MYTH, MAGIC, AND MEANING IN 5TH GRADE ENGLISH
5th Grade readers and thinkers are deep in discussion of the historical novel, Birchbark House, following the journey of young Chippewa Omakayas’s family on their island in what is modern day Lake Superior. Organized in seasons that highlight the vast differences each time of year brings to the work, games, rituals, and day-to-day experience of their lives, this novel also centers sometimes fantastical storytelling between the older and younger characters to show the cultural importance of this exchange for learning, relationship building, and entertainment. I joined a class discussion this week at the end of Chapter 9, where Omakayas’s grandmother’s spirit has emerged from a lake after a long slumber. As students attempted to make sense of this part of the story, they shared interpretations and textual evidence using annotations they’d marked in their books.
In a book I read a while ago there was something similar, and [the message] was about how if someone you really love dies then they’re only absent but not really lost. Because they’re still with you
One student offered as his explanation, “Fairy tales in the modern world, they’re warnings for what could happen later in life. They tell these stories to kids and they take some truth but also as a warning for them as they get older. Maybe the warning here is, ‘Heed your elders.’”
A peer responded, “In a book I read a while ago there was something similar, and [the message] was about how if someone you really love dies then they’re only absent but not really lost. Because they’re still with you.”
Wrestling with how the characters treated this interaction with a spirit as literal, students share many other ideas and perspectives. Their teacher guided them to consider the ways we add our own perspective and “bring ourselves” to each book we read, which shapes our interpretation but also the impact of the book on us.