them.
A good example of maintaining the balance is the fact that I don't have my students do the Imovie editing. They could probably do it, but it would take forever, and the focus would move away from the literature to technological aspects like special effects. If they were doing it as an after-school thing it would be fun for them. But otherwise it would take them too far away from what the project is really about.
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| Nicole: |
What do teachers need to think about when they are using technology in the classroom? |
| Monica: |
When I was doing the American Memory project one of the things that I would always challenge the other fellows with is why should we use the American Memory website—why should we be using this online resource when there are books and photographs? Why should we create all these projects online? As things get easier and easier there is more reason to do it. But that has always been my question.
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| Nicole: |
Do you have any final words? |
| Monica: |
I am such an advocate for people not being put off by Alice in Wonderland. I really encourage people to take another look at it and go into it without a lot of baggage. It doesn't have to be only for high school students. Kids like this book, and it was originally written for their age group. There is still something very universally attractive to kids about it. They like the humor; they like the poetry; they are fascinated by it all.
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| Nicole: |
Many teachers are uncomfortable teaching fantasy like Alice in Wonderland. What's your response to that? |
| Monica: |
I have always been an advocate of fantasy, but many teachers just don't like it. There is nothing wrong with that—you should teach what you love. But I also think that there should be a place for students to recognize what they love. I always have an independent reading program going on, so if they don't like Alice they have to have a chance to read stuff they enjoy. The idea of students self-selecting is so important. That balance has to be there.
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