4. CASE ANALYSIS
4.1. C ASE 1
General situation of three cases from kindergarten
These following three cases come from the kindergarten167, i.e. children from around 5 years old to 6 years old in the region of Toulouse. They study in the same kin-dergarten however differ a lot in their reading abilities. Their teacher was selected accord-ing to our questionnaire earlier distributed. In this kindergarten, poetry learnaccord-ing is con-sidered as an intensive and temporary modular project (theme), which could last several months, however remains irregular. Unfortunately, their teacher was not available for the further interview concerning the comments of children’s performance and the explana-tion of her professional gestures. Part of the reason also lies in her disconnecexplana-tion to-wards the poetry project, which has been over for several months until then. As for the poem chosen for this group of children, since they are relatively young in kindergarten and most of them could barely read, we decided to adopt a learnt poem (see annex 1) based on teacher’s suggestion to accomplish our interview.
CASE M – GS
According to his teacher, M was at an average level (even lower) of reading in class.
He hasn’t entered reading yet in the last year of kindergarten, he told me that the most difficult for him in reading is the seven days of a week, which he considered rather long to read. However, he enjoys reading, especially the stories. The purpose of reading for him was quite limited to a compulsory task or a mission needed to be done, as he said,
167 Our three cases are in the final year of kindergarten in France. This period is also called as the GS (grande section de l’école maternelle) in French educational system.
should learn to read.
- D168 : Qu’est-ce que c’est le plus dur pour toi dans la lecture ? - M : Les jours de la semaine. C’est long.
…
- D : T’aimes bien lire ?
- M : Oui, j’aime bien lire l’histoire.
…
- D : Tu sais pourquoi on lit et apprend à lire à 6 ans ?
- M : Parce qu’on doit apprendre à lire… je ne sais pas pourquoi.
Since he was willing to participate in this interview related to poetry, we then put forward a series of questions concerning poetry. We initiated our questions by asking what poetry is for him; he was a little confused concerning the concept of poem and that of poetry and decided to equate poetry to poems. Then I introduced another concept of songs to see if he could differentiate from poetry and he explained that songs are fast to sing while poetry should be read gently. He emphasized on the two verbs: sing and speak allocated respectively to songs and poetry. Moreover, he was also conscious that not all songs are rapid while he insisted that all poetry should be treated slowly and gently. We believe that such impressions towards gently reading of poetry should be highly relevant to how poetry is taught in class. So we launched another question concerning the poetry learning in class, he told me that their teacher firstly read the poem and then read again more gently. This confirms what we thought, that is to say the poetry teaching in his class stopped here, therefore mostly in recitation. There exists no further or higher level of learning except for the poetry diction in M’s class, poetry in this case is merely consid-ered as an instrument of diction.
- D : Qu’est-ce que c’est, la poésie pour toi ? - M : Comme les poèmes…
- D : Est-ce que c’est une chanson ?
168 D refers to the interview, the writer of this thesis.
- M : On fait vite pour la chanson, et le poème, on fait doucement.
- D : Pourquoi on fait doucement avec la poésie ? - M : Parce qu’on parle.
- D : Et la chanson ? - M : On chante.
- D : Est-ce que toutes les chansons sont rapides ? - M : Non.
- D : Est-ce que toutes les poesies sont lentes ? - M : Oui.
When we started to ask more questions towards the linkage between him and the poetry, it seemingly didn’t arouse his great interests. He expressed his dislike of poetry straightway claiming that poetry takes too much time to learn (he referred mainly to the diction of poetry). By comparison, songs are much faster to sing, therefore he prefers songs. Here we may also infer that even in the domain of poetry diction, he have not acquired other diversified diction of poetry from their teachers (or his teacher didn’t of-fer enough devices of poetry learning) except for reading slower to highlight poetry dic-tion in class. He regarded it as dull and time-consuming therefore saw no necessity of its continuation, which could in turn contribute to his dislike of poems.
- D : La poésie, ça te plaît ? - M : Je n’aime pas.
- D : Pourquoi ?
- M : Parce que ça prend longtemps.
- D : Ça prend longtemps de ?
- M : Ça prend longtemps d’apprendre la poésie.
…
- D : Tu sais la poésie, ça sert à quoi ? - M : Non.
If we could move our sights back to his home, obviously his parents only read him a little at home according to him, let alone reading poetry. Therefore, he and his parents didn’t intend to build any bridge between school and home reading. Poetry didn’t appear in his home, so there could be no sign of poetic activities outside of school.
- D : Tu écoutes ou tu lis la poésie à la maison ? - M : Non.
- D : Tes parents te lisent à la maison.
- M : Un peu.
When I read him a poem (since he was not able to read at that time), he basically re-fused all interactions concerning the given poem. He felt nothing towards the poem;
there was no image in his head while reading the poem; he was ignorant of the punctua-tions (linguistic elements) emerged in the poem … he seems disliking poems.
- D : Comment tu te sens après avoir lu ce poème ? - M : Je ne sais pas.
- D : Est-ce qu’il y des images dans ta tête ? - M : Non.
- D : Ça te fait penser à quoi, ce poème ? - M : Je ne sais pas.
- D : Ce signe ça sert à quoi (ponctuation)?
- M : Non.
We thought it might be the memorization of poem made him boring, the fact was although he paid little attention to poetry, he enjoys poetry recitation by deeming that poetry is even easier to recite compared to stories. He may have certain passion or talent of recitation so as to he recited all day even without repetition. This contrasted a lot with his attitudes towards other learning aspects of poetry. Therefore, it was not the memori-zation of poem that bothered him.
- D : Tu m’as dit que tu n’aimes pas trop la poésie, pourquoi tu l'apprends par coeur ? - M : Parce que j’ai envie de la prendre par coeur.
- D : C’est facile ? - M : Oui.
- D : C’est plus faicle que réciter l’histoire ? - M : Oui.
- D : Comment tu fais pour mémoriser la poésie ? - M : Je récite tous les jours.
- D : T’aime bien faire ça ou bien tes parents t’ont demandé de le faire ? - M : J’aime bien le faire.
He kind of confirmed the relation between poetry and reading but couldn’t tell the exact reasons. Later, he also agreed that poetry contributes to growing up because we learn reading through poetry. We continued our interview. He abandoned his previous refusal gesture, talked a lot about one learnt poem in detail and told me the title of poem is mon frère blanc (see Annex 1). Evidently, he has appreciated a lot this poem with all his willingness to share with me by referring several times during the interview.
Another element worthy mentioning here is that M insisted talking a lot on this po-em about « skin color », which rpo-eminds us of his origin. He is from Africa therefore he has a darker skin color. Admitted or not, M may (accidentally) feel certain energy or courage from the poem when he read it, or furthermore he has found certain recognition of identity in the poem. Anyhow, he could have already indulged himself into the poetic nurture even without knowing. This nurture remained implicit because it was never re-vealed or developed by any didactics from his teachers. If well guided, motivations like this could play a crucial role in building a solid psychological linkage between poetry and reading. Thus M’s refusal of poetry and his ignorance of relevant linguistic elements may be overturned gradually. This kairos moment should therefore be detected and seized by teachers serving as an entry point of stirring his interest of literacy learning, sadly not.
- D : Tu penses que la poésie peut t’aider à grandir ? - M : Oui. On apprend à lire.
- D : Qu’est-ce que tu as appris dans la poésie ?
- M : Il y des gens qui ont les couleurs…et un homme qui change des couleurs, dans le soleil, il est rouge ; quand il est né, il est rose ; quand il a grandi, il est blanc ; quand il est mort, il est gris ; quand il est malade, il est jaune ; quand il a froid, il est bleu ; quand il a peur, il est vert ... Les titres c’est mon frère blanc…
Followed by this poem, I asked him if it is possible to have so many colors for hu-man beings in the reality. He told me no but he still enjoyed the unreal descriptions in the poem. We could tell that he is quite conscious that poetry is full of mixed realities and fantasies and this mixture actually pleased him very much. Then he told me that he
un-remarks, we could still realize that he has indeed tasted certain joy in reading poetry how-ever remained at the door of the entrance of poetry learning. We suppose that his knowledge of poetry and literacy learning may not rich enough to support his individual opinions and obviously he has rarely had such experiences before.
- D : Tu penses que ça peut exister dans la réalité ? - M : Non.
- D : Ça te plaît ? - M : Oui.
- D : Est-ce que toutes les choses dans la poésie sont vraies ? - M : Non. Il y a des choses vraies et des choses pas vraies.
Not surprisingly, he changed his mind at the end of the interview when I re-launched the question of whether he enjoys poetry learning, he said yes but stayed si-lence when I asked him about the reason of this change. We believe that he himself may not quite conscious of, even confused about why he changed his idea.
- D : La poésie ça te plaît ? - M : Oui
- D : T’as changé tes idées ? Pourquoi tu changes d ‘ avis ? - M : Silence.
To resume, M was on his way to become a pre-reader. He has a good command of certain talents of reading, recitation for instance however he didn’t show adequate inte-rests to the reading elements (letters, sounds, punctuation etc.) , even the weekday seems too long for him to read. For him, poetry was reduced to some texts slow to read which occupies a lot of time in class, nothing else. This impression was so strong that he could barely realize the joy that he found in poetic fantasies, or the resonance that he sensed in political poems. Therefore M’s stagnation (little progress) in reading may find its way out in poetry, or at least we could give it a chance. Children as M are in desperate need of proper guidance (accompaniment from teachers and parents) in order to walk out of this confusion and refind his underlying motivations in reading through poetry.
CASE E - GS
Reading ability About E’s reading ability
Teacher’s comment towards E’s reading ability was very positive. According to her teacher, she became a pre-reader (almost reader sometimes) from the year of four169. Her success is not limited in reading, but also in other disciplines in school. She could well express herself: a wide range of vocabularies and well-structured sentences are the proofs.
E is talkative and of an open character.
As a motivated learner, she tended to get prepared to become a reader. To confirm this comment, we intend to ask her several questions relating to her reading competences.
Our first question focused on the utility of reading. There, she answered briefly: pour lire un livre (for reading a book). Then she told me that she went back to read the notebook of the first year (petite section) of kindergarten. We could tell that she is willing to read, and voluntarily set herself a goal to read real books afterwards.
As a pre-reader, E also has her own problems at reading. Her difficulty seemingly concentrated on the identification of capital letters according to her description. She then put forward the example of L and E to further explain. Evidently, we see that the two capital letters share a common part of L. This confusion may originate from a lack of letter writing practice in reading.
- D : Qu’est-ce qui est le plus dur pour toi dans la lecture ? - E : Il y a des lettres … majuscule … je ne sais pas lire trop.
- D : Pourquoi ?
- E : Parce qu’elles sont difficiles quand même à lire … Moi, j’ai confondu un l en majuscule avec un e en majuscule.
169 Petit Section in the kindergarten in France.
Later she was given a poem to read, however she refused to read it by herself alt-hough she admitted that she had the capability to read. She kept laughing (considered as her strategy to diffuse embarrassement) to avoid my invitation by declaring that she is not willing to read. Judging from her open character, we believe that this posture of re-fusal may indicate her lack of diction practice in poetry, and maybe a lack of self-confidence to read.
Therefore, I tried to invite her to read independent words in order to release her re-fusing attitudes, and to figure out her reading ability. She has recognized most of the words, except for a little hesitation on the word « donnent ». She read it as the pronuncia-tion of « donner » at the very beginning and then hesitated for a couple of seconds. Fi-nally, she chose the right pronunciation. Then, she was asked to explain the process of how to decipher the recognized words. At this moment, she started to walk around (an-other strategy of avoidance) and laugh without answering the question, followed by an impatient inquiry concerning the resting time of the interview.
To resume, we could preliminarily tell that E has mastered the basic rules of deci-phering at her age except for occasional uncertainties. She obviously has no particular technical difficulties on reading, however, she doesn’t seem to enjoy reading aloud alt-hough she looks like a chatty girl. Her posture of avoidance and even refusal during the interview could demonstrate her underlying problems in reading. That is to say, she may not have established her self-confidence in reading, let alone reaching its pleasure. Her shyness in reading contrasts against her open personality, depending on which our hy-pothesis could possibly be confirmed. Also, she sometimes found it confusing when it came to the writing of letters or words. We believe that learning to read may still remain a school task for her, and she requires more practice, both oral and written, to discover more linkages between her (as a human as well as a pre-reader) and reading.
The potentiality of poetry Poetry and self
because she didn’t utter one word concerning poetry. I, therefore, didn’t push during the whole interview until after reading our selected poem; I then repeated the question to find out what poetry is to E. And this time, she finally grasped some ideas as follow.
- D : Qu’est-ce que c’est la poésie ? A quoi ça sert à l’école maternelle ?
- E : Faire un petit peu…là ça sert à avoir un amoureux par exemple. Ce n’est pas obligé sur toutes les poésies. D’autres poésies servent à d’autres choses.
- D : Ça veut dire après avoir lu le poème, on va avoir des amoureux ? - E : Oui. Ça nous donne envie d’avoir un.
- D : Je tire un autre poème qui s’appelle « sans moi », elle l’a reconnu tout de suite.
- E : Ça, ça sert à aller la mer elle répond automatiquement . En fait ça sert à avoir plusieurs thèmes.
She connected the content of the poem to the willingness. As she explained with her examples, the poem on lovers boosts the willingness to have one’s own lovers. She told me that these are three lovers, a little, a middle and a big. Same for the poem on the sea, which encourages us to embrace the sea (in the poem of « sans moi » (see Annex 1)).
She also mentioned a nursery rhyme talking about the snails, there, she believed that people who love the rain would be willing to become a snail after reading the text. It seems that she was making efforts to transfer the aimable descriptions in poetic texts into reality through her imaginations. Her immersion when reading poetic texts could probably offer her a larger psychological space where she would visually perceive the emotions, imagine the described scenes, nurtured in the poetic atmosphere as if she were there. This space could eventually be served as what we call the « transitional area » where children search for psychological fulfilment if well guided.
- D : Du coup chaque fois la poésie, ça donne envie de faire des choses dans la poésie.
- E : Oui. Oui.
- D : Et l’histoire ne peut pas faire ça ? - E : Des fois oui, des fois non…
- D : Donc c’est surtout dans la poésie ça sert… ? - E : Oui.
- D : Dans la chanson, non ?
- E : Non…oui sauf dans « petit escargot » parce que si c’est petit escargot, comme si, quelqu’un
- E : C’est une comptine.
Her description of images triggered by the given poem confirmed what she expres-sed here. The images which flew into her head seem having certain connections with her own life (considered as privacy so we didn’t confirm). She described the two lovers in the poem living in the same apartment however on distinctive stages to avoid having a dis-pute on raising their children. We have every right to believe that this scene could be very familiar to her, and she has evidently corresponded the lovers in poem with one particu-lar couple in real life (may be her parents). Again, her immersive tendency brings us these incarnations in reality, which should be considered as a rather advanced weaving ability for learners. She, therefore, is considered as being capable to create herself a favorable context to recall the traces of her life experiences thus to boost her imagination.
- D : Est-ce qu’il y a des images dans ta tête quand tu lis le poème ?
- E : J’ai dessiné des images… J’ai collé et dessiné des images dans mon cahier de vie.
- D : Ah oui, qu’est-ce que tu as dessiné ? Tu peux me montrer ? - E : Des amoureux, mais mon cahier de vie est dans la classe.
- D : Qu’est-ce qu’ils ont fait ?
- E : Ils se tenaient. J’avais fait une maison à côté. Et une poubelle ! - D : Une poubelle ! Et c’est pour eux ? C’est leur maison ?
- E : Ben oui. En fait c’est un appartement de deux étages. Ils habitent chacun à son étage.
- D : Pourquoi ? Ils sont des amoureux !
- E : Parce qu’en fait, ils vont se voir tous les jours… et ils sont séparés parce qu’ils ne veulent pas se disputer.
- D : Comment tu sais qu’ils vont se disputer ?
- E : En fait, ils ont fait des enfants, il y a quelqu’un qui garde les deux enfants. Et ils vont se
- E : En fait, ils ont fait des enfants, il y a quelqu’un qui garde les deux enfants. Et ils vont se