Spirit of Endurance

I’m going to be starting our next reading unit, which is on questioning. My district curriculum has provided me with a couple of books about snakes, which are probably interesting, but I’m ditching them in order to use one of my favorite books: Spirit of Endurance, by Jennifer Armstrong.  The subtitle is “The true story of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic”, and if you don’t know anything about this trip, you need to read this book. One of the reasons I feel confident in switching out snakes for Shackleton is that in addition to teaching and practicing questioning, I can also use it to talk about theme and even character traits, even though it isn’t fiction. Ernest Shackleton is such an amazing person that it’s worth talking about what character traits would describe him.

I’m going to start by showing students the cover, and asking them to write some “I wonder” questions, which I’ll record so we can see if they get answered. We can talk about how some questions get answered as we read, and some don’t, or may require more research on our part. These kinds of questions are the ones that hopefully propel the reader further into a book as they look for answers to their questions. Jan Richardson, author of The Next Step in Guided Reading, calls these “red” questions, because you have to stop and think about the answers.  These are in some ways the most difficult to answer, but we often start any book with things we wonder about, so I’ll be dipping into the more difficult questions first. (A link to her resource page is here: www.janrichardsonguidedreading.com/resources-1)

As we read and find out more about Ernest Shackleton and his crew, and his desire to cross Antarctica by dogsled, then we can try “green questions”, which Richardson describes as being found right in the text. These are the kinds of questions we often ask to check direct understanding, like “Where was Shackleton from?” or “How many dogs did he take on his trip?” I’m going to model several of these, but then I’m going to have students write their own green (literal) questions to share with another student or the whole class.

The last kind of question I’ll be trying is a “yellow” question – one that you may have to look in several places for in order to answer the question. A great question to ask with this book would be “What factors caused Shackleton to abandon his ship?” Asking students about similarities and differences would also be examples of yellow questions.

About midway through the book, I use an activity where the students are given a list of items found on the ship that will either be taken with the expedition or left behind. Students work with a partner to discuss what they would keep and take, and then we go over what actually happened. I found this on the PBS website for the show NOVA, which has some great teacher resources connected to a show they did about Shackleton: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/activities/2906_shacklet.html

The discussion that ensues is often interesting and impassioned, especially with regard to the fate of the dogs.

Finishing up the rest of the book leaves plenty of opportunities for more “red” questions that could start with “what would have happened if….” or “why do you think….”. This is when we can talk about theme (like perseverance and stamina, or never give up) and character traits we could use to describe Shackleton (bold, courageous, dedicated – but while a great leader, probably not the best husband or father, as his love of exploring meant he was always gone).  Through the sinking of the ship, travelling in the rowboats to find land, sailing one of them through freezing hurricane-force winds to finally land on South Georgia Island where an enormous hike awaited them, and finally rescuing all the men, and never losing one of them – Shackleton’s story is one of the greatest rescue stories ever, and it will leave us with plenty of discussion possibilities, such as “Was the trip a success or failure?”

I can’t wait to share this amazing story with another group of students!