Chapter+2


 * Chapter 2 **

This chapter opens with a teacher having her students read Sandra Cisneros essay "Salvador Late or Early".


 *  Salvador Late or Early Sandra Cisneros Salvador 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 cornflakes 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 crisscrossing, 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. **

After a failed comprehension strategy of using sticky notes to list a connection, the writer tried using a [|double diary entry]form. Student actually listed a quote on the left side of a paper then on the right side listed 'So What'. This forced the reader to get to the meaning behind the quote.

So, in summary, making a connection doesn't equal to a deep comprehension....but it should pose another question, conclusion, a visualization or even more confusion. This leads readers to the 'So What'. The full circle brings the reader back to the text to back up a conclusion or clear the confusion.

In close, strategy instruction encourages teachers to teach less better. We need to banish the idea that "school is a place where young people go to watch old people work".

How could I use this? Students could read a more difficult [|text] then use the comments and connections as a basis for a lesson by answering the questions or conculsions they formed.