The No Nonsense of Nonsense

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post "Jabberwocky & Dr. Seuss:  A Lesson in Nonsense" (although one can be read at the exclusion of the other).

Playing with nonsense is important to language learning, critical thinking and creativity...aside from just being so much fun!

Whether playing with nonsense words (as in Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky) or nonsense ideas, places, and things (Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat or Dr. Seuss' The Lorax), the author invites the reader to:

• play with language - in terms of phonics and vocabulary;
• play with language - in terms of allegory, and metaphor;
• play with concepts - considering greater depth, inference, detail, fun and surprises as they pop up in the reading journey; and
• play with reading making it more active and interactive as author and reader play with words, sounds, and sentence structure.

Shakespeare, Carroll, Lear, Dr. Seuss are just a few authors well-known for their integrating nonsense words, verse, and ideas in their writing.

Shakespeare created his 'words' combining alliteration, onomatopoeia, and word play as he took two unrelated words and combined them to express some often-foul-filled image such as "boil-brained" to create a new, scathing curse or slam [Here is a link to create your own slams from Shakespeare's word lexicon].

Lewis Carroll used nonsense words to play with the sound and structure of language. He also integrated sound, onomatopoeia, illusion and alliteration and, in the case of Jabberwocky, was more inventive in terms of words /word choices (go to: for complete text):

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Yet, even with Carroll's truly nonsensical words, given their use and placement in the sentence, the reader can create an image and story. And upon closer examination, many of the nonsensical words are quite similar to ones we might substitute.  "Gyre" alludes to gyrate, and "mimsy" is close to whimsy, and whether intentional or not, the reader has fun actively constructing his or her own sense of meaning and intent.

Edward Lear, a third English author also integrated nonsense words with nonsense ideas (an owl marrying a pussycat, and the important thing is a ring?)  in his works, often in limericks and songs that he asserted were "nonsense, pure and absolute." His best known songs are probably The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and "The Daddy-Long-Legs and the Fly." [For more, visit Edward Lear Home Page. ]

Owl and the Pussy-Cat Verse II

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married!too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose, 

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

The Daddy Long-legs and the Fly - Verse 1

Once Mr. Daddy Long-legs,

Dressed in brown and gray,

Walked about upon the sands

Upon a summer's day;

And there among the pebbles,

When the wind was rather cold,

He met with Mr. Floppy Fly,

Add dressed in blue and gold.

And as it was too soon to dine,

They drank some Periwinkle-wine,

And played an hour or two, or more,

At battlecock and shuttledore.

Dr. Seuss' nonsense words were both like Shakespeare's in combining two unrelated words to create a third, and like Lear's and Carroll's in their play on sound, language, and sentence structure (as seen in Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please go Now):

 Marvin K. Mooney will you please go now!...

You can go On a Zike-Bike 

If you like....

You can go in Crunk-Car 

If you wish...

You might like going in a Zumble Zay...

You can go by bumble-boat...or jet

I don't care how you go.  Just get!

[For those of you who love political satire, here's a link to Dr. Seuss' play with political satire - as he sent a copy of Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! text to columnist Art Buchwald in July, 1974, with Marvin K. Mooney crossed out and Richard K. Nixon plugged in "Richard M. Nixon Will You Please Go Now!"]

"NONSENSE" in these instances in not nonsense at all - it is, in fact WORD-PLAY and we should be encouraging this with our kids as they learn to read, write, create, and express themselves. 


Lanaguage: Playing with nonsense words in rhyme, as Dr. Seuss does, allows young readers and language learners to:

• play with long and short vowel sounds;
• play with consonants, and consonant blends;
• play and experiment with sentence structure (using this along with mapping is integral for verbal and written expression)
• play with vocabualry, alliteration, onomatopoeia (Do you like the "piano tuna" ...create your own with your child!)

Critical thinking: Dr. Seuss, Edward Lear, nursery rhymes and fables all encourage children and readers in general to:

• compare and contrast to distinguish the 'real-life' from the fantastical fantasy. 
• infer - gaining greater understanding and expertise with metaphor, allegory, double/multiple meanings;
• brainstorm and  imagine our natural world not just for what it is, but for what it could be or might be.
• create - seeing and reading famous works about nonsensical characters, animals, and places encourages young writers to create their own worlds, to learn to exaggerate, to create and to express humor and metaphor. [Like this greeting "WHISK"ing you a Happy Valentine's Day!...make your own!]

 

But the most important thing, is that this kind of word play is fun, it is engaging, it creates multiple memory paths and it is incredibly interactive.  So have fun with nonsense.  Read some of the masters' works and create your own.  

In closing - here is a ditty my daughter wrote when she was young - her take on "Oowey Goowey":

The original

Oowey Goowey was a worm,

A gooey worm was he.

He sat upon the railroad tracks

The train he did not see....

OOOOweyyy Gooweey!!!

My daughter's version:

OOwey goowey was a slug
He was slimy and fat
He crawled upon the railroad tracks...
Chugga, chugga SPLATT!

Please leave some of your fun, nonsensical ideas in the comments so we can all laugh and enjoy!

Mapping for Memory, Clarity, and Creativity

Mapping - in education - refers to a means of graphically organizing things.  Students map sentences, geometric shapes, statistical analyses, stories, ideas, data, and images to see how they are related and connected, to better understand concepts, and to aid in information organization and memory.

Why is Mapping so important?   Mapping helps students organize words, concepts, and /or images.  It provides additional memory associations and connections as well as offer a means of organizing and analyzing information.

• By mapping ideas, or sentences, stories, directions, etc., you are providing means of associating different but related items and this in turn helps memory.  
• By seeing, reading, and constructing maps for various subjects, students are creating more memory associations, more ways to see and think about the material at hand.
• More memory associations mean more ways of retrieving information on demand.
• Once incorporated into long-term memory, mapping and remembering structures (of sentences, of stories, of ideas) frees the mind to construct, abstract and be more creative as the underlying structures are so clearly understood.

Types of Mapping in school:

• Cartography - stars are mapped much as seas and lands are mapped - to help navigate and determine points of reference;
• (Military, political) campaigns;
• Math -  functions, shapes, patterns, relationships are all mapped to gain a clearer conceptual understanding;
• Science (experiments, concepts, surveys) - to understand relationships of factors studied;
• Concepts, Metaphors and Analogies can be mapped to help understand inferences and relationships;
• Language:

• Words - are mapped to help students recognize definitions, antonyms, synonyms and to build overall vocabulary;
• Sentences  - are mapped to help students better understand how sentences are constructed, to help them better understand word usage, and to help them be more effective and efficient communicators;
• Stories - are mapped to help students better understand relationships between characters, concepts, plots, settings and themes.

In this post, I will be focusing on language mapping.

Word mapping is a visual means to help students think about and remember words and word usage.  Here is one example from http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/word_maps/:

Sentence mapping encourages students to break down a sentence into its component parts. Sentence mapping promotes vocabulary and encourages students to think about terms or concepts in several ways. It also helps students better understand, recognize, and employ proper sentence structure.  Sentence mapping encourage students to build upon prior knowledge and visually represent new information. And yet, given these essential skills, it is often not done or is certainly not done enough.  Sentence mapping should be routine - especially for weaker language learners.  So here is what you can/should do for younger and older language learners:

• For preschoolers this might mean finding the noun or subject of the sentence, adjectives or 'describers' and the verb or action in a sentence. 
• For grade-schoolers this means decomposing sentences in to verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, clauses, modifiers, and compliments.  

Understanding parts of a sentence- decomposing sentences and mapping sentences should become routine exercises. There are many ways students can do this:

• They can color code different parts of speech within the sentence,
• They can put nouns and verbs above and modifiers below a sentence diagram (see below), or
• They can simply label parts of speech above or below the sentence.  

Here is one example (from education.com) where students put nouns and verbs above a sentence line diagram and modifiers below:

Here is a different type of sentence mapping (from elec-intro.com) where words are identified by their usage:

...And from en.wikipedia.org:

Story Mapping - helps students visually organize various story elements such as characters, plot, setting, themes, problems, and solutions.  Story maps are used to help student comprehension, to illustrate the framework, structure, and organization of a story, and to teach students how to compare, contrast and organize various story elements.

There a dozens of different types of story map graphic organizers.  For young students, story maps often simply plot on the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Understanding story sequence is essential for critical thinking, for writing, and for communicating.  There are maps that help describe characters, that trace sequences and relationships of story events, that graph word usage and compare and contrast concepts and themes.

Here is a simple beginning/middle/end story map, again from AdLit.org :

Another type of visual story map may involve showing how two themes are related. In the example below (again from Reading Rocket) students use a venn diagram to map relationships:

The list and types of story maps are varied according to themes, goals, and preferences.  Experiment with them or create your own.

While many kids find this challenging (and some - I was one) boring, it is actually quite important for students to do.  Once the concept of mapping is understood, you might let them create their own types of 'mapping' while incorporating form and structure. Talk about what works and doesn't work with their maps and why.  Make it fun and meaningful.

Thank you for your time and your visit. I'd love to hear what you think...

Jabberwocky & Dr. Seuss: A Lesson in Nonsense

For the uninitiated, "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense verse found in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.  As Alice is conversing with the White King and White Queen (chess pieces) she finds a book in seemingly unintelligible language.  Realizing that she's traveling through an inverted world, she holds a mirror to the poem and reads the reflected verse of "Jabberwocky" which to her disappointment still makes little sense.

 "Jabberwocky"

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

”

from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872).

'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's rather hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate' (Carroll, Lewis (2010) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass pp 64–65 Createspace ltd ISBN 1-4505-7761-X)

The concept of nonsense verse was not new to Carroll. Nonsense verse existed in Shakespeare's work as well as the brothers Grimm's fairytales. Shakespeare, in fact, is well-known for coining many new words.  Martin Gardner (The Annotatted Alice:  The Definitive Edition.  NY Norton & Company, 1999), however,  wrote that "Few would dispute that Jabberwocky is the greatest of all nonsense poems in English."

Dr. Seuss  was also a genius with nonsense words as he invited kids to explore parallel worlds, language, and morality!!!!

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities. Dr. Seuss US author & illustrator (1904 - 1991)

The genius and fun of nonsense verse is that while many of the words are nonce words (words invented to meet a need that is not expected - often for a particular occasion), the syntax and poetic forms are observed (as you can tell the poem is written in ABAB rhyme scheme and iambic meter). The rhythm and sound of the words make this somewhat scary poem a lot of fun to read and 'feels' solvable.

Nonce words are often used to study the development of language in children. They enable researchers to investigate kids' understanding of morphemes, prefixes, suffixes, and syntax (grammar, sentence structure).  Jean Berko developed the "Wug test" (1958) to observe and better understand the acquisition of the 'plural' in English-speaking children:

"This is a wug.  Now there are two of them.  There are two.....?"

The point is that creating nonce or nonsense words in verse is FUN while being an excellent exercise in language, sentence structure and comprehension. This is particularly important as kids are developing vocabulary and comprehension skills.  So often, when they come to words they can't read or don't quite recognize, readers can use context to help them.  This is the power of playing with nonsense words.  By understanding how the location of a word in a sentence can tell readers if it is an action, a name, a description can help them better figure out its meaning.  Nonsense can be used to teach kids the power of context, rhyme, alliteration, and sentence structure. It also makes language learning more fun and less intimidating.

Instructional Ideas:

• Jabberwocky: 
• Ask your kids to act out the lines.  
• Ask them what the words mean.  
• Ask them to supply their own words to help explain the verse.

• Dr. Seuss' ABC's - While Jabberwocky can be used and read with older kids, this is ideal for younger ones. It teaches the alphabet and letter sounds and it plays with language in an engaging, enticing manner.  Here are some instructional ideas:
• Ask your child what the nonsense might mean (the illustrations will help too).
• Come up with your own version of this book full of alliteration and nonsense words.

Here is a YouTube clip of the book read in Jamaican Patois:

• And of course there's Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  Below is an older animated version.  
• Listen / read this together.  Make a list of the nonsense words.
• Can you identify what they mean in isolation when reading the list?  What about when you read them in the book.  Why?
• Come up with your own definitions of the words.  Insert them into the story and read it again.  Is it as much fun to read?  Why/why not?
• Talk about the value of using nonsense words and HOW masters like Dr. Seuss use them so masterfully.

Language learning should be meaningful and fun.  I can't think of a better way to teach sense, than using nonsense!  What do you think?