Tip of the Iceberg
a new approach to analyzing text
Much attention is being paid to the science of learning (see Holly Korbey’s Substack The Bell Ringer for a wealth of background in this subject). As I read more books and articles about the science of learning, I’m often left with the question, “Yes, but what are the actual, concrete teaching practices we can apply?”
When I start watching a movie with my twelve-year-old son, a few minutes in he inevitably says, “Pause.” Then comes the question: “What’s going on? I don’t get it.” He’s always been a kid who’s great with the concrete and struggles with the abstract. Movies often begin with a puzzle—we see an event unfolding, but we don’t yet know how we arrived at that point. As adults, we’ve had plenty of practice with this kind of narrative. After watching hundreds of films, we understand that many begin in medias res—in the middle of the action—and that the story will likely take us back in time to explain how we got there.
What comes naturally to experienced viewers—holding unanswered questions in mind, anticipating patterns, and making inferences—has to be learned. The same is true in school: students need opportunities to practice thinking beyond what’s immediately visible or stated.
Cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, in his book Why Don’t Students Like School? notes that our minds are naturally attuned to the concrete rather than the abstract:
Abstraction is the goal of schooling. The teacher wants students to be able to apply classroom learning in new contexts, including those outside of school. The challenge is that the mind seems not to care for abstraction. The mind seems to prefer the concrete.
Willingham differentiates between rote, shallow, and deep knowledge.
Rote learning is memorizing and repeating information. “Rote knowledge,” he explains, “might lead to giving the right response, but it doesn’t mean the student is thinking.”
Shallow knowledge means students have some understanding, but it’s limited. They might recognize a line from a poem and grasp its literal meaning, but not be able to situate it within the context of the author, style, or time period.
Deep knowledge is what we truly aim for in learning: “A student with deep knowledge knows more about the subject, and the pieces of knowledge are more richly interconnected.”
In the movie example above, we draw on deep knowledge—our internalized sense of narrative structure and genre conventions—and we notice when a filmmaker breaks those conventions to create something new.
How then do we help students move to a deeper understanding of text and narrative structures in our classrooms?
Understanding Subtext
Having worked with many theater educators over the years, I’ve noticed how much emphasis they place on teaching subtext—the underlying or implicit meaning behind the words of a script.
A common activity is to give two actors a generic scene. In his book Improv!, Greg Atkins offers a series of “neutral scenes.” For instance:
ACTOR 1: Hello.
ACTOR 2: Oh, hi.
ACTOR 1: What are you doing?
ACTOR 2: Nothing.
ACTOR 1: Really?
ACTOR 2: Yeah! What are you doing here?
ACTOR 1: Not much. Just this.
ACTOR 2: Oh.
ACTOR 1: Well, see you later.
ACTOR 2: Yeah, see you around.
Atkins explains that the script provides no information about who the characters are, where they are, or what they’re doing. The actors create the world of the scene through their vocal, emotional, and physical choices. Every pair of actors invents a different world and story using the same words.
A similar concept in language arts is inferential comprehension—exploring meanings behind the literal words on the page. The following classroom approach, which I call Tip of the Iceberg, invites students to uncover and build layered interpretations of a text.
Tip of the Iceberg
The “tip of the iceberg” metaphor reminds us that only about 10% of an iceberg is visible above the surface; the vast majority lies unseen below. In textual analysis, the literal definitions of words are what we might see on the surface—while the deeper meanings, associations, and implications lie beneath.
In this activity, students work in pairs or small groups to “build” their interpretation in two stages:
Surface: What do you see?1
In the first conversation, students focus on the surface of the text—the literal words on the page. What do you notice? What do the words mean? This stage ensures that all students share a common understanding of the text’s vocabulary and basic meaning. It’s the visible part of the iceberg—the 10% above the waterline. At this point, students aren’t interpreting; they’re observing, naming, and clarifying.
Beneath the Surface: What do you think about what you see?
In the second conversation, students begin to explore beneath the surface. Here, they make informed guesses about what the text might mean based on limited information. What might this phrase suggest? What could this text be about? How do the words hint at a larger story or theme?
This stage asks students to shift from the concrete to the abstract—to build interpretations, see possibilities, and begin constructing the “world” of the text in their minds. As more of the text is revealed, they revise their interpretations, just as readers (or viewers) continually adjust their understanding as new evidence appears.
