TEACHERNET Education Webspace - RPS

By Sylvia Olsen (2006)

Summary

It's spring time and Yetsa sets off with her mom to join her Grandma who is preparing new fleece for the special Cowichan sweaters that she knits. Together they clean the fleece, "tease" it, "card" it and spin it to make the yarn her Grandma will use through the winter and to make Yetsa a new sweater. It will have special symbols in its pattern to tell a story about Yetsa and her family. At the end, there is information about the tradition of knitting Cowichan sweaters by the Coast Salish Knitters.

This authentic story is written by a person who married a Coast Salish man and learned the tradition of making Cowichan sweaters from sheep to sweater. Sylvia Olsen ran a Cowichan sweater shop for sixteen years on the Tsartlip Reserve and later completed her Master's Thesis about the Coast Salish Knitters.

Strategies

This is a wonderful story to use with many of the reading strategies. It lends itself to questioning, particularly if the process of cleaning and preparing the wool is not a familiar one to children. As I read the story, I realized that I was making inferences, connections to my own background knowledge and asking questions. For the purposes of modeling a strategy, it would probably be best to focus on only one. This book could be used with students who had been working with the strategies for a while to show how the strategies work together to help with understanding.

Connections

The following is what I would do to model the strategy of making Text - to - Self connections. I might not use all of these examples depending on the responses of students in the large group and the time frame that I had.

• Explain to students that good readers are always thinking as they read and that one of the kinds of thinking they do is to think about their own experiences and what they know themselves that relates to what they are reading. We sometimes call that our own background knowledge or schema. When we do this kind of thinking when we are reading, we call that making connections.

• Explain that you are going to read the story out loud to the students.

• Read the story a second time explaining that you are going to think out loud about the connections you made to the story so that students can hear what was going on in your head as you were reading.

• Look at the cover. Share the connections that you made before you started reading the story.

When I looked at the cover I noticed that the older woman was knitting with fat needles and thick wool. My Mom used to knit things for my sister and me. Sometimes, she used fat needles like this when the wool was very thick. I remember a sweater she made for me that I wore for several years until I grew out of it. It was a little scratchy on my chin but it was really warm.

• Explain that you have left tracks of your thinking on sticky notes through the book. Show that each sticky note has a T - S on the top because the connections are between the story or "text" and your "self". As you read the story, share your connections that you have written on the sticky notes. The following are examples of what I would write on sticky notes to show text-to-self connections:
  

Dedication page:

I have just been learning how to knit from a friend. It looks like this person who is knitting is an expert. I'm thinking that because she is using many needles all at once and I am learning that is tricky to do. Maybe she is helping the little girl like my friend is helping me learn or when I make a mistake. (This is actually an inference but if my lesson is about making connections, I wouldn't mention that here.)
The book is dedicated to Laura Olsen. That's probably a relative of Sylvia Olsen. It's also dedicated to "the other Coast Salish knitters". I know that the Coast Salish people are First Nations people in British Columbia somewhere.

First and Second Pages: "It's a bright Saturday in May…"

I didn't live close to either of my Grandmas but I can imagine what it would have been like walking with my Mom for a visit. It gives me a good feeling. When I look at the picture, it reminds me a little of walking on a trail beside a river in British Columbia because I can see lots of trees and the mountains in the background.

Third and Fourth Pages: "Grandma lives near the beach and it's chilly when the wind blows off the salt water…"

Now, I really think this might be British Columbia because I know that salty water is in the ocean.
I can see that Yetsa's sweater is too small for her like mine got for me when the sleeves didn't come down to my wrists.
Yetsa's Grandma loved her like my Mom loved me to put all of that special attention into making her sweater one of a kind that matched things about her family. My Mom didn't put symbols in her knitting but she made interesting patterns.
I have seen wool that has been prepared for spinning at my friend's house. It's very soft and fluffy.

Fifth and Sixth Pages: "Grandma is out in the back adding sticks of fir and alder and maple wood to the fire…"

The big black pot looks a little like the big pot my family had for camping when we would cook over the fire. It was heavy and black with soot.
What a great hug Yetsa and her Grandma have. I remember how soft my grandma felt when she hugged me.

Seventh and Eighth Pages: "The bundles of fleece are piled almost as high as Grandma…"

I remember seeing a show on TV that was about sheering sheep. The fleece looked long and scraggly just like in this picture. It was kind of dirty too from when the sheep were in the fields. I only have a few memories of my Mom, Grandma and me doing things together because we lived so far a way. It always gave me a good feeling when we did things together that were things that they did when my Mom was a girl like making jam. I think that must be how Yetsa is feeling.

Ninth and Tenth Pages: "Yuck, yuck, yuck!"

That's pretty yucky when Yetsa finds the sheep poop but its sort of funny too. I was glad it was her and not me!

Eleventh and Twelfth Pages: "Grandma checks the fleeces for any more sheep poop while…"

The pot in the picture does look like a witch's stew! Yetsa and I made the same connection.

Thirteenth and Fourteenth Pages: "Grandma fills two more pots with cold water for rinsing…"

I remember having to wash my sweater by hand in the bathtub because it couldn't go in the washing machine or it would shrink. It was really heavy to lift out of the water and it took a lot of patience to make sure it was rinsed really well.

Fifteenth and Sixteenth Pages: "When Grandma says the rinse is finished…"

I remember the water running down my arms and dripping off my elbows and getting me all wet exactly like what happened to Yetsa. It was cold.

Seventeenth and Eighteenth and Nineteenth Pages: "Yetsa feels cold and wet…"

Fresh bread and homemade jam is awesome. It was always fun to have snacks at my Grandma's house because they were so yummy.

Twenty-first and Twenty-second Pages: "Yetsa and Mom sit down beside Grandma…"

This reminds me of sitting with my Grandma and asking her lots of questions. She was always patient to answer just like Yetsa's Grandma.

Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Pages: "When they have a pile of teased wool…"

I have seen someone "carding" wool before but they used two little comb-like things. The machine that Grandma uses is different but it looks like it does the same thing.

Twenty-fifth and Twent-sixth Pages: "Can I help? Can I help?..."

I remember being too little to do the things the older people got to do. I remember trying to use my Mom's sewing machine and the thread got into a huge knot tangled up in the machine. It took my Mom a long time to get it untangled and we wasted a lot of thread. I felt badly about what I had done.

Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Pages: "When Yetsa and Mom arrive the next Saturday…"

Balls and balls of wool…This looks like my friend's house and also the wool drawer at my Mom's house.

Thirty-first and Thirty-second Pages: "Yetsa sits next to Grandma and watches her needles flick together…"

I remember sitting and watching my Mom knit. She went so fast.
I think it's really neat that the sweater design matches things in Yetsa's life. It's like a story sweater or a story quilt.

• Share any connections you made after reading the story.

I kept thinking that Yetsa was so lucky to share in this family tradition with her Mom and her Grandma. Sometimes it might be hard work or not very much fun like the sheep poop part but it becomes part of who you are. My Mom and my Grandma and I share gardening that way. It's something we all loved to do and I liked helping whenever I could.

• Explain how making connections between the text and self helps you to understand the story better.

Making text-to-self connections helped me to remember what happened in the story. Remembering the feel of my own sweater and washing it in the bathtub helped me to think about what was happening to Yetsa. My own memories with my Mom and Grandma helped me to know how Yetsa was feeling. Knowing how proud I am of my own knitting projects and how I would like to knit a sweater some day makes me think I know how proud Yetsa is of her Grandma and that maybe she would like to be a knitter like her Grandma someday.

• You could follow-up with an activity time where students talk about and record a connection to this story. You might want to use this story and modeling time as an "anchor lesson" that you can refer to in subsequent lessons (Harvey & Goudvis, p. 35, 2000). After reading another story, read it a second time and invite students to talk about connections they made to the story "just like I told you about my connections in the think aloud with Yetsa's Sweater". You might follow with lessons where connections are recorded with the student's name on a chart. After modeling and practice in the larger group, it's time to let students make connections with their own reading. During this reading time the teacher can be conferencing with students about the connections they make. Having a time where students pair share with each other will help them articulate their connections. Using sticky notes and then putting these into a reading log or journal provides a record of their thinking for later study.

Strategies Used in the Activities Suggested on the Willow Awards Site

The suggested follow-up activities on the Willow Awards website work to enhance student comprehension as well and can be tied into the reading strategies that we are proposing. Students may need modeling and practicing of these strategies in order to do these activities independently.

The Willow Awards 2007 - Yetsa's Sweater
http://www.willowawards.ca/nomdescribe/yetsa.htm

• Interview a family member, relative, or neighbour, about things they remember from their childhood. Making Connections
• Have a sweater fashion show. Visualizing, Making Connections, Questioning
• Bring sweaters that have special memories or a story and share with the class. Making Connections
• Research an item or article. Create a bulletin board with illustrations and history of the item. If possible have a guest speaker into the class to talk about the item. Determining Importance, Questioning, Synthesis

• Another fun activity that would help to build background knowledge might be to have someone show students the teasing, carding, spinning, and knitting process. Inviting students to bring wool and knitting needles to school and showing them how to knit would be a fun extension to build background knowledge.